5 Free (or small fee) Squarespace Plugins and Tools
As a website designer and developer, I’ve found a few ways to make my life easier and work more efficiently. Here are my top 5 favorite FREE Squarespace (or super small fee) plugins that will hopefully help you too. Some of these Squarespace plugins and tools are free and some are paid, but all are worth it! None of these links are affiliate links and I will not get any part of any purchase you make. These are simply tools that I use for my Squarespace websites, love, and wanted to share. You will see notes below as to which are free vs. paid.
Block ID Finder:
If you are using CSS to customize your Squarespace website, then you will need various collection IDs (to target specific pages), block IDs (for text blocks, image blocks, etc.), and section IDs (to target whole sections within a page) in order to specify and style these areas of your site. This tool makes finding, copying, and pasting those IDs VERY EASY. It doesn’t totally eliminate the need for Google Chrome’s Inspect developer tool which is built into Chrome already, but it does cut down the need significantly. The Block ID finder is simple and straightforward to install, and I use it ALL the time. Check it out here: Squarespace ID Finder . FREE SQUARESPACE PLUGIN TOOL
Scrolling Screen Capture:
This is a Chrome plugin and is super useful if you are looking to capture full height images from your computer that go beyond the edges of your device screen. You can see I’ve used this tool to grab a screen print from a recent website project to display in my portfolio page. This tool does exactly what it says, no ads and nothing complicated. Check it out here: GoFullPage - Full Page Screen Capture. FREE SQUARESPACE PLUGIN TOOL if you want a quick screen grab and don’t need to go further, or PAID SQUARESPACE PLUGIN TOOL for $1 per month if you want to edit and export (that is what I do).
Search and Filter:
If you have a product page or a gallery page, this plugin is for you. It is not an overall site search, but rather a tool to be able to filter and search collection pages on your site. I highly recommend this to anyone using Squarespace e-commerce. I’m using this in an upcoming website going live in a few weeks. Until then, check it out here: Square Websites Universal Filter. PAID SQUARESPACE PLUGIN TOOL one time fee. If you need help implementing it, they offer that too!
Lightbox Anything:
A very useful tool to display embedded videos, images, forms, and more in a window that can pop-out from any text, image or link. There is even an option to display the lightbox window on hover. I implemented this plugin on Bill Shermans’s Broadway Juliet project. To see it in action, scroll down to the official trailer and hover over the play button. You can find more information on this plugin here: SQSP Themes Lightbox Anything. PAID SQUARESPACE PLUGIN TOOL one time fee.
Display more than 30 Items in a Summary Block:
Squarespace currently has a limit on the number of items to display in a summary block (30), but sometimes that just isn’t enough. This plugin was developed to let you display unlimited summary items which is very handy on a press page, for example. I used this plugin on Barbara Prey’s press page here. Developed by Square Websites, the Lazy Summaries is very simple to install and use. It also has settings to manage loading and caching so your page load time is not negatively impacted. Check out Lazy Summaries for yourself here. PAID SQUARESPACE PLUGIN TOOL one time fee.
I hope you find these as useful as I do!
~Jackie