No matter if you’re a photographer showcasing your work or an entrepreneur launching an online store for merchandise sales, Squarespace provides many beautiful templates from which to select – however it can be challenging identifying exactly which template an existing website uses without knowing what signs to look out for.
Look at the Template ID
Squarespace is an incredibly popular website builder, and many beautiful websites are constructed on it. Unfortunately, it can be challenging to ascertain exactly which template a specific site uses; Squarespace does not provide much insight into their usage so you must rely on visual cues alone in determining their design.
Finding out which Squarespace template a website is using requires diving deep into its source code and looking for something called “template id”. This string acts like an ID number that uniquely identifies which template it uses; right-clicking websites to select “View Page Source”, or using programs such as Notepad or TextEdit can help find it quickly. Once found, search Google using that ID number and find out what templates it represents.
Trying to identify which template someone is using can be challenging; one approach may be asking them directly or searching the Squarespace forum for assistance. Once you know their template type and version (7.0 or 7.1), this information can help determine their version number; for instance if the site uses version 7.0 it could contain a message on their homepage encouraging them to upgrade to version 7.1.
If the site is running on 7.1, they should provide a list of available templates – both their name and family (Brine or Bedford) are usually displayed here. Alternatively, see this table which lists them all.
Once you know which template and version a site uses, it can help provide insight into what kind of content will appear there. For instance, if a 7.1 template is being used then they might feature a Shop Now call-to-action as well as featured products sections on their homepage; while for Brine templates these websites typically host blogs as well as services pages.
Look at the Template Family
Squarespace used to offer template families for its older primary templates: Skye (for bloggers), Pacific (with text overlays and scrolling full-bleed index page), Bedford (great for nonprofits and small businesses) and Brine (for any brand or company). Since then, however, they’ve swapped out this arrangement in favor of an inflexible default architecture and eliminated any option for customizing your template; making identifying which template you are currently using much more challenging.
If a website runs on Squarespace version 7.1, it should be relatively straightforward to determine their template of choice. All 7.1 templates share similar basic structures and functions; thus appearing similar. However, each has unique style rules which make them distinct from each other 7.1 template.
Squarespace provides numerous template families as well as variants that offer additional layout and feature options for each template, such as Brine which features Index pages that enable dynamic grid or slideshow galleries as well as full-width carousel galleries pages.
Julia, Monta and Julia XT templates offer distinct layouts and features to help them stand out from one another. Their variants provide a variety of design styles that meet the needs of various websites.
One reliable way of discovering which template someone is using is to visit their site and search its code for “templateID”, this should provide some indication. Other methods might work too such as asking the site owner or designer who can access their template dashboard; but these may not provide as accurate results as simply searching their code for “templateID”.
Look at the Version
Websites today must not only look beautiful but be easily discoverable by people. Optimizing for search engine results is paramount and Squarespace makes this possible; however it may be challenging determining the template a site uses when its owner has not disclosed this information.
Optimizing a Squarespace website requires understanding what version of template you are working with. Each version may have specific instructions that must be adhered to; if a website was constructed on an older version of Squarespace it may not support some of its latest features and may cause issues down the road; so before beginning any instructions it’s advisable to know exactly which version your website runs on.
If you are building your own Squarespace website or curious to know which version someone else is using on theirs, there are a few methods for finding out. One option is looking at the website’s footer which often displays information on which template(s) is being used; another way is using SiteFindr which automatically searches websites to detect which template they’re using based on code analysis; it then matches any given template ID against all available templates, giving screenshots and information for any matched templates that match.
At last, you can check what version of Squarespace your website is running by looking at its management panel or account billing. If an old version exists, this may be indicated either within these features or via banner advertising on its home page. Alternatively, right-clicking any page and selecting “View page source,” before searching for words such as ‘templateId’ and ‘familyId’ to determine what template the website uses.
