Tricks for Photographers Using Squarespace
2024 Update:
Hey there! Just wanted to provide an update here. Password protected pages are still a great way to protect your content and photos, as well as reducing the overall file size. But, with the introduction of Fluid Engine in Squarespace 7.1, most photos throughout your website are automatically locked and unable to be pulled off your website. The only tools on Squarespace that still allow for your photos to be pulled off the website are the gallery block (retired for non-Circle Members), Gallery Pages, and List Sections.
Further, the Poster Block has been retired and is only available in Classic Editor. It could be removed entirely at some point soon, so I’d recommend upgrading to Fluid Engine if you haven’t already.
So, my latest trick for you as a photographer to prevent your images from being pulled off your website is to disable right click entirely. You can do so by using the below code, and adding it to your Footer Code Injection. You can get to Footer Code Injection by clicking on Website, then Website Tools, then Code Injection. Paste it in, and click Save.
Here’s the code:
<script type="text/javascript">
document.oncontextmenu=RightMouseDown;
document.onmousedown = mouseDown; function mouseDown(e) {
if (e.which==3) return false;
}
function RightMouseDown() {
return false;
}</script>I’ll continue to update this post if new options become available. Thanks for visiting!
If you're a photographer, you probably have some of your portfolio online in different places all over the web. With Custom Squarespace Website design, the photographers that I know are often concerned about their photos being stolen and used for other purposes they don't allow, and for good reason. After all, that's your money and your work, right? Most other platforms don't tend to showcase the benefits for photographers, but with a bit of knowledge, you can secure your images in Squarespace easily. In this brief article, I'll walk you through some tricks for photographers when using Squarespace to protect your images.
Password Protected Pages
The first and easiest thing to do with Squarespace to protect your images is to protect your pages with a password. You can add a password to any page on your website by clicking the gear icon to the right of the page in the navigation. I'd recommend keeping any of these pages you want to protect under "Not Linked" so they can't be accessed by just anyone.
You can then create a Gallery Page or a Page with a Gallery Block to host the images on that password protected page. The image I've included here is an example of how you can stylize each password protected page with your brand, fonts, and colors, as well as add an example photo for that specific client. It really gives an added level of personalization for your site and your work. There's even more customization you can do, and Squarespace has a really helpful article to give you the details.
Reduce File Size and Quality
Another easy thing to do (and you might already be doing this, so kudos!) is to reduce the file size and quality of each photo in any galleries you put up publicly. You can also do this for your client page, while also adding a button or link to download the high quality images from your service of choice (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.) If you're using a Mac, I find that ImageOptim is a great, free tool that reduces the file size pretty significantly without reducing quality. I tend to use this app when I'm using stock photos for client websites, and you can use it in the same way.
For reducing quality, I would use Photoshop, another photo editing app, or online photo editing website. Ideally you would reduce the quality to lower than 1MB so if it does pop up on another website, it'll be a lower quality photo that people won't use.
Use the Poster Block
My last trick is one that I recently discovered, and it might take a bit more work for larger galleries, but it's significantly worth it if you want to showcase specific shots in your portfolio without the worry of them being taken. Last year, Squarespace introduced Image Block 2.0, adding a slew of new design features and options for placing text on top of, next to, or inline with the images.
What I discovered recently was if you turn on Poster with each image you upload, but don't put any text in, the sample text disappears and it locks the photo to the page. Standard images on a page can be clicked and dragged off of the page, but the Poster design prevents this from happening, along with any other of the design elements. The Poster design is the easiest because you can't tell if it's a Poster Image block or just a standard image.
I've included a brief video showing how you can do this as well!
Conclusion
There are some quick tips and tricks for photographers when using Squarespace from our Squarespace design specialist. Squarespace has a great article about the best templates to choose for photography portfolios right here. I hope these are helpful, and please let me know if you have any questions when it comes to building your photography website!
Your Designer
I'm Justin, a veteran Squarespace website designer with over 12 years of experience building websites. I've worked with every industry and type of business, building platforms for small businesses through to multi-million dollar companies. If you want to discuss a potential project, you can email me on info@justinmabee.com, or get in touch with me here. Alternatively, you can book a free 15-minute consultation call here.
