Moving a counselling website from Squarespace

What the export is, and is not

Use Squarespace’s import/export to download the content export where your plan allows it. Treat that file as a copy of text, not as the new website. Product blocks, member areas, some gallery layouts and the visual design do not come across as a working site. Download the images you have rights to, separately, and list every public URL from the pages panel and from Search Console.

The old combined note on this site, which treated Wix and Squarespace as one job, now lives as two guides. Wix has its own limits.

URL mappings, DNS and mail

Squarespace’s mapping format is its own. The new site still needs the permanent redirects after the domain points away, because the Squarespace mappings stop applying once the domain no longer resolves there.

• Write each changed path as a 301 in Squarespace URL mappings while the old site is still the live one, then repeat those mappings on the new host after cutover
• Do not send every old URL to the homepage
• Copy MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC before changing nameservers
• Leave the Squarespace site up until the new forms and the new redirects have been checked
• A same-domain move does not use Google’s Change of Address tool

Sources

• Squarespace URL mappings
• Google site moves