Using Blog Posts and Summary Blocks To Organize Your Portfolio in Squarespace
Did you know that using the Blog format can be a good choice for any type of information you need to present in a collection of information? You can use the Summary Block function in Squarespace to organize a set of information to your audiences and go even deeper into organizing that information using Tags or Categories.
For example, if you are an actor you want to create an extensive portfolio of work that is categorized into different categories such as TV, Film and Advertising; you can use the Blog format as your base to house these portfolio pages.
Step 1: Choose a Blog page by adding it to your Unlinked Section on the Pages section within Squarespace
Step 2: Create “Blog” entries for your work and Tag them with the corresponding category. So if you are this actor, create a blog entry with your television ad work using a video block and write a short description of the work you did for that client. In your Settings within that blog post as “TV” or whatever label makes sense to you and the user.
Step 3: Continue to build out your blog posts for your work. The same applies if you are an artist or writer or any type of professional that wants to divide your body of work into categories.
Step 4: Use Summary blocks to present your work in different categories. If you are showcasing TV work, add a Summary block to your page and allow it to pull information from the blog you created for your portfolio. Then filter by tag and choose your TV tag and your Squarespace site will then pull only the posts tagged with that label onto your page.
Step 5: Adjust the Spacing on your Summary block. I like a minimal gutter width (space between content within a Summary block) and for the images to show in a standard grid format. Choose how many items in the Collection (in this case the blog you created) to show.
You can organize your portfolio in different sections. Add a header describing the work and give your site visitors an easy way to see the breadth of your work. If you want to create a section that allows the user to filter the entirety of your Collection/Blog, you can create text links that filter out each category or tag (they both work in the same way). There is an excellent plugin called Universal Filter that you can also add to your side to have more complex configurations and options for your user, such as sorting the Collection in ascending or descending alphabetical order.
Understanding the Summary Block is one of those seemingly simple concepts in Squarespace that gets overlooked. I can’t think of a better name for this function, but at first it was not intuitive for me. But as I tried to do more with it, I learned that using is can add a lot of flexibility on how to present a large variety of information.
Another example where I used the Blog format in a Summary Block is a large clickable media page for a public relations firm’s site. A simple password protected page led to a variety of samples that media members could access and request samples with the hopes of media coverage for the firm’s clients.
Why use Summary Blocks instead of sending users directly to a Blog page
Because Summary Blocks can be placed anywhere on a page, the design options are far greater than just sending users to your source Blog page. You can adjust the size and how your Summary Blocks appear in relation to other elements on a page. Try placing a larger image next to your Summary Block as an enticing lead-in to that section.
If you have an e-commerce site, you can use Summary Blocks to highlight a specific category of products on the page. Create customized suggestions of other products the user might like underneath a Product block.
Learning how to use Summary blocks can be a key to unlocking the power of a site with lots of content. Once you get the hang of it, and how to use tags and categories to filter your data, you can be on your way to creating a user-friendly content site.
One of my clients is a copywriter, SEO strategist and voiceover artist. For his portfolio site we were able to create an easy way for people looking to hire him to examine his work by type and by industry through tags and categories and then filtering appropriately on specific pages.
