The ability to host files on your website is very useful. It allows you to share a downloadable resource with your audience or ask buyers to submit images related to their orders. Though Squarespace allows uploading files, this feature is not easy to find for most users.
In this post, we’ll cover different options to upload files to Squarespace and some common questions on this topic.
You can upload many file types to Squarespace, such as PDF, JPEG, ZIP, DOCX etc. However, Squarespace has a file size limit of 20 MB or smaller. If you have larger files, you should reduce their sizes before uploading them.
You can use this process for:
Here’s the video tutorial of the steps to upload files to Squarespace:
1) Go to Pages menu
2) Under Not Linked section, click the + button and choose Link. Click the gear icon to open the Link Editor popup.
3) Go to File. Click Upload File and select a file from your computer
4) After a quick second you’ll see the file name appear, which means the file has been uploaded to your Squarespace storage.
Select the checkbox next to the file name. Click Save. This will bring you back to the Link Editor popup where you’ll get the URL of the file.
5) On the Link Editor popup, you will see a URL link has been generated that starts with /s/. This is the link to view and download the file you’ve just uploaded.
By this point, your work is done 🎉. The file has been uploaded and you’ve got the file URL. You can exit the Link Editor popup without saving.
If you add a Link Title and click Save, the PDF file link will be added to your Not Linked menu. This acts as a shortcut that allows you to get the file’s URL link quickly. When you no longer want the shortcut, you can delete the link on your Pages menu and the file will still be functional.
You can actually upload files to Squarespace from multiple starting points, not just from the Pages menu. When you add a button, an image, or a hyperlink, there’s a gear icon next to where you enter a link. That’s the entry point to Link Editor, where you can then follow steps 3-5 to upload a file.
Yes, Google can crawl and index a PDF file like all other content on your website. If the content on your PDF is relevant to a user’s search query, the file may appear in the search results.
However, the likelihood of ranking is lower because a PDF file doesn’t have SEO features like a webpage (eg. meta description, heading tags…).
If you want to be extra careful for the file not to show up, use a dummy file name instead of a searchable phrase.
If you want to display files on a page, you will need to upload the file to a third-party application (eg. Issuu for PDF), then use code block to embed it in Squarespace.
This might be hard if you don’t have coding knowledge. A workaround here is to screenshot a page on your PDF and display the image as a file preview, then link that image to the full PDF file.
You need to update the file content, but you’ve added the file link to many places and it’s inconvenient to change. Fret not, here’s what to do:
This feature can be found in the Custom CSS section.
From the home menu, go to Website, then scroll to the bottom and click on Website Tools, then on Custom CSS.
Click the arrow button on Custom Files to select image or font files. Once the file has been uploaded, click on it to get the URL displayed on the code areas.
Watch the tutorial video below to follow this process step by step:
Though Squarespace has a built-in form builder, it doesn’t allow you to accept file uploads from visitors.
The workaround Squarespace has for this is to use a third-party tool called Wufoo.
Basically, you will create a form in Wufoo then embed it on your Squarespace site using a Code Block. With this approach, you will have to pay a monthly subscription to Wufoo.
If you want a free alternative to allow visitors/customers to upload files, you can use a redirect after form submission.
For example, prospects will fill out a request form on your website and once they hit the submit button, they will be taken to a Google Forms page to upload files. The files will then be stored in your Google Drive folder.
To create a post-submit redirect, go to Post-Submit in the Content tab. Click Redirect, then enter the URL to the file uploading page in the Redirect URL field. Click Save and don’t forget to test the flow before making it public.
