Editing The Pen Addict 26/transcript (section)

== Squarespace ==


'''Stephen Hackett:''' I'd love to. I'd love to talk about Squarespace for a second, if that's all right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Absolutely.

'''Stephen Hackett:''' So Squarespace is back supporting the network. Once again, love those guys. And today I really want to talk about their mobile applications. You know, Squarespace is famous for having all the things you need to build a great website right in your browser. You have the design. It's easy as drag and drop. You have editing and markdown or HTML. You have all your management tools for things like comments and stats. All that's in the browser. But it's also all in Squarespace's free mobile apps that run on iOS and, if you're so inclined, Android. Now, these apps bring everything that's in the browser, just about everything, to your pocket. So with the apps, you can post and manage both blog posts and pages. You can preview them. So, like, for me, for instance, I love writing on a template so I know exactly what it's going to look like when I hit publish. The Squarespace apps lets you do that. You can edit in text, markdown, HTML. Whatever language you're used to, whatever your workflow is in supports it. You can deal with comments. You can mark them as spam, reply to them, delete them. You can do this in batches. So if you have a bunch of comments that you want to mark spam all at once, you can do that real easily. And you can even receive a push notification for when new comments are posted. And finally, and what I really like the most, is that you get all your site stats with you in your pocket. A lot of blogging platforms, the stats are a separate package, a separate app. With Squarespace, it's all built in. You can see your unique page views. You can see people coming back. You can see search terms. All right in the app with your content. It's your whole Squarespace experience right in your pocket. Now, you know, Squarespace is well known for being affordable. They've got two plans, a standard plan and what I like to call the big boy plan, the ultimate plan. And the start, just $10 or $20 a month. If you sign up either annual or even for two years, you get a discount. If you use the discount code 70decibels8, you get an additional 10% off at time of checkout. So check them out, squarespace.com forward slash 70decibels. You can sign up for a free 14-day trial. Try out the app. Try out the website. And I really think you'll be impressed.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Absolutely. And I'm a Squarespace convert. And Myke and I have talked about it over the months here, you know, about my transferring over to Squarespace. So we've talked about it a lot. And one of the things I keep going back to time and time again is the iOS apps, the mobile apps. I mean, that's been a killer feature for me. And it's actually changed my blogging workflow completely. And the way I, you know, at least, if nothing else, the way I manage comments. I mean, I turned off from my old type ad blog. I had every comment emailed to me. You know, just so I could see. You know, I didn't, I just wanted to see what's going on. I like to, you know, you know, comments in the blogosphere is about 10 other episodes. But, you know, I keep comments on because, you know, I get a lot of questions and have a lot of back and forth with the readers. And, but it would end up, you know, just, that's just a constant flow into my inbox. And that's just, it just became kind of, it kind of got in the way of, you know, just my regular inbox. So the Squarespace mobile apps allowed me to yank that out of my general email inbox, you know, on my computer and put that on my iOS device. And I could actually manage it better. And it actually works out a lot better for me. And I can see when the comments come in and I can choose when to reply to them. And I don't know, I've been really happy with the mobile apps for Squarespace. So thank you, Squarespace, for continuing to sponsor us. We're obviously huge fans.

'''Stephen Hackett:''' Absolutely.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So let's talk about pens.

'''Stephen Hackett:''' That sounds good.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. That's seeing it as the Pen Addict podcast. You know, I, one of the first times I talked with you was when I was employed by JetPens. And I sent you out a few pens to try out. And, you know, at the time, I think you were using, I think you were using the .7 G2, Pilot G2. And Blue Ink. Sure was. I haven't looked this up. I'm just, I think that was right. So I'm glad that was right. It is.

'''Stephen Hackett:''' I still have one in my back. It's still kind of my fallback.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Exactly. Exactly. And I sent you a few things to try out. And, you know, there's kind of some middle ground there. You know, there were some likes and dislikes. But since then, you've kind of latched on to definitely one of my all-time favorite pens in the Zebra Sarasa push clip in blue-black ink. Is that right? Is that kind of your go-to workhorse these days?