Add a contributor to your Squarespace website without giving away your password
Have you ever had a guest blogger, a website designer, social media manager or a member of your team who needed access to your website?
You definitely don’t want to be giving all those people your website password. You also don’t want to be giving too many people complete access to every aspect of your website. After all, your social media manager doesn’t need access to your website billing.
Luckily, Squarespace has created a way of giving those contributors access to your website without needing your password. You can also limit what access they have – and you can take away their access whenever you want.
How do you do this? Through Squarespace permissions.
How do you add a contributor to a Squarespace site?
All you have to do to add a contributor is send them an invite.
Contributors only need to have an email address and a Squarespace account. If they don’t have a Squarespace account they can sign up when they accept your invite.
To send an invite:
1. From the Home panel click Settings > Permissions
2. Click the Invite Contributor button
3. In the pop up window, enter the contributor's name and email address
4. Switch the toggles to choose the permission type(s) that your contributor will have
5. Click Invite to send your invitation
6. They will now receive an email inviting them to log into their Squarespace account or create a new account
You can find a list of your invited contributors under Invites Sent.
What permission types are there?
If you are on the Personal website hosting plan can have only 2 contributors to your Squarespace website. For all other hosting plans you can add multiple contributors.
Each contributor can have more than one permission type assigned to them by you. For better security, it’s a good idea to give them access only to the parts of the website they need for their work rather than giving them access to the entire website.
OWNER
All Squarespace websites have this permission type. It’s generally the person who created the site. I transfer ownership to my clients at the end of our work together so that they’re in charge of all the permissions. Former owners become Administrators and can be removed by the owner (though many of my clients keep me on for future help and changes).
ADMINISTRATOR
Admins have access to everything on the website. They can do anything except transfer the ownership of the site.
BILLING
If you have a person in charge of finances, but who doesn’t need to access either the design or content, this is the role for them. Billing allows your finance person to pay bills, such as subscriptions and view invoices.
WEBSITE EDITOR
Website editors can add blocks and change content, but can’t make major design changes like adding pages or editing the site styles.
ANYALYTICS
This one does what it says - gives access to the analytics panel.
STORE MANAGER
The store manager can manage orders and add products to your online store. They also can add blog posts and events to the website.
EMAIL CAMPAIGNS EDITOR
This permission allows your team member or marketer to create new emails, send, and track analytics for Squarespace email campaigns.
COMMENT MODERATOR
If you have comments enabled on your blog posts, you can require that comments are approved before they appear on your site (this can be a good way to avoid spam in your comments). Comment moderators receive email notifications about new comments and can use the Comment panel to approve, delete or report the comments as spam.
VIEWER
This is a great permission to use while you’re building your website. It allows the viewer to see your password protected site. If you have password protected specific pages they will still need the passwords to see those pages.
There are also 3 types of permissions that are available if you have a Squarespace Scheduling subscription: Scheduling administrator, Scheduling view and edit, and Scheduling view only.
*Adding a Basic Author
A one off guest blogger probably doesn’t need to have access to your website, but you might still need to add their names and bios to their posts. In this case, you would add a Basic Author.
Basic authors don’t need to be invited like other contributors. Their names, images and bios are added by an owner or administrator.
1. From the Home panel click Settings > Permissions
2. Click Add Basic Author
3. Add in the Author’s details
4. Click Save
All hosting plans can add multiple basic authors. They don’t count as contributors.
Removing a contributor from your website
Sometimes a contract ends or a team member leaves, or let’s face it, sometimes a working relationship just isn’t working anymore. In this case, it’s time to remove this contributor from your website.
1. From the Home panel click Settings > Permissions
2. Click the contributor's name
3. Click ..., then click Remove Contributor
4. Click Remove
Note: if you remove a contributor who has previously written blog posts for your website, those posts will now show as Guest User (a basic author). You can edit the basic author with the former contributor’s information or you can remove their permissions instead of removing the contributor.
Removing permissions without removing a contributor
Maybe a team member goes on leave or you work with someone once a year, but not constantly. In this case you might want to remove their permissions temporarily rather than kicking them off the site entirely.
1. From the Home panel click Settings > Permissions
2. Click the contributor's name
3. Click ..., then click Remove Permissions
4. Click Remove to confirm
The permissions are now removed from that contributor. When (and if) you are ready to add permissions back to them go back to the Permissions panel and click the contributor’s name. You can now switch the toggles for the permissions you want them to have (like you did when you invited them). Click Save.
I use permissions on almost every web design project I do, inviting my clients to view their websites in progress to changing ownership of the sites over to them. It’s useful, easy, handy and secure!
Don’t want to do it yourself? Let’s work together to make it easy!
I’ll take care of the design, coding and details, while you get back to business.
