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Squarespace, the Web publishing platform that offers a variety of tools from design templates to hosting and data reporting, is launching Squarespace V5 today, with a handful of new customization options and partnerships with Oracle and Peer1 to offer extended features to its customers.
As a publishing platform, Squarespace is also looking to change the very concepts surrounding website publishing, hoping to allow users to create sites with a process that’s more aligned with the human thought process, which, according to Squarespace, is semi-structured publishing. That allows a great deal of room for customization, merging many of the existing models already in use by other website publishing tools such as WYSIWYG editors and template designs with the structured back-end CMS for building a fully functional website.
Squarespace V5 expands on the custom options made available through the company’s fluid approach to website creation, with a live editing interface, pluggable features that work for all aspects of Squarespace’s site building, including search and data collection. There are more than 60 new style templates to choose from, all of which are fully customizable by users.
A couple of new partnerships grant back-end grid architecture powered by Oracle Coherence and hosted by Peer1 Network for improved support for a wider variety of sites, regardless of size. To see how Squarespace can be implemented, you can check out the video here, or stick around for Kevin Rose’s announcement in the coming hours, as his diggnation show on Revision3 will be taking advantage of Squarespace’s site creation capabilities.
The aim with Squarespace’s tools are to offer a platform for simplified design options that are available to all user types, despite technical knowledge. As platforms such as Squarespace and Secondbrain create a more accessible process for site creation, the need for easy, all-inclusive services are being met with continued development coming from the platform space.
Everything from advertising and analytics to redistribution and application creation will eventually become part of this one-stop shop concept that these services are approaching, targeting those website publishers that don’t have a strong technical background but would still like highly customizable and easily implemented options for their online presence.