My mic picks up everything! How do I reduce background noise during recording?

First of all, let me say I totally get this! I live in Los Angeles, and it’s never quiet here! Sirens, helicopters, garbage trucks, leaf blowers—I swear there’s always something making noise while I’m recording. 😆

Unless you have the ability to record in a very quiet environment, or to fully soundproof a “recording studio” in your home or office, often we just need to work with what we have. 

First, you can make sure you’re turning down the gain on your microphone to its lowest setting, so it’s picking up as little “extra stuff” as possible.

I also wear headphones plugged into my mic while recording, so I can hear exactly what it’s picking up—and, if needed, I can pause during my recording to let a plane pass overheard, or redo a sentence my dog barked during. Remember to take long pauses (about 5 seconds or so) to help yourself find those sections you’ll need to cut out when you’re editing.

If you’re really worried about the background noise in your home or office (or wherever you’re recording), you could look into renting a quieter space or recording booth. But, my take is: as long as it’s not detracting from your content, a small background noise is not the end of the world, and can even make you feel more human and relatable to your audience.

I know I have a background noise in my recordings here and there, I wish it wasn’t so, but my business is built around being real with my clients and customers, and that’s just one of the realities of being a small business owner working from your home office.

Why do you use slides instead of screenshare tutorials?

Three reasons: 

1. As you may have guessed, I’m looking at my notes while recording. In some cases, you may be best suited to speak naturally and extemporaneously as you’re recording, and that’s great! The Membership Lab had 104 pages of notes I had to refer to while recording, to make sure I was covering everything intended. I’d like to think I have a pretty good memory, but it’s not that good. 😉

2. When working with tech or any other type of information that changes often, it’s easier to make quick updates if you use slides (you can swap out a slide or two in your video much more easily than re-doing your entire screen recording). So, slides allow me to keep the program updated more smoothly than if I needed to re-record every time MemberSpace or Squarespace made an update.

3. It also allows you to share your slides and transcript as an option for anyone who prefers to learn that way.

In my sign-up form, I’d like to link members to the membership program terms section of my website’s terms & conditions page, without making them scroll through the entire page to find the correct section. How do I do that?

You’ll need an anchor link!

Here are instructions on creating an anchor link on your Squarespace website. Add an “anchor” to the section heading for your program terms, per the instructions in that article. Then, in your MemberSpace sign-up form (Customize > Sign-up Fields), you’ll add the “anchor” to the link for your program terms hyperlink, following the same instructions outlined in the Module 5.

Here’s an example hyperlinked “program terms” checkbox field:

I agree to the <a href="https://www.yourwebsite.com/terms/#membership" target="_blank">program terms & conditions</a>.

Note: target="_blank" can be added to your link, as you see above, to have it open in a new window.

Why is my sign-in (or sign-up) button not working?

There are a few possible reasons—one is that the link was not added correctly (refer back to Module 5 for how to add this, or contact us if you have any questions about it.)

Another possibility is that it’s not your fault! During the Membership Lab launch, some people emailed us that they couldn’t sign up, because the enrollment buttons weren’t working. Which was true! MemberSpace had an outage. (Perfect timing! 😆)

Though rare, both MemberSpace and Squarespace do have occasional outages, as any web-based service does. Here are some helpful links to bookmark in case you experience any outage issues in your own program:

MemberSpace Status Page // Squarespace Status Page

These status pages will let you know if the entire system is having a brief outage, or if the problem you’re running into is specific to your program.

Help! I have two different programs but MemberSpace only lets me choose one “Send members without access here” page… is there a way to add different pages for different programs?

Unfortunately, no, we only get one page for all programs. So, the best workaround is to create and use a “catch all” page that any of your membership programs could be promoted from. (You can see we’ve done this with our Courses page, which gives a brief overview of each of the courses, and links through to more information and their respective sign-up pages.)

I’m using blog posts for my membership content and I’ve run out of space on my archives page. Now I have an “Older” link at the bottom, but I’d like to rename it “See More” and style it differently.

No problem!

Yes, Squarespace blog archives pages display a maximum of 20 posts, and when you have more than that, an “Older” link will appear to link readers to previous posts. We can update this, but we’ll need a little custom code.

First, find your blog archive page collection ID following the instructions in Module 4 (and that handy dandy Squarespace Collection/Block Identifier Google Chrome extension).

Then, to update the text that appears for the “Older” label, copy/paste this code in your Squarespace CSS editor (Design > Custom CSS), adding in your own collection ID and replacing “NEW TEXT” with the specific text you’d like to display:

#collection-id .BlogList-pagination-link-label {
visibility: hidden;}

#collection-id .BlogList-pagination-link-label:after {
visibility: visible;
content: "NEW TEXT";}

And copy/paste this code if you’d like to update its styling (updating any of the descriptors with your own font, color, size preferences, etc.): 

#collection-id .BlogList-pagination-link-label {
font-family: FONTFAMILY;
font-size: SIZE;
color: COLOR;}

What’s up with the new Squarespace Member Areas? Should I be using it?

This is a great question, and one we’ll be putting together lots more content on! Squarespace just released their own version of membership protection, “Member Areas,” which is exciting in some ways, but also with the caveat: MemberSpace is still a more robust and flexible membership tool, more affordable in some cases, and perhaps necessary in many (there are limits to what Member Areas is currently capable of).

I see Member Areas as an additional option for fairly simple membership programs (and am adding that into the course content here if you’d like to consider it!)… but I think MemberSpace will still be a better option for most programs, as it has more capability and flexibility.

In any case, more details on the new Member Areas coming soon! And in the meantime, here’s an overview of its functionality, and how it compares to MemberSpace: What to Know About the New Squarespace Member Areas // Squarespace Member Areas vs. MemberSpace: Which Is Best for You?

How can I connect my Squarespace Member Areas sign-ups to my Mailchimp mailing list?

You can’t. 😬

Squarespace is probably trying to promote their Email Campaigns here (it’s seamlessly integrated with Member Areas), but there’s currently no direct way to send new sign-ups from Member Areas to your email list on another platform (like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Flodesk, etc.). The only way to get your members over to those lists is to manually export the list of members from Squarespace and manually add them to your mailing list elsewhere. 

This is, of course, not ideal, and not feasible for programs that use an automated welcome email with instructions, etc. (Technically, you could add that welcome info to your Squarespace automated confirmation email… but you’d still need to export/import members into your email marketing tool to communicate with them about your program, if that’s something you see being necessary down the road.)

How can I set up different subscription options in Squarespace Member Areas? For example, a monthly fee and a slightly discounted annual fee?

Sadly, Member Areas views these as two different “areas.” (Each Member Area can have only one payment option associated with it.)

So, that means you’ll need to create two separate Member Areas (which bumps you up to the second pricing tier, so just note the cost difference), and you’ll have to duplicate content between the two Member Areas—they can’t share pages. And, not to be a downer, but since that duplicate content requires separate pages, you’ll also need to use two different URLs for the two versions of the same page content. (So, just be careful with that if you’re linking a page to your members! They’ll have different links, depending on which payment option they signed up with.)

How do I get two different fonts in my announcement bar like you have?

Magic! 

Just kidding. 😉

You can update your built-in announcement bar styling via Design > Site Styles > Announcement Bar (though on Squarespace 7.0 you’ll need to have the announcement bar displaying in order to access those style settings). Update this as you’d like for your first font style.

Copy/paste this code into your Squarespace CSS editor (Design > Custom CSS) and style as you’d like for your second font style. (See your Squarespace Custom Code Cheat Sheet for more details on custom text styling.)

.sqs-announcement-bar-text p strong {
font-family: FONTFAMILY; 
font-size: SIZE;
font-weight: FONTWEIGHT;}

Then, bold whichever part of your announcement bar message you’d like to appear in your second font style.

How do I hide my announcement bar from my membership pages?

Great question! If you’re promoting your membership program in your announcement bar, you may not want that to display inside the member pages for your current members. In that case:

Find the collection IDs for each of your membership pages you’d like to hide the announcement bar from (follow the instructions in Module 4). Then, copy/paste this code into your Squarespace CSS editor (Design > Custom CSS), adding the collection ID for as many pages as you’d like to hide, separating each with a comma:

#collection-ID, #collection-ID {
.sqs-announcement-bar {display: none;}}

What happens when a member cancels their membership?

In general, members can cancel any plan at any time, but how that works with billing depends on what type of membership it is (one-time fee, subscription, free, etc.) and whether you’re using MemberSpace or Member Areas.

MemberSpace: When a membership is canceled, the member’s access will be revoked. For free or one-time payments, that happens immediately. For multiple payment or subscription products, you can choose whether you’d like cancellation to take effect immediately or at the end of the member’s billing cycle.

Member Areas: For all payment types, when a membership is canceled, the member’s access is immediately revoked. So, this creates a bit of an issue with subscription products, which members are shut out from before the end of their paid term, if they cancel a subscription before the end of their billing cycle. Member Areas does not send automatic prorated refunds, so you would need to manually refund any members who canceled their membership in advance and did not receive the full term they paid for their subscription.

Both MemberSpace and Member Areas will send automated membership cancellation emails, which you can adjust if needed in your member email notification settings.

Have another question you don’t see here?