I run my main site on Squarespace, for reasons I've mentioned before.
My CRM is hosted elsewhere.
But it still offers public-facing features.
So how do I make that work?
The setup is pretty simple, because the needs are simple:
The CiviCRM site runs a theme that's inspired by the main site design.
I don't offer user logins, so permissions are divided among just two roles: staff, and anonymous visitors.
Long-form content lives on the main site, and it only links to the CiviCRM site for specific forms. (Example: the Operational Assurance info page links to the Operational Assurance sign-up form.)
The trickiest bit is the daily emails that you’re reading now. I want a public archive on the main site, but I want CiviCRM to handle delivery and list management.
So:
Each email is composed first as a Squarespace blog post.
CiviCRM's NewsStore extension monitors the RSS feed of that Squarespace blog, and sends each new post as a mass mailing to my Daily List subscribers.
CiviMail naturally handles unsubscribes, bounces, etc. as usual.
Soon, I may experiment with embedding CiviCRM forms on the Squarespace site, or switch to CiviCRM standalone, or more. There's always something that could be improved.
But for now, for my needs, this works well.
All the best,
A.