Breaking Up With My Recurring Subscription to Squarespace

I wanted to rebuild my site so I could play with the wealth of tools to demistify how things work - and end a recurring subscription along the way.

I originally built my personal site on Squarespace in January 2021, a few weeks after getting accepted into Wharton. At the time, it felt like a grown-up step: a clean, polished place on the internet that signaled I was serious and put together.

This rebuild was also to leverage AI coding tools in a way that helped me understand how things work, removing the cost of a recurring subscription for a very basic site, and giving myself more flexibility to extend it over time.

I had also started running into limits with Squarespace when trying to host projects I built elsewhere, including a project I made using Bolt. Rebuilding the site myself gave me the freedom to integrate those projects directly, without fighting the platform.

Before & After

Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park, December 2020 — **January 2021.** Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park. My Squarespace-era homepage.

Mt. Baker, Summer 2024 — **Summer 2024.** Mt. Baker during an all-women climb fundraising for SheJumps.

How I approached the rebuild

I scoped the rebuild with ChatGPT to understand what tools I would need and what I could ignore.

I sanity checked the plan with an SDE friend to make sure I was not adding unnecessary complexity.

I spent about two hours setting up the scaffolding. This included VS Code, Astro, Netlify, and moving the site hosting off Squarespace.

Once the foundation was in place, I came back to focus on the content. That part was fun and creative in a way the setup work was not.

Tools and setup

Astro for static site generation and layouts
Markdown for writing and organizing content
Vanilla CSS for layout and visual decisions
GitHub for version control
Netlify for hosting and deployment

I used AI as a support tool to help me understand unfamiliar concepts and debug issues. I did not use it to make architectural decisions for me.

The hardest part was not syntax. It was building a clear mental model of how the pieces fit together and deciding what level of structure was enough.

Working in VS Code felt less intimidating than I expected. It reminded me that coding is mostly writing and organizing files. It is not that different from building a Tumblr theme, just with better tools.

What this unlocked

Once the scaffolding existed, continuing felt straightforward. I was no longer blocked by the platform.

Rebuilding the site was not a big leap. It was a small set of decisions that made the site easier to understand and easier to extend.