I make recommendations on what blogging and/or CMS platform to use to literally dozens of clients each year. In that vein, I think it is extremely important that I try things out myself as much as possible. My thought being that this: if I have trouble with something, what kind of problem is my less-technically-inclined user going to have?

I've been playing with SquareSpace lately (as I wrote back in June). It seems like a really ideal choice for many of my clients, who want their combination of handholding, customization, and flexibility. I was working on a layout for a client this weekend when I ran into a problem with one element. One element that would not go away.

I looked for some sort of basic guide to how SquareSpace labels its CSS elements in terms of site structure. I literally spent hours trying to figure this out when I could not find anything.

About 11:30pm last night I broke down and contacted support on help with where to find the one annoying element. And this was the reply I got today:

If you modify your layouts (i.e. Custom CSS or site templates) then we assume you're fully knowledgeable with coding practices to do this. If you're not, I'd recommend staying away from these areas, as they are considered for advanced users.

Um...thanks. What am I going to tell my clients? SquareSpace is great for x, y, and z, but don't contact support if you don't want to be treated like a naughty chlid?

I'm holding out hope that things will come around, because I want to like this system. I want to recommend it to my clients. I want to send them somewhere that I trust will give them the options they are looking for and will treat them respectfully.

It's always something.