Upgrading Squarespace sections to Fluid Engine

Over the past month or so, whilst you have been working on your Squarespace site or making edits, you may have noticed an upgrade button appearing in the top left corner of various sections.

Now I'm sure your curiosity has been getting the better of you and you have been wondering what does that mean?

What will happen if I press it? Am I gonna break something if I press it? So in this video I am going to speak about what it means, what will happen with if you click upgrade and how you can safely and sensibly upgrade your sections.

What does upgrade mean on my Squarespace website?

The upgrade button that you may have seen on your Squarespace website recently, refers to converting your page section to the new Squarespace spage builder called Fluid Engine. This is different from the original builder which is referred to as Classic Editor.

What is Fluid Engine?

Fluid engine in the new drag-and-drop page builder created by Squarespace. The idea is to give website owners more flexibility and control over the design of their pages. It supersedes the original page builder called Classic Editor, which was quite restrictive with where blocks could be placed on a page.

Any new section you add to your website pages will automatically use the new builder, which is why you may have noticed some changes to the way the builder has been working for you from page to page.

Although it’s a bit of a learning curve, the new builder is more powerful and with some practice will give you a better experience when using your website builder.

Should I upgrade my Squarespace section?

This really depends. If you are happy with your existing pages and don’t need to make any major changes to the website, there is no need to go through and upgrade everything. However, with all new sections using the new builder, it is worth familiarising yourself with how it works.

Things to watch out for with Fluid Engine

The biggest thing you need to remember about the new builder is that it doesn’t automatically format the design of mobile pages. That means before you save or publish your work, check the mobile view as it might not look the way you expect it to. The new builder will stack your blocks depending on the order you added them to the page, which can result in some strange-looking layout if you don’t check and rearrange.

This sounds like a major negative but it actually allows you to create a mobile view that looks exactly like you want it to, so you have much more control. It just takes a little extra work.

Finally, once you upgrade a section to the new Fluid Engine builder and press save, you can’t convert it back to Classic Editor. So if you are unsure, I recommend making a duplicate of your page, and having a play around with upgrading before you make any irreversible changes.