I have long maintained my own Wordpress-powered site, and before that, joined Wordpress.com a few weeks after they opened to the public. I've built Wordpress sites for employers, friends, and even spent some time running my own hardware out of my own home to keep a WP-powered site online.

In other words, I know Wordpress. I know a little PHP. I'm pretty good with Linux (or at the very least, I'd like to think I can keep a secure LAMP machine up and running without having to rely on anyone but my ISP).

So, why Squarespace?

I've heard a lot about the service-- I've been an avid listener to This Week in Tech and its associated Leo Laporte-hosted podcasts since long before Squarespace started their advertising binge there. Even though I've been a loyal customer of Laughing Squid for several years (and would recommend them wholeheartedly to anyone who wants fantastic Wordpress hosting), I kept finding myself wishing I didn't have to manage plugins or run Wordpress updates or go buy premium Wordpress themes just to keep a modern site online. Wishing that I had a simple, working WYSIWYG editor that didn't insert random "&nbsp" into my text, that actually produced the same layout every time-- without the need for endless boxee plugins or markdown editors or irritatingly unreliable HTML5 audio players.

Add to that the fact that e-commerce on Wordpress can be a nightmare-- do a search for "wordpress e-commerce" and see what I mean-- and I finally just got tired of it. Tired of editing PHP and CSS by hand, tired of hearing about how easy it was to do thing things I wanted to do, if only I moved to Squarespace.

So I tried it. And within 24 hours, I had a site that I was really happy with. Editors that I was familiar with. E-commerce ready to turn on with the click of a button.

Call me dumb, or a n00b, or lazy. Its probably true. But I've built a Squarespace site in less time that it used to take me to hunt down that plugin I wanted so badly, or find a premium theme that worked with the most recent version of Wordpress. I bought 1 beautiful stock image with some money I'd made on AudioJungle, and I was good to go.

It was that easy.

And I've never been happier with my site.