Two quick *helping-friends* projects this week: two artists who have been making their own sites for years, by hand, and are switching to Squarespace. Both want to keep the archives of their existing static sites, while starting fresh on Squarespace.
So, for *each*, we did the following:
- added a subdomain on the original host for archive.[DOMAIN.com] pointing to the current site's IP address
- checked that that archive.[DOMAIN.com] site was working for a bunch of test links
- made a free (link: https://www.cloudflare.com/plans/ text: CloudFlare) account
- moved the DNS from their host to CloudFlare
- changed the name server from the original host to CloudFlare
- made a text file with a map of the root-level pages and directories on the sites and wrote Squarespace-specific URL forwarding files (Settings / Advanced / URL Mapping)
- did a little `.htaccess` work to route links to an aliased domain
- add the "third-party domain" to Squarespace in its settings
.. and after waiting 24–48 hours for the name server to propagate, which you can check with (link:https://www.whatsmydns.net/ text: whatsmydns.net):
- change the CloudFlare DNS records to a hybrid of the original host (for mail, SPF records, subdomains, a dedicated ftp.* subdomain) and Squarespace ( three A records for @, CNAME for www, a verification subdomain)
Voila.
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