Configuring MarsEdit for Squarespace

I have setup two Squarespace sites with MarsEdit, and once it was able to auto-detect the settings, and once it was not.

Fortunately, manually configuring MarsEdit is not very difficult, as long as you have a few simple bits of information.

Note: I adapted this information from a MarsEdit forum post which provided some key information, however it was slightly out of date, and did not include images, so I decided to write my own.

Whenever you see “tjluoma.squarespace.com/tech” below, substitute your own Squarespace URL.

If you use a custom domain, such as luo.ma/tech, you can use that instead of your Squarespace URL, but I prefer to use the squarespace.com domain since the rest of this is Squarespace specific anyway.

Squarespace Blog ID Number

The first thing you’ll need is your “Blog ID number.”

You can get this either by going to your Squarespace blog (or “journal”) URL in your regular web browser, and then View Source, and search for the CURRENT_MODULE_ID which will be a set of numbers. Mine looks like this:

 Squarespace.Constants.CURRENT_MODULE_ID = "12919306";

The ID number is “12919306” (yours will be different). You want just the number, not the quotation marks.

Alternate Method:

If you are comfortable with the Terminal, you can get your Blog ID number by using these two lines (note: remember to change the URL to your own):

URL='http://tjluoma.squarespace.com/tech'

curl -s "$URL" | fgrep CURRENT_MODULE_ID | sed 's#";##g; s#.*"##g'

That will show you just the ID number, without anything else around it.

Note: if the Terminal version doesn’t work, Squarespace may have changed the format since this was written. In that case, try the GUI method.

Add Squarespace to MarsEdit

If MarsEdit can’t auto-detect your settings, it will ask you if you want to edit the settings for that blog. When you do that, you will see a panel like this:

• The “Blog Name” can be whatever you want, it is only used for identifying the blog in MarsEdit.
• Homepage URL should be the same URL you used above, usually http://something.squarespace.com, but it may have a path after it, like /tech in my example.
• Set the “System Name” to Squarespace and the System API to Squarespace API
• For API Endpoint URL use http://www.squarespace.com/process/service/PostInterceptor
• For “Blog ID” use the number from the instructions above
• Download the last X most recent posts. Set it anywhere from 10-30. I think 30 is overkill. 10 will probably be fine unless you chronically go back to tinker with things or have a lot of drafts-in-process.

We’re not done! One more step.

Enter the HTTP Password…

Find your blog name in the left MarsEdit column of the main MarsEdit window.

Control-click (aka “right click”) on it to bring up the menu shown here:

Choose “Enter HTTP Password…”

You will be prompted to enter your Squarespace username and password.

When you do so, you should see MarsEdit download your posts from Squarespace.

If this doesn’t work, head over to the MarsEdit support forums and let them know what you tried, and what didn’t work.