My favorite Squarespace Block: The Summary Block
Today I want to talk about my favorite block to use when designing a Squarespace website: The Summary Block. This is especially true for the church websites and website templates I’ve built.
What is the Summary Block
Well according to the Squarespace help article about summary blocks:
Summary blocks pull content from certain collection pages on your site. Before adding the block, add content to a supported collection page. For the best display, add featured images to every item you want to display in the block. It's not possible to add content directly to a summary block.
Basically, summary blocks are a great way to create internal links for your content like related blog posts, featured content on a page, or as is often the case for the church websites I’ve built, to easily display information that’s elsewhere on your website so you don’t have to keep creating and maintaining duplicate content.
This blog post will be why it’s probably my favorite block. If you’d like to find out more about how to use the Summary Block, check out this blog post from InsideTheSquare.co, one of my favorite Squarespace blogs.
How I’ve used it here on my website
For the most part, at least at the time of this writing, I use the Summary Block to quickly display relevant blog posts. But here’s a few specific examples of how I use them.
Example 1
On my homepage at the moment, near the bottom is a block titled “Trending Blog Posts.” The displayed blog posts are a Summary Block. Sometimes I have it pull the most recent blog post. But usually, I will check my analytics from time to time to see which blog posts are performing the best, and update it.
So how do I update it? Well, the Summary block works by pointing it at a collection that already exists, such as a blog, and summarizing the content. I say summarizing because you can control how many posts display, the layout of the Summary block, and even filter the content to display only certain tags, categories, or “Featured” posts.
So for the Summary block on my homepage, I have it pointed at my blog, and set to only show “Featured” posts. Featured posts are those that I have set as featured by flipping the featured switch on the Options tab of the individual blog post settings. By checking out my analytics (provided by Squarespace, which is super-handy), I can see which posts are performing well, and then flip the switch for those posts.
Example 2
Another way I use the Summary Block is on my blog series called Church Website Series (Not very clever, but at least you know what it is 😉). On each of those posts, I want my website visitors to see other posts in the series. So I have a Summary block on the page, and I’ve pointed them at the blog and filtered them by the Category of “Church Website Series”. That way, it automatically pulls any posts with that category (including any new posts down the road, which is very helpful) and shows them right there in the post so they can be easily found. I have it limited to two posts, as it could get unwieldy once the series gets more posts in it.
The Summary Block on Church Websites I’ve made
The examples above show a use case for the Summary block that’s often seen on Squarespace websites. However, I’d like to show you a few more ways I’ve used them specifically on church websites that I’ve built.
Example 1
On my church’s homepage at the time of this writing, about halfway down, I wanted to show our website visitors a few upcoming events. I didn’t want to show ALL of our upcoming events, but just a sampler to let visitors see a sample of what kind of things events/ministries we have at our church (with a link to see more, if they choose, of course). So I pointed a Summary Block at our Events page and it automatically pulls the next four events and displays them. I LOVE this, because I don’t ever have to update it, as long as I’m keeping the Events page up to date, which of course I do. And I use Summary blocks pointed at the Events page on several other pages on our site, for various reasons, and they always pull the correct events based on the dates and filters I’ve chosen. THIS IS HUGE! I only have to keep our events up to date in one place, and they automatically update anywhere else on our site that a Summary block is using the Events page as a source. What a timesaver!
Example 2
Another way I use the Summary block on our church website is to display recent sermons and services.
We use Squarespace’s blog functionality to post the video of our church’s Sunday services every week. Each Sunday is a new blog post. And each post has a Category that corresponds to the speaker, so that they can be filtered, if needed.
On our homepage, I wanted to briefly show our website visitors what a service at our church is like. I didn’t want this to get out of date, but I also didn’t want to have to keep changing it all the time to keep it fresh. So I placed a Summary block on the homepage, set the Sermon blog as the source, and set the option in the Summary block to display on one post, the most recent. So the Summary block always displays the most recent sermon that’s been posted, automatically!
There’s also a Media page on our website showcasing different types of media we produce at our church. One section features our Sunday services. So, again, I placed a Summary block on the page, pointed it at the Sermon blog, made a few style option tweaks, and voila! It always displays the 4 most recent Sunday services, and they’re always up to date.
Example 3
This example is a little more obscure, but still it shows off the versatility of the Summary block.
I wanted a way to show the sermon notes of the upcoming service in two different locations on our website: our Live page and our Next Steps Portal page. But of course this meant adding it in two different locations for every service. It got a little tedious.
So I created a new blog on our website. Not a new blog post, but a brand new additional blog, with one single blog post in it. That blog post is empty! There’s nothing there. But that’s ok, because the content of the blog is not what we are after. Instead, we were after the “Excerpt” field.
Every blog post in Squarespace has an optional “Excerpt” field that is designed to have a one- or two- sentence summary of the post, like a teaser to entice people to read more.
A Summary block can display the contents of the Excerpt field. So now all we have to do is add the relevant sermon information in one place—the excerpt field of this specific blog post in the newly created blog. Then, on the two pages I wanted to display sermon notes on, I placed a Summary block, set their source as this brand new blog, turned off all the other display options except the excerpt field, and…voila again!
It was a bit of work to set it up, but not too much. And it’s a bit of a niche use case, but again, that just shows the versatility of the Summary block.
Wrapping it Up
Now I assume you can see why the Summary block is my favorite Squarespace block. It’s really handy and allows you to save a bunch of time and energy by allowing you to “link” to various parts of your site and bring that content to other parts without duplicating things.
If you have any questions, be sure to let me know.
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Do you have other creative ways to use the Summary block? Have questions about my design preferences? Just leave a comment at the bottom of the page! 👇
