At some point in the last couple of years, I seriously considered consolidating. One portfolio. One platform. Less maintenance, less context switching, less explaining to people why I have two sites with slightly different names. I almost went all-in on WordPress. And honestly, I still might — eventually. But for now, both sites exist, both serve a purpose, and keeping them has been the right call. Here's why.
The Squarespace Problem
A decade of SEO you can't just pack up and move.
I've had my Squarespace site since 2014. That's a decade of domain authority, inbound links, indexed pages, and search history that doesn't just transfer when you pack up and move platforms. SEO is slow, patient work, and a ten-year-old site has a kind of accumulated credibility that a newer one simply doesn't have yet. My WordPress site launched around 2020. It's good. But it's four years younger, and that gap matters in search.
That's reason one to keep the Squarespace site alive — and it's a purely practical one.
But there are also things about Squarespace that genuinely frustrate me. The Fluid Engine update changed how layouts behave in ways that felt like a step backward in some respects. Tablet view — which sits in that awkward middle ground between desktop and mobile — has been largely neglected, and I think that's a real mistake. A significant portion of web traffic comes from tablets and large phones, and a platform that effectively ignores that viewport is leaving a gap that designers have to paper over manually.
But there are also things about Squarespace that genuinely frustrate me — and the biggest is the Fluid Engine. The concept sounds promising: a flexible, drag-and-drop layout system. In practice, things don't stay where you put them. Elements float, drift, and stack in ways that feel arbitrary rather than intentional. It tries to approximate what CSS Grid and Flexbox do natively in something like Elementor, but it doesn't quite get there. Add in the neglected tablet view — that awkward middle ground between desktop and mobile that Squarespace has largely abandoned — and layouts that look fine on desktop can fall completely apart in the middle.
The WordPress Freedom
Real control feels different.
WordPress gives me control that Squarespace doesn't. Full template access, real CSS flexibility, plugin architecture, no artificial limits on what I can customize. When I build something on WordPress, I own it in a way that feels different from building on a hosted platform.
Right now, my WordPress site at meghanlewisdesign.com is functioning more as a sandbox than a showcase. It has good bones — the portfolio structure is there, the content is real, the testimonials are genuine. But it hasn't gotten the same focused attention that melewdesign.com has over the last year.
That's going to change. The WordPress site is next on my list once the Squarespace work settles down. And there's a version of the future where WordPress becomes the primary — where the SEO gap has closed enough, and the build is polished enough, that it makes sense to fully consolidate.
Two Sites, Two Audiences
Different conversations, different destinations.
Having both sites means I can direct different conversations to different places, depending on what someone needs to see.
Polished & curated
The job-application-ready version of my practice. The one I send to hiring managers and potential clients. The one I've spent the last year rebuilding from a logo grid into a narrative portfolio.
Looser & broader
More work, organized differently, with a different visual feel. Useful for showing range in contexts where the more curated Squarespace site might feel too tightly edited.
The Honest Answer
SEO juice is real and I'm not ready to give it up.
The real reason I kept both is that I wasn't ready to let go of a decade of SEO history on a platform I was increasingly frustrated with. That's not a very glamorous answer, but it's an honest one.
The frustrations are real. The Squarespace limitations are real. And the WordPress future is real — it's coming, I'm working toward it, and at some point it will probably become my primary site.
But for now, both sites live, both serve a purpose, and the SEO juice of a ten-year-old domain is not something you throw away lightly.
