Self-Taught Developer Will Myers on Harnessing the Power of Code on Squarespace
Location: New York City
Started using Squarespace: 2015
Title: Plugin Developer
Inspiration hits everyone differently, sometimes at 2:00 AM. For Will Myers, the spark struck in unexpected moments: while working on a farm in Fiji, during a client project, and later, in the middle of the night while sick. The result? A web development career that spans over a decade, rooted in plugin development and teaching others how to harness the power of code. The Circle Platinum Partner and Community Leader is devoted to building sustainable, useful solutions for both web designers and DIYers. From practical utility to playful, interactive effects, Will approaches website building as a creative problem solver. He also co-hosts the Somewhat Useful podcast with Christy Price, where he shares insights on entrepreneurship and the behind-the-scenes of running a creative business.
In this interview, Will shares go-to code snippets, tips for implementation, and practical advice for taking your Squarespace sites to the next level.
What drew you to the web design industry, and how did you get your start?
I consider myself much more of a builder than a designer. I spent a summer working on a sustainable farm in Fiji, and when it was over, I offered to build them a website. Not sure why; I hadn’t ever done that before.
After fiddling around and launching their website, I found I kind of enjoyed the process. I did it for a few other businesses and got hooked on this feeling of building things. Where there once was a blank page, I built a real thing that anyone anywhere could see. This idea of permissionless building was really exciting to me.
Fast forward a few years, and I started a business with my then-friend-now-wife (story for another time), and we got paid to build websites for people. We dabbled in the other website-building platforms (I shan’t say their names) but always came back to Squarespace, in large part because it was the easiest to hand off to clients. Also, using Squarespace, we could go from idea to great-looking and fully functional website faster than with any other platform.
When did you first discover your passion for coding? How has it evolved?
Our website-building business was going well and growing. As we started charging more for our work, our clients’ expectations rose accordingly. They wanted all sorts of design tweaks and added functionality that weren’t built into Squarespace—the kinds of customizations that required code.
There was a project we’d taken on where we promised something to the client that we had absolutely no idea how to deliver. Classic move.
Around 2:00 AM the night before our deadline in a co-working space in downtown Seattle, I was trying to replace the site title on their website but only on one specific page. I’d been at it for hours: searching for every possible variation of the question, watching YouTube videos about CSS, digging through obscure forums, copy-pasting bits of code that half-worked but broke something else. I was banging my head against my computer and didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.
And then all of a sudden, it worked. The old title was gone, and the new one appeared on the page I needed it. It felt like magic. Using this silly syntax full of curly braces and semicolons, I was able to command the website to do something. It had listened to me.
Walking home that night, I was exhausted but also pumped. This was the closest thing to magic I had experienced, and I was hooked.
A year later, I got really sick one night. I couldn’t sleep, and in my misery I was looking for a way to pass the time. I remember I started watching videos about how JavaScript works, and somehow, over the next few hours, between waves of nausea, I leveled up my understanding.
After (finally) falling asleep, I woke up the next day with a very clear thought: “I really love this coding stuff.” It wasn’t just the rush of solving a problem; it was the whole process of figuring things out—breaking stuff, fixing it, and the idea of getting paid to do it. Finding a match between something you genuinely enjoy and something you can make a living from isn’t a given in life. I felt really lucky to have found it.
What's your favorite way to take a Squarespace website to the next level?
It’s the big little details. Those little things on your website that have an outsized impact on a users experience: a subtle bounce animation on a button, or a scroll effect that ever-so-slightly aligns an image with some text as the user scrolls.
It’s fun to use a website and have it react to you. I think designers understand this intuitively. These effects bring an element of cause-and-effect and human interaction in a playful and pleasing way. The biggest mistake people make here, though, is overdoing it. The subtle effects have the most impact.
You run your own community for other Squarespace web designers, Code Curious. What’s the most popular code snippet among the community?
Scroll Effects are definitely among the most popular code snippets included in the Code Curious membership. I have one that slides your text blocks left and right as you scroll and another that gently floats images as you scroll (see here).
Scroll effects are a fun way to add a touch of the unexpected, and, when done right, they can enhance the narrative flow of a page. I’ve heard people call it “scrolly-telling,” and I love that term. It captures how effects like these can help guide someone through a story as they move through a site. And technically speaking, they’re easy wins: quick and easy to install, designer-friendly, and they pack a big visual punch.
What’s the code every designer should know how to use?
Thanks to platforms like Squarespace, a lot of designers can get pretty far without ever using a single line of code—and that’s great! Not every designer or every website needs custom code., Sometimes simplicity and speed outweigh the benefits of custom design or added functionality. Even so, I do think there are a few under-the-radar “utility” lines of code that anyone who builds websites should have in their back pocket.
One example is this code snippet, which allows you to make a video block any size you want. Another one that is so simple that I hesitate to even mention it is a small piece of CSS that automatically balances lines of text while keeping things responsive, so you don’t end up with those awkward line breaks across different devices (great for that client who wants to micromanage headline text and can’t quite grasp the idea of “responsive design”). In fact, that code is so handy and so simple, I’ll just include it here:
h1, h2, h3, h4 {
text-wrap: balance;
}
Utility code snippets like this can be super useful for any designer, and I’ve got a lot of them in my Code Curious membership.
What advice would you give to a web designer just beginning to learn code or starting to use code on Squarespace sites?
Play around as much as possible. Coding can feel tough, especially when getting started, because when you try to solve one problem, three more problems pop up that you then need to fix. This does only go so deep, and eventually you start to recognize the patterns and understand how things work.
If you’re new, I’d recommend starting with CSS. Create a new demo website and play around in the Custom CSS area. Ask AI to build you a plan for learning the fundamentals. Use YouTube to watch other people build things. My channel, along with those of fellow Community Leaders Becca Harpain and Chris Schwartz-Edmisten’s, is focused on Squarespace code, and you can learn a lot there. Follow the rabbit holes and try to understand why things don’t work too. Understanding the concepts behind the code is what gives you real freedom and confidence.
But most importantly, just have fun. Spend more time experimenting in the Custom CSS editor than watching videos or reading about it. Learning hard things sucks if you don’t enjoy using that knowledge.
As a side note, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched a video that was way over my head, and then I’ll rewatch it a few months later and understand 75% of it. And then again a month after and understand it fully. Keep building, and trust your brain to make the connections over time.
You’ve developed countless plugins to elevate Squarespace sites. Which one is your go-to?
Mega Menu and Tabs are two of my favorites, and not just because they’re some of our most popular plugins. They’re clean, modern components that show up in a lot of great UI design, and we’ve worked hard to make them really intuitive for designers to install and customize.
What I love most is how easy they are for my customers to hand off to their clients. One of the biggest perks of using Squarespace is how easy and client-friendly it is, but that gets tricky when a site is overloaded with messy custom code. We’ve put so much effort into building plugins that not only look great, but are simple to manage and update after launch—even for end-users who aren’t tech-savvy.
Back when we were still building full websites, figuring out a clean handoff at the end of a project was always the hardest part. As a developer, I’m always trying to build things that give designers the creative control they want but without creating a maintenance headache for themselves in the future. Mega Menu and Tabs are both great examples of that balance in action.
How do you make the most of Circle membership?
I try to interact with the community as much as possible. Like many others here, I work from home with a remote team. There’s a lot of freedom in that, but the lack of human interaction can feel a little isolating. The Circle Forum, Circle Live, Circle Day—all of it helps create real connection with people who are working on similar projects, navigating similar client dynamics, and having the same love-hate relationship with AI.
It’s nice to have a community that deals with a lot of the same day-to-day and bigger-picture ups and downs of working in the digital creative space. That connection with each other is what makes tougher days bearable and good days shareable.
Key takeaways:
Here are the top insights from Will’s interview:
Consistent practice and play help you recognize patterns and understand how code functions
You don’t need to use code to build great sites, but having a few utility snippets on hand can elevate your Squarespace sites
Subtle, purposeful effects can positively impact the overall user experience
Inspiration may hit you when you least expect it—embrace it
See past events with Will:
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