BigCommerce is a great shopping cart system, but one of its few flaws is that it doesn’t have a built-in blogging integration, or at least not one with the functionality that we’ve come to expect from dedicated blogging services. However, a good company blog is important for a variety of reasons, including SEO, so it’s important to find a workaround for BigCommerce blog integration.
Integrate Using RSS Function
It’s possible to manipulate BigCommerce’s RSS and article functionality enough that it works as blog integration. Before you start trying to do this, make a copy of all of your BigCommerce template files in case something goes wrong during editing and you need to revert. Get the address for your BigCommerce site’s RSS feed and create a new page, selecting the option to display syndicated content.
You’ll then want to work on the layout of the blog page. Once your layout is set, you can make blog posts by creating a news item. It will post to your blog page and voila, you’ve got BigCommerce blog integration.
Connect a BigCommerce Blog to a WordPress Site
If manipulating your BigCommerce templates isn’t an appealing idea, it can be a little easier to set-up and integrate a separate blog. First, set up your domain on BigCommerce. Once that’s done, you need to install and set up WordPress, as well as find hosting for your WordPress blog. Once that is set up, go to DNS Records in the BigCommerce tool menu and create a new subdomain (something like blog.yourdomain.com) as a host. Select A for this host’s type and enter the IP address of your WordPress hosting location.
WordPress BigCommerce Plug-in
Working in the other direction of BigCommerce blog integration, the WordPress plug-in helps you access BigCommerce information while you are creating a WordPress post. This plug-in makes it easy to pull up store images, products, and links and insert them into your WordPress post without having to go look for each one individually. It’s a must-have for anyone who is using a WordPress blog with their BigCommerce site.
BigCommerce blog integration is definitely a problem that takes a little bit of work to get around. However, BigCommerce makes so many other aspects of running an ecommerce business so easy that it somewhat justifies the trouble of finding a solution to this one weakness. Furthermore, the work-arounds are relatively easy and can be handled without a whole lot of coding knowledge. The time investment is definitely worth it because having a blog with compelling content can really help your business attract and keep customers.
Coalition Technologies’ design, branding, and SEO experts are deeply familiar with the ins and outs of BigCommerce—we are one of their premium partners. If you need help with your BigCommerce blog integration, don’t hesitate to contact us right away. Our services will help you set up and manage a blog that is beneficial to your company.