5 Questions Re: The Prevailing Knowledge On Utilizing WordPress Vs
What Jamie said … times two-thousand.
For me, and I imagine most Shopify users, the real issue with the blog support, or lack thereof, is a usability issue. This whiz-bang Shopify platform is awesome, but without a better blog platform, it’s like a Maserati without wheels. Seriously.
My scenario: The first goal with the blog was to create a single post with a certain theme that readers could expect on that particular day of the week. So Monday would always be topic A, Tuesday, topic B and so on, this method enables me and the editorial team to dream up a list of topics and consistently post. It’s also a way to keep the audience coming back for more, while allowing them to skip the things they don’t care about. They expect content as well as navigate through what they want to read. Without scrolling till their heads fall off for *something* valueable to read. Sure it shows up in Google in record time, but not everyone knows what they’re looking for when going straight to Google on all occasions.
So, since I wasn’t able to figure out a simple way to accomplish this with a *single* blog, I ended up creating numerous blogs that “drop down” from the “blog” link in my header. It’s an absolute mess – and at least one of the reasons why people don’t know what the heck they’re looking at/for when they come to my site. The usability is just not there from my end OR the reader’s end.
We even have an editorial calendar for the site and the whole deal, but I can’t streamline content creation at all because of the limitations of the blogging platform.
Take this as an example: lets say on Wednesdays I want to write about baking tips related to ingredients, tips related to production (working faster and better) and tips related to creating recipes. They’re ALL tips, but thematically different. How is a reader supposed to sort through all that with any real ease? And from my end, the back-end starts becoming a mess as well. I’ve already got eight blog ‘categories’ if you will, and I’ve only been posting since Feb 1. Jeez. Perhaps I’m missing the *easy* way to do this, and perhaps there is some magic coding bullet that makes all this simpler, but I’m not finding it.
With a blogging platform this is simple to accomplish. It’s also simple to plan ahead, one other thing that perhaps I haven’t figured out yet, but I’d love to be able to do is front-load posts so they have a specific posting date, and not the date I actually wrote the post.
Since I’m a writer by trade, that’s easy to do. What I don’t want to end up doing is spending gobs of money to follow the scenario Jamie laid out (as much as I love my designer) just to run a blog, which is free in most applications. In combing though the forums even before I signed up, I saw a number of folks chime in on this and then disappear because it seemed to difficult.
I agree that continual writing is key with a blog, but *so* is ease of use. Despite the apparent coding pitfalls that exist with Blogger, WordPress or TypePad, the reason people use those tools is because they’re simple. My Mom can do it. That’s the key. That’s ALSO they key to Shopify! So how about combining the two for sheer brilliance. Wanna’ see a lot of people sign up at $100. a month? Allow them to create a blog (which they’re already doing most likely) allow them to import said blog simply into Shopify, and then teach them how to sell things. You’ll make a fortune.
I do love Shopify and credit the platform with enabling me to *finally* be able to do something with TheBaker.com, that said, however, it bums me out that all the work it takes to just get a simple thing like a blog going and *humming!!!* is so much darn work!
Thanks for listening!