Blogspot

[lucysdoghouse]

Is there anything wrong with doing a blog on blogspot? I have one set up there and it seems pretty easy to use.

All the best,

Hans

[mattb]

There's nothing wrong with building a blog on Blogger. There are a few things you should know, however.

First, Blogger (or Blogspot---they are one in the same) has only a few basic themes that you can use. If you would like to build a custom theme for your business or organization, it becomes a lot more difficult because there are extra hoops that you (or Solid Cactus) will need to jump through.

Also, when you get a blog from Blogger, it is going to be something like yourblog.blogspot.com. This isn't going to boost the SEO for your store any, so you'll need to configure everything to switch to blog.yourstore.com so you get that added benefit.

Otherwise, Blogger is an excellent choice for blogging about yourself or your business. Would you like me to put you in touch with an eCommerce consultant to help get you started on putting a blog together?

[lucysdoghouse]

Matt,

Thanks for the comments.

I am okay for now with regards to setting up a blog.

All the best,

Hans

[2smokingbarrels]

Hi Hans,

We recently discussed blogs in another thread, and I touched on some of the challenges we've experienced thus far with our blog, which as I mentioned in the title there, is from Blogspot/Blogger.

I checked out your blog and it looks like you're off to a great start.

As mattb mentioned, though, the layout thing is a bit of a drag. Ours looked a little cheesy until I finally got one of our designers to add a better header. Ooo, that rhymed.

I noticed you're hosting photos on Photobucket. When you upload photos directly to Blogspot from your PC/Mac, it creates a Picasa account for you (another site under the Google umbrella) that basically functions the same way. I've used Photobucket myself though for videos and stuff but figured it was worth mentioning.

I want to add some more advanced navigation to our blog (say, store categories, for instance) at some point but I'm not even sure if this is feasible. Unfortunately this isn't "low hanging fruit" as far as management is concerned (they're right though).

As an alternative, you can add store categories into the right column (see our blog for an example) and add a Google Search box (you may need to login to Blogger in Draft to get one). Then, restrict the search results to only your blog and your store (it's easier done than said, as it were).

Try it on our blog and see what you come up with (we sell aquariums, so something along those lines will produce results in both).

In the meantime, keep up the good work.

[cperry]

Hi
We also use blogger for the big paw blog...probably need to spend some time cleaning it up a bit -
one thing we run into is using a mac the layout editor does not work properly in firefox....sometimes works in netscape or safari...but other than that it is very easy.
Carol