Since the release of BigCommerce 5.6 the process of setting up a WordPress blog that is associated with your online store has become a hell of a lot easier. This short lesson will take you through the basic process of setting up a WordPress blog on a subdomain that is associated with your BigCommerce store.
By the time this lesson has finished we will show you how to:
- Select a company to host your blog (as cheaply as possible).
- Use the BigCommerce DNS tools to point a subdomain (blog.yourdomain.com) at your blog.
- Install WordPress with a one click process.
- Find and integrate a theme for your blog.
- Add a link to your blog from the navigation bar on your BigCommerce store.
Hosting Your WordPress Blog
Step 1: The Hosting Really Does Matter
First things first, because we’re using WordPress we need to make sure we find a hosting provider that is able to support the software requirements of a WordPress site. To run a WordPress site you will need what is known as LAMP Hosting, which stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP.
The other requirements to consider before making a choice is that of your budget. We are all cheapskates at heart and don’t want to spend a cent more than we have to, but in the long-term interests of your success you really don’t want to fall into the trap of underspending on your blog hosting, although on the flip side you also don’t want to overspend on something excessive like a dedicated server.
If you are a bit of a tight arse and are really looking to do this on the cheap I recommend that you take a look at the hosted option at WordPress.com, where for around $10 per year you can set up and use the software quite effectively. WordPress.com, while cheap may not be your best solution as you have little control over how the site operates (a bit like BigCommerce). This means you may not be able to use certain plug-ins or even install a number of the more popular themes.
A better option to get you started is to go with a cheap shared hosting account from a company such as HostGator. For around $9 per month you will have full access to your WordPress files and will be able to customise how it looks and functions to your hearts content.
If your blog becomes popular, you’re going to want to look at a more flexible option such as Rackspace Cloud Hosting. The price of cloud hosting is coming down dramatically but it is still extremely expensive compared to shared hosting options such as HostGator.
My recommendation to you is to start off using a service like HostGator and if your site really starts getting some traction switch over to a Cloud Server.
Step 2: Creating Your Account
As a way of helping you get started I have been able to obtain a coupon code that will give you a discount if you sign on with Hostgator. For a short time when you sign on use “BIGCOMMERCEBLOG” as your coupon code you will get a $9.94 discount.
Even though your domain is already up and running at BigCommerce, you still want to use it when creating an account with HostGator.
Once your account has been created you will then need to set up a subdomain for your blog via their cPanel.
Redirecting Your Subdomain with BigCommerce
For branding and continuity you are going to want to use a subdomain for your blog that is associated with your online store. Fortunately with the release of BigCommerce 5.6 you are able to configure a subdomain by adding a DNS record and have it redirected to your Hostgator account.
Before signing into BigCommerce you will need to find out what your Hostgator IP address is. You can locate your IP address by signing into cPanel where you will see it in the left-hand menu.
Once you have your IP address handy you can head over to your BigCommerce administration area and update your DNS records.
The tool that allows us to update DNS records is located in the “Tools Menu” under “DNS records”.
Click the “DNS Records” link and when the page loads click on the bottom green + icon. This will give us a new field to add a DNS zone for our blog subdomain. When the field appears enter the subdomain and make sure that you have a trailing dot — eg blog.yourdomain.com.
Next, in the drop down menu you will need to “select A” from the available options.
Lastly, add your Hostgator IP address in the “Redirects to” field.
When happy the information that you have entered is correct, click on the button to “save your changes”.
Installing WordPress With One Click
By now you’re subdomain should be pointing out your shiny new Hostgator account which means you are now able to go ahead and install WordPress.
Your Hostgator account will come with a great little tool called Fantastico, which will allow you to install WordPress in a simple one click process. The beauty of this is you don’t have to worry about setting up databases, uploading files and all the garbage the would that generally goes with setting up your own software.
One thing that you will need to be aware of is that because you are using a subdomain you will need to make sure that the blog is installed into a directory called (you guessed it) “blog”.
Once you have added your administrators username and password you can go ahead and install WordPress — as simple as can be (right). So long as you have set up your DNS records correctly you should now be able to access your blog by visiting http://blog.yourdomain.com/
Here is a simple tutorial that I found on YouTube showing how to install WordPress using Fantastico on Hostgator (opens in new window).
Integrating A WordPress Theme
Perhaps the most difficult task that you will have will be selecting a theme and modifying it to match your brand. The theme that WordPress provides “straight out of the box” is horrible and it just isn’t going to cut the mustard.
Fortunately WordPress has a pretty active community of theme developers and there are plenty of free themes available for you to try out. Dive into the appearance menu in your WordPress dashboard and have a look at some of the themes on offer.
Alternatively, (like me) you can opt for a premium theme such as Thesis or one of the many stylish options from WooThemes. I personally like Thesis as it is more than just a WordPress theme, it is built on a very SEO friendly framework from which you can develop and extend the basic WordPress functionality. Thesis also provides you a toolset that will give you plenty of opportunity to change your layout and design from directly within the WordPress dashboard, no mucking about with HTML or CSS
The most important thing to remember is that changing themes is very very easy. Don’t get hung up on selecting a theme, it’ll only prevent you from getting started.
Linking the Blog From Your Store
Probably the easiest and final step is to create a link to your blog from the main navigation area of your online store.
To do this:
- Go to the “Create a Page” option from within the main “Website Content” tab of your BigCommerce control panel.
- Select the option to “link to another website or document”.
- Name the web page “Blog” and add the link http://blog.yourdomain.com.
- Make sure the checkbox has been ticked to show this webpage on the navigational menu.
- Then when you click the save and exit button you will automatically have a link directed to your shiny new blog.
Now get out there and start pumping out some interesting content about your products, your business or anything else you feel your customers will be interested in knowing.
If you’re not sure about any of the steps above I will do my best to answer them in the comments area below!
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{ 34 comments… read them below or add one }
thanks for your information
Thanks for the tutorial – very helpful =)
Great tutorial, I will work on implementing this. I just wonder why BigCommerce will not host the blog on their own server where my BC site is running, without me needing to get one more provider??
Thanks for the comment Dave.
While it is frustrating not being able to host a blog on the BigCommerce servers, you need to understand that their reasons are totally justified. The real advantage of using a hosted e-commerce platform is that the company providing the service has total control over the web server, and more importantly total control over what software is installed. If they start letting other third-party scripts onto the server they will have all the security and support headaches that go along with them.
Its not really intergration when you are just linking to a wordpress blog. What about getting a wp blog to insert on a big commerce page?
Hi Jonny
Integration probably was a poor word choice in hindsight.
I might be wrong but I can’t see any way that you could integrate a WordPress blog directly onto a BigCommerce page other than using an iFrame which would give you no search engine benefit.
Dave,
Thanks for the article, it is most helpful. Can you give us your thoughts on what the SEO benefit would be, if we implement a subdomain, for an externally hosted WordPress blog /site.
I want to add a blog, using WP / Thesis, on an outside host.
Will the blog articles added there benefit my Big Commerce sites’ SEO, similar to adding “News”, or creating new web pages on BC ?
Thanks,
Mark S.
Wow Mark – to justify your question with a decent answer will more than likely require a full blog post, but to put it very briefly:
1. With the amount of cross-linking that you should be using between your blog and online store I would be very confident in predicting that the search engines will treat your site as one (which is a good thing, big sites generally win).
2. You should also receive the added benefit of an extra search result for the subdomain showing up on branded search results pages (great for reputation management).
3. WordPress is a head and shoulders better solution than creating new pages with the BigCommerce CMS. In my opinion the BigCommerce system will create an absolute mess as you add more and more new blog posts, that will ultimately get buried deeper and deeper over time. There are also thousands of plug-ins that make a very flexible WordPress even more flexible.
4. Lastly, having a WordPress blog on an external subdomain would be an absolute godsend if you ever decide to change e-commerce providers. Your blog would continue on as normal without having to be touched at all.
There are probably a range of other things that I can’t think of right now, but at the end of the day you won’t go wrong following these steps.
I am also wanting to install a word press 3.0 blog to help increase the seo of my main domain i.e. my big commerce website.
I have read google ‘may’ treat a sub domain WPblog.myBCsite.co.uk as a seperate website to that of a subdirectory myBCsite.co.uk/WPblog there not actually helping the page rankings on google for the main website domain.
I have read in a few articles that you should only have a sub domain if the content you are going to ‘blog’ about is going to be different to that of your main website. If the content which are going to ‘blog’ about is similar to that of your main website, then you should create a sub directory and not a sub domain ?
Can someone confirm if it is possible to even create a sub directory on Big Commerce hosted website so I can install wordpress and have for example myBCsite.co.uk/WPbloginstalledhere ????
hi Vicky,
I would like to thank you for your question and hopefully the following will get you going in the right direction.
1. Attaching a blog to your e-commerce site is a good idea regardless of whether you use a subdirectory or a blog. In a perfect world you would probably opt for the subdirectory but in my opinion there really isn’t a lot of difference.
2. You cannot use a subdirectory with your BigCommerce site (unless you are using a third party DNS service) so you have no other choice but to use a subdomain that is directed to your blog on a third party hosting server.
A lot of people seem to be getting hung up on the subdirectory versus subdomain issue and its overall effect on your search rankings. Your ability to achieve targeted traffic from search engines will ultimately have nothing to do with whether it is installed on a subdomain or not.
The factors that are much more at play will be the quality of your content and its ability to attract links.
I hope this information helps, if not feel free to leave another comment
Hi Dave,
I’m dropping a line to let you know that I just released a WordPress plugin to integrate with Interspire and BigCommerce called…well…Interspire & BigCommerce.
The plugin allows you to easily link to your shop’s products from inside the WordPress editor. Click a link and see a list of all your products at once, then click insert and you’ve got a link to the product.
Please take a look and let me know if there are improvements you’d like to see – your site is one that I always come back to when looking for sage Interspire advice (love your speed comparison!).
Thanks Zach will take a look when I get a chance over the next few days.
I have also updated the link to the plug-in so it now works correctly
Hi thanks for your comments and advice Dave. I will see if I can set this up following your instructions.
Zack: your link to your plugin doesnt load up
Whoops! Here it is again: Interspire & BigCommerce Plugin.
Zack, I get the following error after installing the bigcommerce plugin, any ideas what the problem is?
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or ‘}’ in /home/sites/mywebsite.co.uk/public_html/wp-content/plugins/interspire-bigcommerce/interspire.php on line 15
I have found out that I needed PHP version 5 enabled (not version 4) on my server, which has solved my previous error I was getting earlier.
But now when I add in the relevant API details in the plugin settings I get the following error
“Your Interspire API settings are not configured properly”
I have entered them as per my bigcommerce admin details, is there a problem with this big commerce wordpress plugin working?
@Vicky – I have updated the plugin to version 1.0.3, which should fix these issues. I apologize for the inconvenience; they were caused by a difference in checking settings between Interspire and BigCommerce.
Nice Zack, I’ll definitely check out the plug-in once I get my WP installed with BC.
Can anyone recommend a good SEO plug-in for WP?
Thanks,
-Zeke
Hi Zeke – personally I have been using a couple of premium WordPress themes (such as Thesis) that have all the necessary SEO goodness built into them. Before that I used to use “All in one SEO Pack”.
Great Post. Does anyone have any examples of BigCommerce sites with Blogs?
Or a blog using the WP + BG-Plugin?
Thanks for the write up. I did this yesterday and I couldn’t get it to work. I have the blog on HostGator with a baby plan which gives you a shared IP. I had to get a dedicated IP for this to work. Once I did, it worked great.
Well done Bill!
I am surprised that you needed a dedicated IP address to get this going. In my testing everything worked well without one.
Hi Dave,
I noticed when trying the Katz plugin Interspire & BigCommerce for WordPress I get:
Your Interspire API settings are not configured properly
I know I must be on the most recent version, and my WP is properly set to the most recent version.
-any advice (Zack/Dave)?
hi Karl
To be honest I haven’t even looked at Zacks WordPress plug-in so you might have to wait to him to come along with an answer.
I might put it on my to do list over the Christmas break.
Dave
Thanks a ton! Very Very helpful! Keep up the good work!
Would using a blogger blog be any different when incorporating with a big commerce site? As far as seo would go would the wordpress site work better than the blogger or would it be the same type thing
@Cory let’s not be mistaken, the number one reason that a blog is good for SEO is that you can create good quality content that is not as sales orientated as your product page. A blog is great for creating content around your products such as how to articles, case studies, product usage examples, buying guides etc. Not only is this information useful for your customers, it is much more likely to be linked to from third-party websites which in turn helps boost your rankings.
In the end it doesn’t really matter what software you use. I prefer a self hosted version of WordPress because of the flexibility it allows you. In the end, whatever software you choose to use make sure you have it set up on a domain that you own (or subdomain) so that if you have a change your mind and want to use a different blogging software you don’t have to worry about changing your address.
I realise there is a debate around whether you should use a subdomain and how much it helps with SEO. Personally I believe if you are interlinking your main site with the subdomain Google will see it as one, but in the end it doesn’t really matter as the only way that you can set up a third party blog if you’re using BigCommerce is to use a subdomain as you cannot set up a blog on the BigCommerce servers.
Regards Dave
I know this is a very old post. Every site I work on is set up in Wordpress. Wordpress is a dream come true, it allows the ordinary person to have a great website and free from designer bondage. Also the only platform that gets good rankings and so many other benefits, I cant even figure out why anyone would use anything else. I am specifically talking about a self-hosted wordpress blog.
I am helping a friend with her Big Commerce site. She is such an amazing Mom who put this store together after her son was in a car accident and is now in a wheelchair. She learned quickly that Big Commerce is terrible for traffic, and a million other problems. I suggested putting in a wordpress blog, but seems that Big Commerce only makes that a challenge, and I see why.
My recommendation would be to stop using Big Commerce, and put a store on a Wordpress Blog with a plugin, and also set up a facebook store. But if for some strange reason you insist on shooting yourself in the foot, then this article is the way to go.
Liz
Thanks for the comment Liz!
Every site obviously has different needs and for some a WordPress plug-in is more than suitable. Although it has been a while since I have looked closely at WordPress e-commerce plug-ins, my initial impression has always been that they don’t quite cut it for a large e-commerce venture.
I would like to learn more about your problems with BigCommerce, particularly its inability to drive traffic.
Would it be a bad idea to install Big Commerce on a subdomain of a site? Reason I am asking is liking the ability to use a WordPress theme (self hosted) that may have slideshows of products and then a “SHOP” button in the navigation that would at that point take them to the Big Commerce subdomain of that site. I keep seeing this discussion of the other way around of a blog being on a subdomain but I am more interested in possibly putting Big Commerce on a subdomain so I can control the look of the home page more.
Feedback?
Thanks!
Angie
@Angie I personally believe this is a better way to go. The days of “just” having an e-commerce store are disappearing quickly. You need to offer your customers much more than just a sales process. I always tend to use the analogy of building a community that just happens to also sell stuff.
Thanks for the step by step. I didn’t know you could do that through the bigcommerce admin for DNS.
Great info. One question, what would I need to do to implement what you are saying here…
“2. You cannot use a subdirectory with your BigCommerce site (unless you are using a third party DNS service) so you have no other choice but to use a subdomain that is directed to your blog on a third party hosting server.”
Thanks!
@Don the situation that you are asking about is aimed more at if your blog was hosted on the root domain (e.g. yourdomain.com) and you then used DNS to direct a subdomain (e.g. shop.yourdomain.com) at your BigCommerce store. This is a situation that really suits a lot of people, especially those who are using content as their main traffic generating strategy and then decide to tack on an online store to generate an income.