The idea of blogging on Shopify isn't new, but it hasn't yet gained widespread traction. While more brands are starting to use Shopify's blogging feature to engage their audiences, using Shopify as a primary blogging platform is still a relatively new concept.
With blog editors becoming more akin to website builders Shopify shines by separating content from layout offering a distraction free place to create and publish content. If you’re expecting it to be Wordpress it’s not. But it doesn’t mean it’s lacking in features either. It’s just built differently and blogging on Shopify starts with knowing how to use it.
The Content Editor
For most bloggers, the Content Editor is a primary concern when choosing a platform. If you're a fan of WordPress's Classic Editor, then Shopify's Content Editor will feel familiar:
- Set a publication date
- Add a featured image
- Organize with tags
- Customize the handle, meta title, and description
- Assign an author
- Add an excerpt
- Edit custom fields
- And see all of a posts comments
You can compose your content directly in the Editor or copy and paste from your favorite writing tool. While its simplicity and content-focused approach may give the illusion of limited robustness compared to other platforms, that's not the case. The Content Editor is designed for content only, while post layout customization is handled separately in the Theme Editor. And with the help of Zora, you can embed products and collections where you want them to appear as you're writing and even turn any post into audio or video using z-codes.
The Theme Editor
Want to create a custom layout for your blog or blog posts? Shopify's Theme Editor is your go-to tool. Themes are at the heart of every Shopify store, and the functionality you get is only limited by the theme you choose. When it comes to blogging, most themes allow you to:
- Show or hide author and date information
- Enable social sharing features
- And more...
This experience is similar to other platforms that use templates and themes with predefined sections, patterns, and blocks. Once you create your desired post layout, it will be used consistently across all your posts – no need to recreate the template each time.
Customizing Content
But what if you want to change the content within a specific section or block in your post layout? In Shopify, content is separated from the layout. This means you can create metafields (custom fields) accessible in your Content Editor that you regularly change. For example:
- A fashion blogger could add a "Collection" metafield to showcase products featured in a post
- A food blogger could create a "Nutritional Facts" field for calories, fats and carbs for a recipe post
After creating metafields, head back to the Theme Editor, locate the relevant section or block, and connect the field to your metafield using a dynamic source. This seamless integration let’s you add unique content per post without changing the layout. You can maintain a consistent format for your viewers and invite others to contribute content without worrying about variations in design.
Post Management
Shopify streamlines post management with custom saved searches, allowing you to organize your blogging experience with "Draft" and "Published" tabs. While you can't currently filter posts by upcoming dates, you can see which posts have an active publish date. It would be beneficial if Shopify added the functionality to sort by "Hidden" and "Publish Date" to create a "Scheduled" tab in the future. For now, you can filter by author, blog, visibility, and tags to create your own customized Blog Admin interface.
Categories
Shopify doesn't have traditional categories; instead, it offers a more flexible approach – multiple blogs. Rather than a designated "Category" feature, you can create separate blogs for each category. For instance, if you're running a news source like The New York Times, you could have blogs for World, Business, and Lifestyle all within your blogs directory:
- example.com/blogs/world
- example.com/blogs/lifestyle
- example.com/blogs/business
Alternatively, you can use tags to create categories. This method is useful for travel bloggers who might prefer one blog with country/region-specific tags:
- example.com/blogs/europe/tagged/germany
- example.com/blogs/europe/tagged/france
- example.com/blogs/europe/tagged/finland
For deeply nested categories, tags are key. For example, a food blogger might have a blog named "Recipes" with subcategories like vegan, vegetarian, and pescatarian. But what about categories like soups, salads, and sides? Zora leverages Shopify tags by introducing a reserved "cat-" prefix that lets you create deeply nested categories:
- cat-vegan_soups
- cat-vegetarian_salads
- cat-pescatarian_sides
You can create blogs with categories up to four levels deep, resembling the power of a dedicated "Category" feature. And add custom images and content for each Category in the Theme Editor
Tags
While Shopify doesn't distinguish between tags and categories alone, with Zora, you can. Any tag that excludes the "cat-" prefix is treated like a normal tag. Going back to the example of the food blogger, there may be a need for flavor profile tags like sweet, savory, and herbal alongside category tags. With Zora, you can organize your content by category, subcategory, and topic, providing a rich taxonomy for your blog.
Comments
Shopify's built-in commenting system lets you enable/disable comments and moderate them just like other platforms. You can mark comments as spam, approve, or keep them unapproved. While Shopify's commenting system lacks threaded comments out of the box, with Zora, you can enable this feature in the Theme Editor, enhancing audience engagement.
Contributors
For multi-author blogs or adding sponsors, you’ll need to get a little creative with Shopify. You're limited to one author per post, and adding new staff members or contributors might not always make sense, especially for guest bloggers.
With Zora, you can enable multi-authoring by adding contributor or sponsor tags using the “role-” or “sponsor_” prefix, ensuring you attribute your content accordingly. You can even create contributor pages to make it easier for your audience to connect with their favorite contributors.
Access
Want to offer exclusive content to your paid subscribers? While Shopify doesn't natively support this, it doesn't mean it's not possible. With the help of Zora, you can enable memberships on your site and tag any post as "exclusive" or if you have tiers enabled append the tier name (e.g. exclusive-plus). Zora will ensure your content is accessible only to subscribers based on access level.
Permissions
Where Shopify excels is in permissions. You have granular control over who has access to your site. You can add collaborators and staff members with access only to your blog posts and pages. This allows contributors like content writers and copywriters to focus on creating content without worrying about design.
Media Management
Having a centralized home for all your media files is essential. Shopify's built-in CDN lets you host your images, videos, audio, documents, and more. And with Zora, you can reference your video or audio media in any blog post using media z-codes
Want to share an image or PDF with your followers? All your files, with the exception of videos, are accessible via your domain, allowing you to create a branded experience anywhere on the web:
- example.com/shop/cdn/files/[filename.ext]
SEO
Shopify's blog URL structure has been long debated as not being SEO-friendly. However, it's time to debunk that claim. What makes something SEO-friendly is its readability by search engines and humans alike. One thing that Shopify does well is getting you started with SEO-friendly, pre-defined sub-directories. All your blogs are hosted at your "/blogs/" directory. If you give your blog a relevant keyword handle and name, you're off to a great start.
Take for example the "United States" blog in Zora's demo store. We're telling search engines that this is a blog about the United States. And with the ability to customize the meta title and description, you can provide search engines with even more context. If you don't have time to edit the SEO of every post, Shopify will automatically create your meta title and description based on your page title and content.
Ready to Start Blogging on Shopify?
Shopify's solid blogging engine with the help of Zora unlocks underutilized functionality to kickstart your blogging journey. With multi-authoring, gated content, multimedia posts, embedded products, and sponsored posts, Zora adds familiar enhancements to your Shopify blog.
Whether you're an established blogger or just starting, the combination of Shopify and Zora offers a flexible solution for creating, publishing, managing, and monetizing your content. Shopify's unique approach to separating content from layout, let's you focus on what matters – delivering valuable, engaging content to your audience.