Blog/Shopping Cart Integration - Any Advice

[Stonebro]

Hi I am new to the forum although have had both Web Designer 6 & 7, and am just about to upgrade to MX.
I like Xara Web products for the ease of rattling off a quick attractive site - that doesnt look like its been rattled off quickly

I have built a couple of attractive sites using these products, but I am now interested in integrating

A) A Blog
and
B) A Shopping Cart

I am familiar with Zencart and have had two succesful dalliances with Zen shops (sold last one)
But would like to hear any advice anyone may offer re: Blogs - which and how and shopping carts

I suppose what I want most is the viewers browser experience to be as seamless as possible without obvious re-direction to a wordpress or zencart site.
Any thoughts????

[gwpriester]

Welcome to TalkGraphics

I am not sure about blogs, though there has been a lot of discussion in this forum about blogs, but a lot of people like PayPal for it's simplicity, and ECWID. PayPal is very easy to set up and is accepted and trusted widely. ECWID is more attractive and has more options to customize.

[Cloud]

Just in the middle of creating a site for a client and created the site using webdesigner and a blog page in wordpress, simply create a folder for the blog, install wordpress in this folder and then link to this folder in the main site with a button on the blog to take you back to the site, that way you get the best of both worlds. Could have created the whole site in wordpress but the client wanted quite a customised site so felt webdesigner was the best thing for this. And I have found ecwid to be just as easy as paypal to integrate in webdesigner.

[xtom]

If you want blogging and shopping cart functionality that integrates seamlessly into your xara made website then also consider the cms I'm working on -> http://www.xt-cms.com/ The blogging functionality isn't as robust as wordpress but it covers the basics of categories, posting articles and user comments etc. and the shopping cart functionality is in there too with paypal support.

[vgvetter]

Am presently recommending that our clients incorporate blogs on their sites to take advantage of the help that periodic site update appears to have on maintaining search engine rank.

This also allows blog posts to be introduced into newsletters that site Viewers subscribe to, hopefully maintaining site visibility with those interested enough to subscribe as well as with RSS subscribers.

We use blogs without comment capability to avoid problems associated with moderating, spam, and hacking.