Testing blog modules in e-shops: IdoSell Shop
Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2024 10:26 am
After looking at the possibilities offered by blog modules on platforms such as Shoper and RedCart, it was time for one of the most popular, IdoSell Shop (formerly IAI-Shop.com). How to run a company blog on Idosell Shop?
IdoSell Shop (formerly IAI-Shop.com) has been on the market for a long time. They currently support — as they say on their website — over 5,000 online stores and over 1,000 accommodation companies with thousands of properties. It sounds really impressive.
The blog module in the IAI store appeared only in 2016 as a result of the division of the previous News module. As a result of these changes:
- news and blog were separated - at the moment they are separate functions;
- a new division of previously added content was established - a different location of entries from the News and Blog modules.
Before the blog module was placed on the IAI pages, there was a News module , on the basis of which the blog module was created. I suppose that the entire operation of creating a blog on IAI largely consisted of duplicating and slightly modifying solutions known from the News module, changing the name (to the BLOG module) and establishing other places for entries to appear in the standard template. Taking the easy way out, especially since News was not among the newest and most up-to-date in 2016. From what I managed to read on the IAI website, the last major improvements and modifications that significantly changed the comfort of using this module were made in 2014.
As a result of these changes, news gained:
- a modified, more intuitive interface. News has been divided into four sections, which made it more transparent;
- a news editor, which was based on the editor from the section: Creating subpages and managing their content (CMS editor), slightly expanding it;
- sections, change history;
- friendly links, i.e. friendly URL;
- the ability to set any number of CMS page types (sections) - equivalents of categories in the blog.
These solutions were immediately adapted to the blog module created in 2016.
How does the IdoSell Shop (formerly IAI) blog module look externally?
As I mentioned earlier, the blog module from IdoSell Shop is the younger brother of the News section.
It has its own page, which contains a list of entries and a page for presenting their content. The left sidebar contains links to entry categories and an entry calendar (the so-called archive) grouping entries by architect email list months and years. Selected blog entries are presented in a special area on the store's main page, provided that your template allows it.
After clicking on the blog link, a list of entries is displayed. The appearance of the list of entries depends of course on the template we use in our store. Most often, the list of entries contains thumbnails of entries, an introduction and a "read more" link. Entries are usually arranged one under the other. If you use a simple template, you cannot count on any fireworks. Nevertheless, the blog module can also look quite attractive to the eye. Below are examples of the design of blogs functioning in stores on the IdoSell platform.
Adding categories in IdoSell Shop
Archived Posts Search Engine
Features in the IdoSell Shop blog module
In the IdoSell store I tested, the blog module is located in the MODERATION tab. After entering the module, a list of all entries with their date of addition will be displayed. Above the list, there is a menu that directs us to the tabs:
Back to the list of pages
Blog Categories
Add a new blog post Blog
Post RSS Feed
In the Blog Categories tab , we add a new category to articles. After attaching the category to the first entry, it appears in the side menu on the blog subpage. After entering the Blog Category and clicking the Add a new category of blog entries link , a window pops up where we can create a new category. When adding a category, we can simultaneously enter an individual meta description, as well as text that will ultimately be displayed above the list of entries from this category. From an SEO perspective — an excellent solution.
I am slightly less impressed with the Search for blog posts tab , which from my perspective is completely useless. In the search engine for archived posts, we can search for an article from the year, month of addition and location. Now let's imagine that we want to find all the articles that concerned, for example, walnuts. We won't find this in the search engine. We can possibly find all the articles from January 2018. Why? We don't know. It is much more useful to search them by topic. For a content marketer, copywriter or SEO specialist, this is much more important.
Adding a new article in IdoSell Shop
The most important aspect of running a blog is editing content. So let's take a look inside to see what the content editor looks like in the IdoSell Shop module.
In an article on the IdoSell Shop website discussing its advantages, we can read, among other things, that a blog "is a module that allows you to present content related to your sales in an attractive form." After reading this sentence, I could only smile slightly. Paraphrasing a well-known folk saying - I don't know what the people who wrote this article were taking, but they can give me some, because as you can see, it works. The fact is that you can add content to the IdoSell Shop blog and it is true that it can be attractive, but it all depends on the graphic template you have and whether you have a friendly graphic designer who will create a cool graphic design for you. The blog's functionalities alone do not allow for any madness. I have seen various blogs in IdoSell Shop stores and many of them did not look attractive at all.
In the first part of the text editor we have a list of checkboxes that allow us to specify the visibility and location of a given entry. We can choose the category, as well as the activation date of a given article.
In the proper part there is a place where you can already place your article. In a separate window we add an introduction to the article and separately its development. Similarly to categories we have the possibility (after clicking Meta settings > use the ones given below ) to set our own metadata for a specific entry.
How do you format text?
It depends on whether you are ambitious and will do everything in HTML, or you will take the easy way out and immediately switch to WYSIWYG mode. I have used both options and for people who have never dealt with HTML and do not want to stress, I recommend switching to WYSIWYG right away. IAI will reliably warn us that the code will be contaminated in this mode, but do not worry. Just do not paste the text into WYSIWYG straight from the Word editor and it will be OK.
IdoSell Shop (formerly IAI-Shop.com) has been on the market for a long time. They currently support — as they say on their website — over 5,000 online stores and over 1,000 accommodation companies with thousands of properties. It sounds really impressive.
The blog module in the IAI store appeared only in 2016 as a result of the division of the previous News module. As a result of these changes:
- news and blog were separated - at the moment they are separate functions;
- a new division of previously added content was established - a different location of entries from the News and Blog modules.
Before the blog module was placed on the IAI pages, there was a News module , on the basis of which the blog module was created. I suppose that the entire operation of creating a blog on IAI largely consisted of duplicating and slightly modifying solutions known from the News module, changing the name (to the BLOG module) and establishing other places for entries to appear in the standard template. Taking the easy way out, especially since News was not among the newest and most up-to-date in 2016. From what I managed to read on the IAI website, the last major improvements and modifications that significantly changed the comfort of using this module were made in 2014.
As a result of these changes, news gained:
- a modified, more intuitive interface. News has been divided into four sections, which made it more transparent;
- a news editor, which was based on the editor from the section: Creating subpages and managing their content (CMS editor), slightly expanding it;
- sections, change history;
- friendly links, i.e. friendly URL;
- the ability to set any number of CMS page types (sections) - equivalents of categories in the blog.
These solutions were immediately adapted to the blog module created in 2016.
How does the IdoSell Shop (formerly IAI) blog module look externally?
As I mentioned earlier, the blog module from IdoSell Shop is the younger brother of the News section.
It has its own page, which contains a list of entries and a page for presenting their content. The left sidebar contains links to entry categories and an entry calendar (the so-called archive) grouping entries by architect email list months and years. Selected blog entries are presented in a special area on the store's main page, provided that your template allows it.
After clicking on the blog link, a list of entries is displayed. The appearance of the list of entries depends of course on the template we use in our store. Most often, the list of entries contains thumbnails of entries, an introduction and a "read more" link. Entries are usually arranged one under the other. If you use a simple template, you cannot count on any fireworks. Nevertheless, the blog module can also look quite attractive to the eye. Below are examples of the design of blogs functioning in stores on the IdoSell platform.
Adding categories in IdoSell Shop
Archived Posts Search Engine
Features in the IdoSell Shop blog module
In the IdoSell store I tested, the blog module is located in the MODERATION tab. After entering the module, a list of all entries with their date of addition will be displayed. Above the list, there is a menu that directs us to the tabs:
Back to the list of pages
Blog Categories
Add a new blog post Blog
Post RSS Feed
In the Blog Categories tab , we add a new category to articles. After attaching the category to the first entry, it appears in the side menu on the blog subpage. After entering the Blog Category and clicking the Add a new category of blog entries link , a window pops up where we can create a new category. When adding a category, we can simultaneously enter an individual meta description, as well as text that will ultimately be displayed above the list of entries from this category. From an SEO perspective — an excellent solution.
I am slightly less impressed with the Search for blog posts tab , which from my perspective is completely useless. In the search engine for archived posts, we can search for an article from the year, month of addition and location. Now let's imagine that we want to find all the articles that concerned, for example, walnuts. We won't find this in the search engine. We can possibly find all the articles from January 2018. Why? We don't know. It is much more useful to search them by topic. For a content marketer, copywriter or SEO specialist, this is much more important.
Adding a new article in IdoSell Shop
The most important aspect of running a blog is editing content. So let's take a look inside to see what the content editor looks like in the IdoSell Shop module.
In an article on the IdoSell Shop website discussing its advantages, we can read, among other things, that a blog "is a module that allows you to present content related to your sales in an attractive form." After reading this sentence, I could only smile slightly. Paraphrasing a well-known folk saying - I don't know what the people who wrote this article were taking, but they can give me some, because as you can see, it works. The fact is that you can add content to the IdoSell Shop blog and it is true that it can be attractive, but it all depends on the graphic template you have and whether you have a friendly graphic designer who will create a cool graphic design for you. The blog's functionalities alone do not allow for any madness. I have seen various blogs in IdoSell Shop stores and many of them did not look attractive at all.
In the first part of the text editor we have a list of checkboxes that allow us to specify the visibility and location of a given entry. We can choose the category, as well as the activation date of a given article.
In the proper part there is a place where you can already place your article. In a separate window we add an introduction to the article and separately its development. Similarly to categories we have the possibility (after clicking Meta settings > use the ones given below ) to set our own metadata for a specific entry.
How do you format text?
It depends on whether you are ambitious and will do everything in HTML, or you will take the easy way out and immediately switch to WYSIWYG mode. I have used both options and for people who have never dealt with HTML and do not want to stress, I recommend switching to WYSIWYG right away. IAI will reliably warn us that the code will be contaminated in this mode, but do not worry. Just do not paste the text into WYSIWYG straight from the Word editor and it will be OK.