Testing blog modules in e-shops: RedCart.pl

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Should you set up blogs for e-shops? Of course you can. A blog in an e-shop in 2019 is a must. However, creating a fully valuable blog on an e-commerce platform is not that easy. In this series, I am testing blog modules on the most important platforms offering solutions for e-shops.
Not all e-commerce platforms have implemented solutions that allow for the integration of a store platform with a blog platform such as WordPress. Not all of them allow you to set up a valuable blog on your own system. I recently checked out the blog module on Shoper.pl, and today you will see what solution for running a blog the RedCart.pl platform has for us. I last tested the blog module on RedCard in 2015. That's a long time. Let's see what has changed on this popular SaaS platform since then. This text is an update of an article from 2015. Let's get started!
Can we create a blog on the RedCart.pl platform?
Fortunately, yes. In the RedCart.pl administration panel there is a BLOG module. It is located in the Store appearance tab.
What does the blog module look like on the RedCart.pl platform?
In 2015 it looked really bad (primitive is a better word). Formatting the article and running the company blog itself was a real pain. Now it's much better. Text formatting options have been expanded - now they match the standards. The ability to categorize entries has also been added, which is a big improvement compared to the previous version of this module.
Adding Categories to Redcart Blog
What functions does the blog module have in RedCart.pl?
After entering the tab in the e-shop administration panel called Shop Appearance, we can do two things: enter Add news or Configuration . However, Configuration is a rather unfortunate word in my opinion, considering the contents of this tab. We have as many "configuration" options as a cat cried. We can: Set the title of the section and block and set the number of entries all contact number list with name on the page and box. And also enable or disable Facebook comments under texts. And what else? Pick your nose after hard work. We will find much more options in the Add news tab, . When adding a news, we can set the following data:
News title
Date added
Status for entry (active or inactive)
Whether the thumbnail should be displayed in the post content
Add a thumbnail
set blog category affiliation
This last option is a novelty, which is a consequence of the appearance of the categorization option in the module (wow!). The panel for adding news itself consists of two parts: a place to add the article lead (short description) and the main text (entry content).

How do you format text?
In this respect, the blog module has seen the most progress. The module is equipped with a pretty decent-looking text processor. We can make all the basic text improvements in it: choose the font, size, style, text alignment, insert media, emoticons, etc. And — what is a real surprise — everything works quite well. There are minor differences between what you set in the panel and what you finally see on the page. For example, spaces do not display or the text is spread out. But it is definitely better than it was. Most of these things can be corrected by working on the source code.


Worth praising for...
an advanced text processor that facilitates formatting;
easy, intuitive to use.
And I don't like that...
there is no way to preview the text in the panel (you have to publish it and preview it via the website);
text formatted in the editor looks the same on the page;
text formatting in the panel is slightly different from what is on the website only four fonts to choose from basic knowledge of HTML required, text sometimes needs to be corrected at the code level.
What are the SEO options?
Sufficient. In a special tab, we can set individual options for each news item, such as: alternative title, meta description, and keywords for search engines. There is a character counter under each box, which is a good and practical solution (we know how many characters we have at our disposal).

Summary
Is it worth running a blog within RedCart.pl? It all depends on your marketing goals. If you have a store on RedCart.pl and you want an extensive company blog, you have to put it somewhere else for now. What they offer on RedCart.pl is simply not suitable for these purposes. It is better to invest in a separate installation and enjoy a thousand possibilities and plugins. In this option, however, the blog itself will have less impact on the visibility of the store in SERPs.
The blog module run on RedCart will be enough for people who prefer a simple blog. One that they want to use as a tool for positioning the store or publishing messages and advisory content to customers. A blog run from the RedCart panel has everything necessary to conduct decent communication with the customer. Categories have appeared, which is a great step forward. In this version, in combination with Facebook, for example, it will even function quite well.