I don't like to leave negative reviews but this add-on has to be highlighted for how dreadful it is. One would think with Wordpress, it would be difficult to go wrong but, unfortunately, what you get for your $200 (+ VAT!) (per annum!) is a hugely stripped down version of Wordpress that can barely produce a blog post. For example:
- no matter how you resize an image, it comes out full size.
- galleries come out as images under each other, not as galleries
- pagination doesn't work
- you can't embed any of the usual Wordpress embeds like YouTube videos, etc.
- you can't embed products into your posts
- I can't tell for sure but I don't think it is of any benefit to SEO, which seems to be the main reason to blog these days!
Don't even think of adding plugins as 99% of them don't work.
I have tried to engage with the developers of the plugin because much of the issues appear to be due to disabling Javascript on the Wordpress add-on but they have no plans to update it to make it any more than the most basic of blogging tools.
If your store is hosted by XCart, you won't be able to get a subdomain without an extra charge on a different server so that's not going to be an option so I think your best bet is to buy a cheap domain with the extension .blog and host your own blog there.
The alternative add-on is also very basic but does the job a little better insofar as it integrates with your store. It's also $110 cheaper per annum.
I hope the developers will see fit to improve this add-on in time but as of the end of 2022, my advice is to not go near it.
Blog System in X-Cart 5
-
It looks like garbage on our site and if you click on any posts to read them or go to the 2nd page it loads on its own with absolutely no template or theme at all, just plain text on white and looks extremely amateurish. The entire process of how it works with wordpress is confusing and this module is misleading.