If you run an eCommerce site through Big Commerce, the time may come when you want to add a WordPress blog to the site. Although this takes a little doing, it is possible and doing so will allow you to utilize WordPress to communicate with your existing customers and attract new ones. Steps are listed below:

1) Set up hosting
Big Commerce hosts the eCommerce portion of your site; however, they do not allow you to run WordPress on the Big Commerce hosting. You will need to set up a separate hosting account for your WordPress blog. Shared hosting should fine for the purposes of most. Unless you expect huge amounts of traffic right out of the gate, start with some inexpensive shared hosting and then upgrade as your traffic grows. If you’d like to have us set up shared hosting for you on one of our servers, simply contact us with your website info and we’ll be happy to help out with the hosting as well as all the subsequent steps listed below. Other reputable hosts include Dreamhost, HostGator, and Bluehost. Whichever host you choose, make sure that they have shared servers running Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP as these are all requirements for running WordPress.

IMPORTANT: When choosing a domain, select the same domain as the one you are running with Big Commerce. This is key for the following step.

2) Setup Subdomain for Blog
Once your hosting account is set up, you need to configure a subdomain for installing WordPress. If you are running cPanel, find the Subdomains Icon under the Domains Section and create a subdomain with a URL like blog.yourbigcommercedomain.com.

For the next step you will need your the IP address for your new hosting account. If you are running cPanel, this info should be listed in the top of the left column on the cPanel homepage under Account Information.

3) Set Up DNS Redirect for Blog in Big Commerce
Log into the Big Commerce admin panel and from the top menu go to Tools > DNS Records. Once on the DNS Records page, click on the bottom green plus + icon. This will display a new field to add a DNS zone for your newly-created subdomain. Enter the subdomain and include a trailing dot, e.g. “blog.yourdomain.com.” Then, select “A” from the available drop-down options and add your IP address in the “Redirects to” field. Once you have entered all of the appropriate info and verified that it is correct, save your changes.

Congratulations! You have now created a redirect for your blog subdomain. Visitors typing blog.yourdomain.com into their browser will now reach your blog instead of Big Commerce. You can also add a link to your blog in your Big Commerce store.

Reminder: Don’t forget to install WordPress and customize its design once the redirect is in place!