How to Create a Blog on Shopify (Beginner Guide)

The problem

A merchant asked this on the Shopify Community, and it is a fair question if you only know Shopify as a store builder.

They run a recipe site on custom code. They want to move it to Shopify for features they cannot build themselves. But everything they read says Shopify is for ecommerce. So they asked the obvious thing: can you actually make a blog site on Shopify, or is it stores only?

The short answer is yes. Shopify has a full blog built in, and plenty of content and recipe sites run on it without a single product listed.

Here is their live site. It is a clean recipe blog with posts and categories like Baking, Salads, Muffins, and Pastries.

A custom-coded recipe site with posts and categories, the kind that moves to Shopify well

That structure maps onto Shopify almost one to one. This guide walks through it, using a recipe site as the example, but the steps are the same for any blog.

Yes, Shopify can be a blog or content site

You do not need a plugin, an app, or a theme change to blog on Shopify. The blog is part of every plan.

What you get out of the box:

• Unlimited blog posts and multiple blogs
• A clean editor with images, formatting, and video
• Categories, tags, and an author for each post
• A built-in SEO listing so each post has its own Google title and description
• Fast hosting and good mobile performance without any setup

The one thing to know upfront: in Shopify, the word "blog" does not mean the whole blog area. It means one category. Each blog holds a group of posts. You can have as many blogs as you want. More on that in step 3, because it trips up almost every beginner.

How to create a blog on Shopify, step by step

I set this up on a test store so the screenshots match what you will see. It took a few minutes.

1. Find the blog

In your Shopify admin, go to Content in the left menu, then Blog posts. Every post you write lives here.

There is nothing to install. It is already switched on.

The Content > Blog posts screen, where every post lives, with Manage blogs and Add blog post at the top right

The two buttons to remember are top right. Add blog post writes a new post. Manage blogs is where your categories live.

2. Write your first post

Click Add blog post. You get a title field, a content box, and an image panel.

• Type the title, for example "Easy Lemonade Scones".
• Write the post in the content box. It handles headings, bold, links, lists, and images, so a recipe with ingredients and steps formats cleanly.
• Add a featured image. This is the photo that shows on the blog and on the post card.
• Fill in the Excerpt. This is the short summary that appears under the title on your blog index.

The Add blog post editor with a title, recipe content, and the featured image panel

That is one recipe done. Everything else on this screen is optional polish.

3. Turn your categories into blogs

This is the step that confuses everyone, so read it slowly.

In Shopify, each category is its own blog. A recipe site with Baking, Salads, and Pastries needs three blogs, one per category.

On the post editor, look at the Blog menu on the right. Open it and choose Create a new blog. Name it after the category, for example Baking. Repeat for each category you need.

The Blog menu on a post open, showing the Create a new blog option

For finer sorting inside a category, use Tags. On a Baking post you might tag "gluten-free" or "30-minute". Tags let visitors filter within a blog, while blogs are the top-level categories. Between blogs and tags you can build the full category and filter structure a recipe site needs.

4. Publish the post and set the SEO listing

A new post starts hidden. To make it live, set Visibility to Visible and click Save.

While you are on this screen, scroll to Search engine listing and fill it in. This is the exact title and description Google shows in results. Writing it yourself, instead of letting Shopify guess, is one of the easiest SEO wins there is.

Visibility set to Visible and the Search engine listing preview filled in

Once it is Visible and saved, the post is live on your storefront at a URL like /blogs/baking/easy-lemonade-scones.

5. Add the blog to your menu

A published post is not much use if no one can find it. Add the blog to your navigation.

Go to Content, then Menus, then open your Main menu. Click Add menu item, name it something like "Recipes", and set the Link to Blogs. Pick the blog you want it to point at, or link a single blog per category.

Adding a menu item and setting its link to a blog so visitors can find it

Save, and your recipes now show in the top navigation, right where visitors expect them.

6. Keep your old URLs when you move over

If you are moving from custom code or another platform, this step protects the traffic you already have.

Go to Content, then Menus, then URL redirects. For each old address on your current site, add a redirect that points it at the matching new Shopify URL.

Do this and visitors who click an old link, and Google's index, land on the right new page instead of a dead end. Your rankings carry over instead of resetting to zero.

Blogs vs tags: how to organize a recipe site

Because the naming is odd, here is the plain-English version.

A blog is a category. Baking is a blog. Salads is a blog. Each one has its own page that lists the posts inside it.

A tag is a label inside a category. "Vegan", "quick", and "kid-friendly" are tags. One post can carry several tags, and visitors use them to narrow a category down.

A post is a single recipe.

So the shape of a recipe site on Shopify is: a handful of blogs for your main categories, tags for the cross-cutting filters, and a post per recipe. That covers almost every content site, not just recipes.

Moving from custom code or WordPress

Two things make the move painless.

Bulk import. You do not have to retype years of posts. You can import your existing posts and images in one batch, so the content moves over intact.

Redirects. Covered in step 6. The reason it matters so much is that a content site's value is its existing Google rankings. Redirects hand that value to the new pages instead of throwing it away.

If your current site is on WordPress, the same two ideas apply. Export the posts, import them into Shopify, then redirect the old permalinks.

Recipe rich results: the stars and cook time in Google

If you run a recipe site, you have seen the Google results with a photo, a star rating, a cook time, and a calorie count. That is recipe rich results, and it comes from structured data on the page.

Shopify's plain blog does not output recipe structured data by default. To get it you have two routes:

• A recipe app that adds a proper recipe card with ingredients, steps, and the schema behind them.
• Theme metafields plus a small block of custom code, if you or a developer want to build it into the theme.

For most recipe sites, an app is the faster path and gives you the printable card and the rich-result markup together.

Shopify blog vs WordPress for a content site

This is the question most people ask next, so here is the honest version.

WordPress is more flexible for pure blogging, with a bigger plugin ecosystem aimed at content. If your entire business is content and you will never sell anything, WordPress is a reasonable pick.

Shopify wins when you might sell later. You get a fast, hosted, secure site with a real blog now, and the option to add products, digital downloads, or ads without moving platforms again. For a recipe creator who might sell an ebook, a meal plan, or merch one day, that matters. Moving platforms twice is the expensive path.

Shopify blog examples

Plenty of brands run their blog on Shopify as a genuine content channel, not an afterthought. Recipe creators, coffee roasters, and skincare brands all use the built-in blog for guides, stories, and how-tos that pull in search traffic and feed their email lists. The blog is a first-class part of the platform, so there is no ceiling on treating it seriously.

What to check if your blog is not showing

If a post does not appear on your storefront, run through these in order.

• Visibility. The post must be set to Visible, not Hidden. A saved but hidden post will not show.
• The right blog. Confirm the post is in the blog you are looking at. A post in "News" will not appear on the "Baking" page.
• The menu link. If visitors cannot find it, the blog is probably not in your navigation yet. See step 5.
• The URL. Blog URLs follow the pattern /blogs/<blog-handle>/<post-handle>. If you linked the wrong handle, the page will not load.

Blog, blog post, and page: the words Shopify uses

Three terms get mixed up, so here they are side by side.

A blog is a category that holds posts, like Baking.

A blog post is one article inside a blog, like a single recipe. It is dated and shows in the blog feed.

A page is a standalone, undated document like About or Contact. It is not part of any blog and does not appear in the feed.

For a recipe site you will use blogs and blog posts for the recipes, and a few pages for About, Contact, and your policies.

That is the whole picture. Shopify absolutely works as a blog or content site, the blog is built in on every plan, and a recipe site with categories and tags fits it naturally.