Can a blog app improve my Simple Theme's blog format?

[lovethehike]

I am currently using the Simple Theme and it has a very basic blog format.  You can't do very much with it from what I can gather.  I want to be able to add a slide show and at least be able to place two images side by side which I cannot do with this theme.  My question is, Can I just add a blog app to help with formatting and jazzing up my blog page, or do I have to install a whole new theme with a better blog.  I get scared changing themes.  It usually means a lot of things break and you spend hours fixing up stuff. I really don't want to spend my time doing that.  Suggestions really appreciated.

[Choong_HueApps]

Hey, yes you can of course install Shopify apps to jazz up your blog page. Below are some for your consideration:

* I have personally experienced using 2 of them + I am the owner of the other one.

1) Blog Posts Articles Filter PRO

Add dropdowns filter to your blog for better discoverability. Demo here.

Disclaimer: I am the owner of this app, happy to answer further question & provide support.

2) Recipe Kit

If you are using your blog to host a collection of articles, I can't recommend Recipe Kit enough. It helps you format your blog post into an easy to read recipe format + improve how your recipe content would show up on Google Search Result page. View demo here.

3) Pagefly Landing Page Builder

Pagefly isn't a blog specific app but its flexibility to let you create custom layout for your page is very valuable for your blog. Use cases would be if you have multiple blogs and need a main landing page to show all your blogs in a page.

I am sure there are other great apps in App Store, but these are what I have personally experienced. Hope it helps!

Edit: Also to answer your concern on switching theme, it's definitely quite a bit of hassle if you have done a lot of customization on your current theme. If there is relatively minor customization done, changing theme could be less hassle, but as far as my experience goes, I have not seen theme with compatible features offered by the 3 apps above.

[lovethehike]

I appreciate the suggestions however, I feel this is not what I am looking for.  Thank you.

[PaulNewton]

You could always use any other system you want has HTML export  that allows more flexible designs or has the layouts you want and THEN just put the HTML into your blogs rich text editor html.

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@lovethehike wrote:

 I get scared changing themes.  It usually means a lot of things break and you spend hours fixing up stuff. I really don't want to spend my time doing that.  

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This is a business red flag: If you don't want to spend time doing X then how is it worthwhile to the business?

Are you wanting this for personal aesthetics to wear the designer hat, or try and emulate others designs.

Have customers asked for this, Do you have a brand bible or similar that requires this, Does all of your traffic come through your blog, How much revenue does that generate?

etc etc; What is the data backed reason this is needed as a business decision?

Consider just hiring someone to create premade layouts , or using the available pagebuilder apps that integrate with shopify, or embedding shopify into a full blogging platform like wordpress with buy-buttons. https://www.shopify.com/buy-button 

Otherwise you need to choose to invest that time and possibly learn to code shopify themes.

But if it's not worth investing in you probably don't need it.

P.S. there is supposed to be a new CMS paradigm in the works for shopify but it's not clear when it will release or how themes will support it.

[PageFly-Victor]

Thank you for mentioning us @Choong_HueApps! 

Hi @lovethehike,

It's PageFly- Advanced Page Builder here, welcome to Shopify Community! 

Regarding your concern, you could totally create your Blog post page in PageFly editor and easily enliven your blogs by adding other elements you want. For more details, I'd like to send you our manual about how to create blog page with PageFly and hope it will be helpful to you. 

If you need assistance, please feel free to contact our Live Chat Support, we will be more than happy to support you. 

Best of luck!