I am about to launch a web site that sells bbq grills and also has lots of content/community related to food preparation and recipes. My number one objective is eCommerce but I plan to use content to develop a community around my product. I am researching ecommerce and blog software packages. It is apparent that commerce and community is not offered from a single software vendor. I really like ASPDOTNETSTOREFRONT for eCommerce and WordPress or ExpressionEngine for blogging/community functionality. I am worried how my site will index by search engines if I use two different software packages for commerce and community. I also want the user experience to feel like the site is built on a single platform. With that in mind, can someone help me with the following questions: 1) Will I have problems with SEO if I use an ecommerce package with a different blog/community package? I want search engines to see all the pages on my site. I would like to stay away from a completely custom site so I can easily add additional future functionality. 2) Site Map – Would it be possible to develop a site map that combines both software packages into a map? I assume this is important if I want all the content on my site indexed by web spiders. 3) Will I have issues running ASPDOTNETSTOREFRONT and WordPress/ExpressionEngine on the same box since they use different technologies? i.e. ASP & PHP Will this negatively impact site indexing? Thanks in advance for your help!
1) No. Search engines view content, not the architecture that allows content to be viewed. 2) Anything is possible. But site maps aren't as important as you think. I've never used them except for when using WordPress. I wouldn't waste the time. 3) Same as the first answer. I assume you have a Windows server, then?