A key and a secret — articles land in your store’s own blog.
Lightspeed eCom has a real built-in blogging engine, and DraftSEO writes into it directly. You create an API key in your own back office, tick the Content permission, paste the key and secret, and articles arrive as native blog articles with every picture uploaded to your store’s own CDN. Two things decide whether it will work for you: the blogging engine needs an Advanced or Professional plan, and the API key only reaches the blog if you tick the Content permission when you create it.
| Connection | API key + secret — Settings → Store Settings → Developers → New API key |
|---|---|
| Lightspeed plan | Advanced or Professional — the built-in blogging engine is not on lower plans |
| Key permissions | Content, Products and Settings — Products is where Tools → Files lives, so it is what hosts your article images |
| Image hosting | Your store’s own CDN — uploaded before the article is written, never hot-linked |
| Series | C-Series only — E-Series is Ecwid and X-Series is retail POS; neither has this blog |
| Publish modes | Auto · draft · scheduled |
Who does what
Nothing, once the key is in. Articles appear in your store’s blog and your theme renders them. Want eyes on them first? Send them unpublished and publish from your back office.
Uses the blog your store already has.
Setup
Lightspeed’s built-in blogging engine is available on the Advanced and Professional plans. On a lower plan there is no blog for articles to go into, and Lightspeed itself will refuse the write — DraftSEO passes that refusal straight through, naming the plan, rather than showing you a generic error.
~1 minute
In your back office open Settings → Store Settings → Developers and click New API key. Name it DraftSEO and save, then switch it on and tick three things: Content — read and write, which is where Blogs live; Products — read and write, which is where Tools → Files lives and is what lets your shop host the article images; and Settings — read, so DraftSEO can read your shop’s own web address. Save again, then press Show to reveal the secret. A key missing Content cannot publish at all, and a key missing Products publishes the words and loses every picture.
~3 minutes
Connect a site → Lightspeed eCom → paste both. DraftSEO works out which Lightspeed cluster your store is on, finds your blog, and connects.
~1 minute
FAQ
This is Lightspeed eCom C-Series, the web store with the built-in blog. Lightspeed X-Series is the retail point-of-sale product and has no blog API. Lightspeed eCom E-Series is Ecwid, which is a different product again. If you log into your store at a Lightspeed eCom back office and see a Blogs section, you are in the right place.
Almost always the API key’s permissions. Lightspeed keys have a tick box per area, and a key can authenticate while still missing the one it needs — so the connection looks healthy and the work fails. Content is what lets us write the article; Products is where Tools → Files lives, so without it the article publishes and every picture in it is lost. Open the key in Settings → Store Settings → Developers, tick Content and Products (both read and write) plus Settings read, and save. DraftSEO checks all three at connect and names the one that is missing.
Lightspeed keeps one article per language, so an article published in one language is not automatically present in the others. DraftSEO publishes into the language your connection is set to; connect again for another language if you want both filled.
On your store’s own CDN. Each image is uploaded before the article is written, so a published article never loads a picture from our servers.
The same article is updated, so its address never changes, and images already uploaded are reused rather than added a second time.
An article has to be published before the blog appears in your store’s navigation — that is Lightspeed’s own behaviour. Once the first article is live, add the blog to your menu in the back office if it is not there already.
No card required. C-Series. Images on your store’s own CDN.