WebSphere Commerce provides you with several starter stores on which you can base your own business (store or site). Starter stores are meant to shorten the time, compared to previous releases, from installing WebSphere Commerce to going live with your site. Shortening time is achieved by not only providing commands and JSP files but also the appropriate organization layout, approval configuration, and subscription to the appropriate access control policy groups for particular business scenarios. Each starter store contains a composite store archive that contains all the assets to create a functional store. Since each starter store is packaged with WebSphere Commerce as a store archive, no further installation is necessary. In order to create a running store, you must publish one of the composite store archives. By default, WebSphere Commerce Developer Edition is preconfigured with published starter stores.
The image below shows the Consumer direct store published with the Housewares sample catalog. All of the features shown in the diagram are enabled out-of-the-box. After publishing the store, you can change the look and feel of the store, choose to enable additional features, or disable features that are not required in your store. You can also change the text that appears on store pages, or in notification messages. All of these changes can be made by using the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator.
To begin using the starter stores, first select the appropriate business model:
- Consumer direct
- B2B direct
- Demand chain
- Supply chain
- Hosting
After you have chosen the appropriate business model, follow the directions to create a starter store based on that business model. The easy start topics guide you through the process of publishing, and configuring a store. You can then go on to customize the store, or test and deploy it.
Customizing a starter store
The WebSphere Commerce business process model includes a model for each of the starter stores. This model describes the main shopping features of the store. For example, the consumer direct starter store business process model describes how customers order products at the store. You can use the business process model to identify the implementation details (commands, tasks, data beans, and JSP page) for a particular aspect of the shopping flow. The business process model is useful if you want to analyze which features are available out-of-the-box, and to identify customization or extension points.
To add additional features to your starter stores you can use JSP code snippets. A JSP code snippet is a JSP page fragment that demonstrates WebSphere Commerce functionality such as an e-Marketing Spot, Sales catalog, or a promotion.
If you would like to add the following features to your store, publish the FashionFlow starter store and use it as your guide.
- Auctions
Availability to Promise (ATP)
- Availability dates for order items
- Backordering of items not currently in stock
- Splitting of orders based on customer preference
- Tracking order status
Collaboration using Lotus Sametime
- Product Exploration
- Product Comparison
- Guided Sell
The FashionFlow starter store, FashionFlow.sar, and accompanying documentation are in the following directory:
WC_installdir/samples/stores/FashionFlow
WCDE_installdir/samples/stores/FashionFlow