Unusual use of AbleCommerce?

[cbad]

Kind of a pre-sales question but hopefully some of you may be able to advise me wisely...

We have a web site that needs e-commerce capabilities, and so far AbleCommerce looks like the perfect fit. The thing we don't really want is storefront software. We want to take advantage of the cart itself, the checkout, order histories, shipping and payment gateways, etc., and have all this peacefully co-exist with the rest of our site.

In a nut shell, we'd like to have links from our existing pages that add products to a cart. Ideally, we could plug the shopping cart right into one of our existing pages. Same for the checkout process, customer account management, and other things like that. Some of this might even be handled using AJAX to help it fit with our UI.

Is AbleCommerce flexible enough to handle a scenario like this, or is it really intended to be the entire store portion of the web site?

Thanks, it looks like an awesome system!

[AbleMods]

We have a web site that needs e-commerce capabilities, and so far AbleCommerce looks like the perfect fit. The thing we don't really want is storefront software. We want to take advantage of the cart itself, the checkout, order histories, shipping and payment gateways, etc., and have all this peacefully co-exist with the rest of our site.

For the most part yes, it can co-exist with an existing site. Understand though that AC7 is a storefront product first with an underlying commerce engine. What you're wanting will require extensive reworking to peel away the AC7 frontends and replace them with your own.

You can completely replace the presentation side with your own HTML, ASPX and code-behind functionality. Is it alot of work? Of course - but that's the choice you've made and you're probably well aware of it.

What you gain is enormous - the underlying CommerceBuilder API is remarkably well designed and thought out. Since everything is written in .Net, you'll have the flexibility you need to design whatever you want and still leverage all the core API functionality. I'd suggest buying the source code as well so you can quickly see how Able accomplishes specific tasks.

The (only) bad news is AC7 does use HTTP handlers. That means you won't be able to control specific product page URLs. Probably won't be an issue for you but thought I'd mention it nonetheless. Might actually work to your advantage depending on your catalog size.

You'll have a lot of work ahead of you, but you'll also have a lot of work already done for you in the form of a complete eCommerce API on the backend.

[cbad]

For the most part yes...

Thanks for a very informative response! It does conjure up a couple of questions...

1. Is there a fairly clean line between the presentation stuff and the commerce API? Is there any documentation on the API?

2. After we go through this, what will happen with upgrades? Wouldn't want to paint ourselves into a corner since the lifecycle of the commerce engine is important.

3. Have you ever done it or know anyone who has? I'm wondering how big a job it is, weeks, months? I'm just talking about exposing and separating the API, not so much incorporating it into our site.

Thanks again!

[AbleMods]

1. Is there a fairly clean line between the presentation stuff and the commerce API? Is there any documentation on the API?

Pretty vague question - all depends on your developer skills. My clean line could easily be someone elses stick-in-the-mud. Mostly Yes. It will take you some time to study and learn the API but that is expected regardless of the system you purchase. Documentation is widely available and a Wiki with source code examples of many AC7 functions.

2. After we go through this, what will happen with upgrades? Wouldn't want to paint ourselves into a corner since the lifecycle of the commerce engine is important.

Yes and no - depends on what you modify. If you buy full source code and modify the CommerceBuilder API directly, you're in an upgrade corner I wouldn't recommend. If you leave the API alone then you're risk of upgrade issues will be minimal. Able rarely changes the core API however it does happen. Again though, you run this risk regardless of the system involved given your intent to modify the store.

3. Have you ever done it or know anyone who has? I'm wondering how big a job it is, weeks, months? I'm just talking about exposing and separating the API, not so much incorporating it into our site.

Only you can decide the magnitude of effort involved. All depends on the quality of the people involved and the extent of the modifications you want. Exposing the API is simple - it's automatically available using Visual Studio 2005/2008. Separating it from the existing AC7 frontend(s) is where your primary workload will be significant. There are a lot of aspects to an online store and each will require some sort of visitor-side interface to them. I'm not familiar with anyone who has stripped out all of AC7 and used only the core API functionality. A separate post to that specific topic might catch someones eye though - worth a shot at least

It might be simpler in the long run to flip the coin and look at it from the other side. Incorporate your content and non-storefront functionality into the AC7 storefront. In the end, it's all still .Net code and HTML.

[awhc]

I have almost completely stripped out a lot of functionality that our company doesn't need and wants to hide from our users. I'm using the software in a non-traditional way for an intranet application for our service reps. I've painted myself into a corner of too many customizations that I really can't patch or upgrade now without a huge amount of effort. I'm a one man shop and I'm not the most savvy of developers either. It has been difficult for me because I can't get support other than thru the forums and I gave up on that because my posts hardly got answered, which left me on my own. If I were to do it all over again, I would have gone a different route. Don't get me wrong, the cart has potential. It may have been just a little too much for me to undertake when I couldn't get help.
Good luck.

[sohaib]

... It has been difficult for me because I can't get support other than thru the forums and I gave up on that because my posts hardly got answered ....

This is a bit of surprise to me because I believe our forum is one of the best when it comes to technical help. I am not sure which one of your posts did not get answered. I see that there are a total of 9 messages from you. Only 3 threads were initiated by you out of which one has remained unanswered.
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=9038
That was back in Sep 2008.

[cbad]

I believe our forum is one of the best when it comes to technical help...

That's good to hear. And since you're with Able, care to comment on the OP?

Thanks!

[kastnerd]

I understand what you are asking, But personally If im on a site that looks nice, and a click to add to cart and the page changes looks.
You can edit the header of Able to be what ever you want, And you can make the "home page" with your current home page content, This way the page looks the same all the time.

With able its quite simple to turn off things you don't wanna see on select pages.

[mazhar]

I second the kastnerd idea. First of all thoroughly make all your requirements clear and then find out do all these changes needs to write a separate UI or just disabling some AbleCommerce features and some re skinning work can fix it. AbleCommerce is very flexible and you can accommodate any sort of designs and layouts in it. If this works out then future upgrades will be an easy job.

[cbad]

First of all thoroughly make all your requirements clear and then find out do all these changes needs to write a separate UI or just disabling some AbleCommerce features and some re skinning work can fix it. AbleCommerce is very flexible and you can accommodate any sort of designs and layouts in it.

You might be right. Our requirements are clear, and a storefront/catalog is not what we think we need. Maybe, however, we can use Able to accomplish what we're looking to do.

Can you remove all the Able navigation? Can we add custom (and often dynamic) content to a product page? Can we add static pages to the site? Can we extend the customer account database to include additional information? Can we easily integrate other 3rd party modules to our site (i.e. ticketing systems, forums, social networking stuff)? If all this is straight forward with Able, perhaps we should rethink our strategy.

Thanks for the input!

[jmestep]

Can you remove all the Able navigation? Can we add custom (and often dynamic) content to a product page? Can we add static pages to the site? Can we extend the customer account database to include additional information? Can we easily integrate other 3rd party modules to our site (i.e. ticketing systems, forums, social networking stuff)? If all this is straight forward with Able, perhaps we should rethink our strategy.

All of this is possible and has been done.

[kastnerd]

First of all thoroughly make all your requirements clear and then find out do all these changes needs to write a separate UI or just disabling some AbleCommerce features and some re skinning work can fix it. AbleCommerce is very flexible and you can accommodate any sort of designs and layouts in it.

You might be right. Our requirements are clear, and a storefront/catalog is not what we think we need. Maybe, however, we can use Able to accomplish what we're looking to do.

Can you remove all the Able navigation? Can we add custom (and often dynamic) content to a product page? Can we add static pages to the site? Can we extend the customer account database to include additional information? Can we easily integrate other 3rd party modules to our site (i.e. ticketing systems, forums, social networking stuff)? If all this is straight forward with Able, perhaps we should rethink our strategy.

Thanks for the input!

I found it easy to make dynamic or static pages. I have no tried to integrate my PHPbb forum user names tho.

[mazhar]

Can you remove all the Able navigation?

Yes you can. For example in order to remove the main navigation in header just edit the header scriptlet and remove the following part

Code: Select all

<tr>
		<td class="navigation" colspan="2">
			<div class="content" style="float:left;">
				<a href="~/Default.aspx" class="tab">Home</a>
				<a href="~/Search.aspx" class="tab">Product Finder</a>	
				<a href="~/AdvancedSearch.aspx" class="tab">Advanced Search</a>	
				#if ($store.Currencies.Count > 1 ) 
					<a href="~/Currencies.aspx" class="tab">Currencies</a>
				#end
				<a href="~/ContactUs.aspx" class="tab">Contact Us</a>
			</div>
		</td>
	</tr>

Can we add custom (and often dynamic) content to a product page?

Yes you can. For static content that you want to show with each product you can place them in product details scriptlet (Show Product 1). The product specific static information can be placed in the description and extended description fields of product. For dynamic information you can create a custom conlib control that can render the custom information. You canl find a lot of stuff for creating conlib controls in the forums.

Can we add static pages

Yes you can. You can add an ASPX page in site then can create static content scriptlet for that page. For example read the following post
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=9473
There is another way to have some static information. You can create a Web Page in AbleCommerce catalog and provide its contents. web page are the (content object) to the store, to display static content, such as contact information, privacy or return policies, etc.

Can we extend the customer account database to include additional information?

You can put custom information in user settings. Please read the following post about user settings. All you need is to call User.Settings.SetValueByKey(key,value) and User.Settings.GetValueByKey(key) for set/get the custom values
viewtopic.php?f=47&t=7228&hilit=logan

Can we easily integrate other 3rd party modules to our site (i.e. ticketing systems, forums, social networking stuff)?

yes this is possible. Many users are using these things. For example Joe has a blog running along with his Able storefront at
http://www.ablemods.com/Blog/Default.aspx

[cbad]

My eyes are wide open, thanks for all the input. Able sounds like it might be a great fit, and the community is obviously willing to be very helpful.

Thanks for all your great responses!