WebSphere Commerce DeveloperFeature Pack 7 or later

Task flow: Enabling Commerce Composer support for a starter store

If your store is based on any store other than the WebSphere Commerce Feature Pack 7 Aurora starter store, you must update your store pages to provide business users the capability to design and manage the store pages with the Commerce Composer tool.

The Commerce Composer tool gives business users the freedom to quickly create and assemble the contents of your store pages without involving IT. By using a library of prebuilt layout templates and widgets, business users can manage store page layouts directly in Management Center. The Commerce Composer tool offers a streamlined workflow that improves your productivity and reduces time-to-market for your campaigns.

For more information about the Commerce Composer tool, see Commerce Composer overview.

Note: You can use the following instructions as a guide for updating store pages for any starter store other than the Aurora starter store that is provided with WebSphere Commerce Feature Pack 7 and higher. By default, the Aurora starter store that is provided with WebSphere Commerce Feature Pack 7 and higher is enabled to use the Commerce Composer tool.

For a guide that demonstrates how to enable Commerce Composer support for a store that is based on the Madisons starter store, see Enabling Commerce Composer support for a Madisons starter store

Before you begin

Ensure that you complete the following tasks:
  • Verify that you have a working WebSphere Commerce store that is not based on the Feature Pack 7 Aurora starter store. If you do not have a published store, publish the Feature Pack 7 Aurora starter store archive. When you publish this archive, do not complete the steps to enable Commerce Composer support for your store. The Feature Pack 7 Aurora starter store is enabled by default to support using the Commerce Composer tool.
  • Install WebSphere Commerce Developer Version 7. As an example, the following steps illustrate how to enable Commerce Composer support for a starter store within a development environment. You can use these steps as a guide to enable support within your production environment.
  • Install WebSphere Commerce Feature Pack 7
  • (Optional, but recommended.) Enable WebSphere Commerce search. WebSphere Commerce search must be enabled for your WebSphere Commerce store before your store can use certain Commerce Composer widgets or extend layout assignments for search results pages when customers use catalog entry synonyms as search terms.
    • Many widgets use WebSphere Commerce search APIs to retrieve catalog information. If WebSphere Commerce search is not enabled, these widgets do not work.
    • The Commerce Composer framework uses WebSphere Commerce search to check search term associations for synonyms of a customer search term. If the synonyms are included in the search term associations for a catalog entry, the Commerce Composer framework can use the layout assignment for that catalog entry. If WebSphere Commerce search is not enabled, the Commerce Composer tool cannot check the search term associations. For more information about using synonyms with layout assignments, see Layout assignments for search terms.

    As part of enabling WebSphere Commerce search, ensure that you build the search index for your store. For more information, see Building the WebSphere Commerce search index.

  • (Optional, but recommended.) Enable SEO for your store. Your store must use SEO-friendly URLs in your storefront to use Commerce Composer for creating content pages. You do not need SEO enabled if you are creating only catalog browsing pages.
  • Update your store to Dojo 1.8. To support the use of Commerce Composer widgets and templates on your store pages, your store must use Dojo 1.8. If your store is not updated to use Dojo 1.8, update the Stores\WebContent\store\include\JSTLEnvironmentSetup.jspf file for your store, where store is the name of your store directory. Change the value of the dojoFile attribute in the file to point to dojo18 instead of an earlier version.
    Note: If your store includes custom code that uses Dojo, you might need to update the existing custom code to support the update to Dojo 1.8.
  • Download and extract the following compressed file into a temporary directory, CommerceComposerStarterStoreSupport.zip.

About this task

By enabling your store to use the Commerce Composer tool to design and manage your store pages, you can gain the following benefits:
  • Business users can use Commerce Composer templates and widgets to design and configure store pages without the need for IT assistance.
  • Cleaner organization of code.
  • Separation of data and presentation.
  • Ease of reuse of code. For example, a Header widget and Footer widget can be easily used in the layout for all store pages.

With support for designing and managing pages with the Commerce Composer tool added, business users can use the widgets and templates that are provided with WebSphere Commerce to design your store pages. Your store developers can also create custom assets for use with the Commerce Composer tool. For more information about developing custom assets for use with the Commerce Composer tool, see Developing Commerce Composer assets.

As an example for updating starter store pages to support the use of the Commerce Composer tool to design and manage the pages, the following instructions modify one catalog page and three static content pages. Specifically, these instructions are updating a Madisons starter store Product Details page, Home page, Help page, and Site Map page. To update the Search Results page and category pages for your store, use the steps for updating the Product Details page as a guide. The steps for updating the category and Search Results catalog pages are similar to the steps you complete for updating the Product Details page for your store. The specific code that you must use to update the Search Results page and category pages can be different than the code for updating the Product Details page.

Procedure