Customize the store

After you review the WebSphere Commerce store architecture and create your custom store, we can use the programming environment to customize the store.

Storefront customization lifecycle

The storefront customization lifecycle includes tasks that you perform to customize your storefront within your programming environment.

For example, identifying storefront design requirements, planning a customization, determining which JavaServer Page files (JSP files), Spring controllers, Spring views, and REST configurations to customize, packaging the customizations, tracking the changes, transferring the package to a drop server, and testing the customization in the quality assurance environment.

Before beginning

• Before you customize the storefront, it is important to understand how the store presentation layer works within the WebSphere Commerce service. To learn more about the Store server, see Store architecture.

• Before we can begin planning customization of the storefront, we must have your Store server programming environment set up and the store assets on the Store server. See, Set up a WebSphere Commerce Developer environment.

• If you plan for our customization to extend beyond the Store server, we must set up the Customization server and Search server.

Customization lifecycle

1. Identify the business problem that you need to resolve or requirement that you need to meet.

2. Plan our customization. Determine where you need to complete the customization:

   • The customization must be developed on the Store server.

   • The customization must be developed on the Store server and the Search server.

   • The customization must be developed on the Store server and the Customization server.

   • The customization must be developed on the Store server, the Search server, and the Customization server.

3. Create our customization by following the customization guidelines. See
   Customizing the store.For example:

   • To create or change a store page:

     • Create or modify the JSP file. See, Customizing storefront pages.

     • If required, modify the store Spring model-view-controller (MVC) configuration used to return the newly created or modified JSP file. See, Customizing the store Spring MVC configuration.

       • Create or modify the Spring view that returns the JSP file. We can use the device ID to return device-specific pages.

       • Create or modify the Spring view controller that returns the Spring view.

   • To create or change a store page flow:

     • Create or modify the JSP files used for the flow. See, Customizing storefront pages.

     • If required, modify the store Spring model-view-controller (MVC) configuration used to return the newly created or modified JSP files. Customizing the store Spring MVC configuration.

       • Create or modify the Spring views that return the JSP files.

         Note: To create pages that fork or branch the user experience based on the type of device used, we must duplicate the Spring view for the page where the user experience is forked. Modify the duplicate view to filter by device ID, and return a device-specific JSP page. We can then continue a device-specific flow by using links to pages that are only accessible from the returned device-specific page.

       • Create or modify the Spring view controller that returns the Spring view.

   • To extend the functionality of the Store server, enabling it to send and receive custom parameters from the Customization server and the Search server:

     • Create or modify the JSP file. See, Customizing storefront pages.

     • Modify the store Spring model-view-controller (MVC) configuration that is used to return the newly created or modified JSP file. For information about customizing the Spring MVC see, Customizing the store Spring MVC configuration.

       • Create or modify the Spring view that returns the JSP file.

       • Create or modify the Spring view controller that returns the Spring view.

     • Extend or modify the REST templates that communicate with the Customization server and the Search server. For information about customizing the REST templates see, Adding or modifying REST templates.

4. Build and deploy our customization assets. See Packaging customized code for deployment.

• Customizing store configuration
  Customize the storefront assets or store functionality by changing the Store server configuration, or by modifying or extending the store JavaServer Pages (JSP files) or Spring-based model-view-controller (MVC).

• Customizing store pages
  Customize the store's pages by completing the following tasks.

• Email messages
  By default, for sending emails to shoppers, the email transport method is active and configured to use the SMTP protocol through an IBM provided SMTP server. Alternatively, we can integrate with for more flexibility such as choosing our own top-level domain or composing outbound emails through a user interface.

• Aurora as a B2B starter store
  We can publish the Aurora starter store as a B2B store and take advantage of features that are offered by the Aurora starter store plus extra B2B capabilities. Get your B2B e-commerce site up and running faster at a lower cost using the Aurora starter store as your starting point. With B2B-optimized features built right into the storefront, we can minimize the amount of customization required to provide an optimal shopping experience to your business customers.

• jQuery Aurora starter store
  The Aurora starter store in WebSphere Commerce is completely written in jQuery, which is one of the most commonly used JavaScript libraries used in dynamic websites. The jQuery AJAX and events API provides an easy to use framework that meets most AJAX requirements for storefront development.