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| 10 / 10 / 2003 - The Childrens Society e-shop goes live |
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| 01 / 09 / 2003 - shopServer new office | |||||||||||||
| 16 / 06 / 2003 - New shopServer site launches ! | Read Full Story... | ||||||||||||
Architecture
The shopServer architecture has 3 major components:
Front-end
The front-end, or the Internet shop, is the software used by the people that use your shop. shopServer supports small as well as very large shops, B2B or B2C, online or offline shops. Very large International companies like Somerfield or EasyJet use shopServer for their B2B solutions, but small companies like The Children’s Society (TCS), Trip-Trap or Zap-in have also build their shopping solutions using shopServer. There is one front-end for each Internet shop.
Back-end
The back-end is the place where all the data for your shop is stored, and where you can control how your shop is configured. The back-end has a sophisticated import/export mechanism, and a lot of other features found in many e-commerce shops. There is only a single back-end, which is used by all Internet shops, which is the reason why shopServer solutions can be build rapidly: A lot of standard functionality is already available in the back-end, which you can utilize from your unique front-end. How much extra functionality you add to the front-end is up to you, small solutions consist mostly of standard functionality, large solutions have a lot of special functionality in the front-end.
Administration Program
The administration program is the administrator’s interface for controlling the back-end (and front-end). All functionality of the back-end can be controlled using this program. If your shop does not have integration to an ERP system, you can use the administration program to handle products, users, orders, prices etc. If you use the integration features, you may only use the administration program for the initial setup of your shop, after which the daily maintenance of your shop is controlled from your ERP system. If you use the built-in CMS features you can control all text of your front-end, and thus e.g. change the welcome message yourself. This is a built-in feature that has no additional cost.
In Storefront solutions you have no access to the front-end files, and can thus not edit these directly. You can therefore not add any extra functionality to Storefront solutions, but only control existing functionality using the administration program.
In enterprise solutions you have full control of the front-end, and can change it in any way you like. You can use shopServer technology, you can use any third-party components you like, you may integrate third-party web services or do whatever you need in order to implement your online shop, you have total freedom to implement the design and functionality you need.
