Site Builder Wizard. The Site Builder Wizard lets you decide how you want to create your e-commerce Web site, as Screen 3 shows. You can select Create a copy of a site to create a new store using one of the starter sample stores that come with SSCE. Alternatively, you can select Create a custom site and answer the wizard’s questions to create an entirely new site.
Let’s examine creating a custom site. Although the wizard takes care of the back-end work, you must still answer some detailed questions about how you want to configure your store. You begin this process by providing some information on the Merchant Information page. The wizard provides the display name that you entered using the Site Foundation Wizard. You need to fill in contact information, including your address and telephone number. Next, identify your locale so that the software can calculate taxes and properly display time and currency values. Use the Site Style page to set the display properties, including colors, buttons, and fonts, for your store. The selections on this page are limited, but you can change the style later using a Web editor.
After you finish making changes to the Site Style page, you can move to the Promotions page, which lets you set up price and cross-sell promotions for your store. Take a look at the Volcano Coffee sample store that comes with SSCE to see examples of each type of promotion. You can skip this step if you want and run the Promotions Wizard later from the Site Manager page.
Next, use the Features page to decide whether visitors to your store must register to enter. You can set up your site so visitors must register upon entry, register upon ordering, or don’t have to register at all, as Screen 4 shows. You also need to choose a department type (either single- or multilevel) and decide whether to enable product searching.
The next step involves the Product Attribute Type page to determine the structure of your data. You must decide whether you want to support dynamic attributes (i.e., products that can have various multivalued attributes) or whether you want to use static attributes. If you decide to use static attributes, you need to select or add attributes that apply to your product.
Next, select the shipping and handling options you want your store to provide. (I’ll describe how you can customize these options later in the article when we discuss the Pipeline Editor.) Fill in the TAX: <country> page (e.g., TAX: USA) for your business locations, and select Payment Methods. You can choose to accept several major credit cards as payment for products on your site from this page. If you’re implementing a corporate procurement site, you’ll probably want to further customize this component with the ability to process purchase orders, requisition forms, private credit cards, and so forth.
The wizard’s next step involves deciding whether you want to keep an Order History for your customers and selecting which steps you want the Site Builder Wizard to perform for you from the Output Options page, as Screen 5 shows. Based on answers you’ve provided during this process thus far, the wizard creates the database tables for your site and can even load sample data.
At this point, the wizard begins performing its tasks in the background and finishes by displaying a page with links to your new site and to the Site Manager page for your new site. You can now browse your site, see sample data, and view the store’s structure. You can also access the Site Manager page, as Screen 6 shows, that you use to customize your site.
Pipeline Editor. At this point, you have two major sets of components, the Order Processing Pipeline (OPP) and the Commerce Interchange Pipeline (CIP), for your site. The OPP is at the core of your e-commerce Web site and consists of a collection of component object model (COM)-based components preconfigured to handle most common e-commerce tasks. This architecture lets you add and remove components as your business needs dictate and customize existing components. For example, earlier you selected which credit cards you wanted to accept as payment at your store. You can now add components to handle purchase orders or additional credit card types. The CIP is a second implementation of this pipeline architecture that lets you tie in to your business partners’ online systems. You can use the CIP to package and transport business data across LANs, WANs, EDI, the Internet, and other types of networks.
To customize a component within the OPP architecture and add an additional payment method to your site, you can either create a new component or install a component from a third-party vendor, such as CyberCash (http://www.cybercash.com) or VeriFone (http://www.verifone.com). You use the SSCE Pipeline Editor, which comes in Web- and Win32-based versions, to work with components. You must use the Win32-based version to create new pipelines, and you can use the Web-based version for remote administration; you can add components and manage pipelines using either version.
To add a new component in the Payment stage of the OPP, you can install the component to the Drive:\microsoft site server\siteserver\admin\commerce\pipeline configuration directory and either right-click the Payment stage in the Win32-based Pipeline Editor and select Insert Component, as Screen 7 shows, or click the Insert component link on the Stage2: Payment section from the Web-based Pipeline Editor, as Screen 8 shows. Finally, select your new component from the list of available components to install.
Note that the icon next to each component in Screens 7 and 8 shows that this particular component is part of a transacted pipeline (i.e., one built to use MTS capabilities). This functionality lets you roll back a transaction to a consistent state if one stage of the transaction fails.
Sunil Kapoor January 26, 2000