Your first shop
This manual is written for developers. Setting up a shop is explained inside Alfa Commerce itself, on the live screens, so this page only says where to start.
Follow the setup checklist
Open Components, Alfa Commerce. The Dashboard shows a setup checklist. Each row is one thing a shop needs, checked against the shop as it is now, and each row opens the screen where it is done or starts a guided tour of it.
The checklist has 17 rows in three groups, and says how many are done:
| Group | Rows |
|---|---|
| Required | Store name and contact e-mail, default currency, at least one active tax, storefront menu items, at least one published category, at least one published item |
| Recommended | Checkout form fields, an active payment method, an active shipping method, customer pages, storefront pages linked across languages, document numbering series, Joomla mail configured, media folder writable |
| Optional | Item fields, search-engine-friendly addresses, HTTPS |
Planned for 2.2.1, which is not released: the checklist has 20 rows. Three join the Recommended group:
- Required form fields can be filled in. It fails while a form field that is required in a form is served by no enabled plugin of Public access, and names each such field.
- PDF library for sales documents. It says that the dompdf library ships with Alfa Commerce and is installed with it, together with the libraries it needs. It fails only when one of them has been removed, says that installing the Alfa Commerce package again restores it, and opens Joomla's extension installer.
- Joomla page cache. It passes while "System - Page Cache" is off, warns while it runs beside "System - Alfa Commerce Sync", and also warns while that plugin is disabled, missing, or not run for visitors who are not logged in, saying what Alfa still keeps out of the page cache and what is lost. See Caches.
The shop cannot take orders until every required row is done.
Two rows have a Create for me button. On "Storefront menu items" it creates the Shop and Cart pages. On "Customer pages" it creates the account page and the sign-up page. In both you choose the menu they go in: a new menu named Alfa Commerce, made for you, or an existing one.
The first time you open the Dashboard, a short welcome tour starts by itself. You can close it and start it again later from the tour menu.
Take the guided tours
Alfa Commerce installs 33 guided tours. A tour walks through one screen step by step, on the screen itself: categories, items, payments, shipping, currencies, taxes, discounts, cart rules, order statuses, stock and the others. Start one from the tour menu in the administrator's header, or from a row of the checklist.
The tours are kept up to date with each release and are translated by the language packs.
One idea a developer needs
A payment method or shipping method is a record that a shopper picks at checkout. Each method belongs to one plugin, which does the work, and carries that plugin's settings. The plugin is the code; the method is one configured use of it. See Method in the glossary.