OFBiz User Community,
We are pleased to announce a new release of demo sites, with many
enhancements and features, to our site at http://bigfish.salmonllc.com.
As always, the best way to see what it's all about is to visit the site,
click on "demo" and play around with both an eCommerce implementation
and the Admin Module.
Significant feature enhancements since the last release are as follows:
** Many, many small enhancements and fixes, in both the eCommerce and
Admin Modules
** Check-Out: enhanced features to control single-page-checkout;
guest-checkout; multi-step-checkout; credit-card-required; store credit
card for future use etc. All configurable of course via the Admin Module
-> Admin -> System Parameters.
** Product Detail Page: ability configure a "recently viewed" component.
This will display a history of previously viewed products in the
product-detail page.
** Product Loader and Feeds functionality: we have defined many incoming
and outgoing BigFish feeds that our clients can use for daily
interaction with BigFish from their existing ERP solution. The primary
feed is a BigFish Product Loader -- clients can use either an XLS or XML
format file that is used to initially load and subsequently update the
entire product catalog. We are finishing up writing some scheduled
services so that this process can be more automated. Outgoing feeds
include Customers (registered users); Orders; Catalog Requests; and
Contact-Us events. Incoming upload feeds include Product Catalog and
Order Status changes.
** Real "variant" intelligence: SEO-Friendly-URLs are now generated to
the variant level. So, for example,
www.retailsite/apparel/special-blouse can now have several variant
extensions such as www.retailsite/apparel/special-blouse-red etc. This
is useful for both SEO purposes and email campaigns (since the exact
variant link can be put in the email, customer clicks on it, and the
proper color variant is displayed initially)
** Product Listing Page: we've expanded the sort options to include
"Most Viewed" and "Best Sellers". Available options offered are
maintained as a system parameter.
** Expanded Content Spots: in the Admin Module -> Content section we've
added many new content spots. These can be used to provide lifestyle
content on all the category listing pages, special recurring content on
the product-detail-page (such as standard social media links) etc.
** New Admin Screens: Maintain the backend OFBiz Shipping Charges and
Scheduled Jobs via the BigFish Admin Module.
** Admin Module Skins: we created a GunMetal-Grey css skin for the Admin
Module. Ability to create and upload your own skins is now available in
the Admin -> Tools section.
** Multi-Site: we've made some progress in being able to support
multiple Product Stores. The initial challenge was to allow for product
catalog and all associated content to be segregated by Product Store.
This is now complete. Next steps is to move forward and create the
actual catalog and content in order to demonstrate this.
** DIV-Sequencing: we've spent a ton of time on a concept we're calling
"DIV Sequencing". Basically each component on a page, say the Product
Detail Page, maps to a DIV/Class in the CSS. Some clients may want image
+ product-name + color-selector + add-to-cart-button + full-descriptions
+ ratings-and-reviews. Another client may want product-name + image +
full-descriptions + color-selector + add-to-cart-button. The
DIV-Sequencing feature allows retail clients to pick and choose which
elements should be displayed in a particularly page and the actual
sequence they should be rendered in the mark-up. This significantly
simplifies the styling changes required in the CSS to get the final
look-and-feel since the basic layout is setup by the DIV-sequencing.
This has applied to all of the key pages. The Div-Sequences are
maintained in the Admin->Tools section of the Admin Module.
** Docs: we've loaded up our specifications, useful for getting some
insight into our process and approach
** NEW CLIENTS: We are anticipating announcements for a couple of our
new clients being launched on the BigFish platform. Getting production
ready has proven to be quite tricky given the normal integration efforts
that are involved in going live with an eCommerce site. See the
Product-Loader and Feeds section above!
Comments, questions always welcome!
Best Regards,
Nick Rosser
[email protected]
O: 516.742.7888 x221
C: 516.901.1720
On 5/3/2012 1:28 PM, Nick Rosser wrote:
OFBiz user community:
A quick update for the BigFish eCommerce project. For more details
please visit http://bigfish.salmonllc.com. The best way to view what
this is all about is to click on the "Demo" link and play around. The
Fashion House and Electronic Store demos show the majority of
features that are available.
Significant feature enhancements since the last release are as follows:
** Many small enhancements and fixes, in both the eCommerce and Admin
modules
** Rotating Carousel: Fashion House and Electronic Store both have
implementation examples. Content maintained in Admin Module (Content
/ Home page spots).
** QuickLook on Product Listing Page (PLP): prototype available,
still needs some tweaks to control the transition
** Product "Variant" enhancements. Check out the Fashion House demo
at http://bigfish.salmonllc.com:8082/online/control/main. Click on
Apparel / Blouses. Play with the "swatches", works very well in
Product Detail Page. Also integrated into the SOLR facets. On the
Fashion House demo execute a site search for "pink" -- you'll see the
pink variant image of the "3/4 sleeve button down". Search for
"white" and you'll see the white version. Works nicely.
** Mega Menu. Both Fashion House and Electronic Store demos have
examples of overriding the standard navigation drop-down with a more
expansive "mega menu". Content managed in Admin Module (Content /
Product Category Content).
** Under the covers (CSS): we've spent a lot of time consolidating
and cleaning up the CSS, for both eCommerce and Admin. For adopters
this should greatly simplify styling for your desired look-and-feel.
Tools in the Admin Module (Admin / Tools) to store new style sheets
and switch CSS files. Currently working on alternate styles for the
Admin Module (for some reason folks don't seem to like our classic
"in your face orange" styling!).
** Admin Module, enhancements to support all additional features,
enhanced Order Status changes (on the Orders tab).
ROAD MAP ...
For a complete list of features, what's coming soon, and our road map
go to http://bigfish.salmonllc.com/bfFeatures.html.
There was some previous interest in the multi-site capability of
BigFish. We've made some baseline changes to control the separation
of Product catalog, and the Admin Module understands this separation.
We have a clear idea as to how to separate out the other content
(home page, static pages etc.) and will be implementing this shortly.
NEW CLIENTS ...
The community may be interested to know that we're working on two
client implementations, both decent mid-sized companies. Our general
sales prospecting efforts are beginning to pick up some momentum and
we typically have 2 client demos each week ... obviously hoping that
we will be converting some of these into real clients over the coming
weeks and months. We've also found that the BigFish solution stacks
up quite well when comparing to Magento and other pay-for
competitors. We don't have any particular "white papers" or similar
documentation but obviously the price point is a very attractive
feature. In terms of integration we are leveraging our custom
software history as a way to ensure prospects of our capability and
our ability to implement a robust, stable, expandable and flexible
solution. The rich functionality of the OFBiz baseline is key here --
and every BigFish implementation is by nature an OFBiz implementation
so hopefully this will bring more attention to the OFBiz project
during the rest of this year.
As always, comments, questions, suggestions are welcome!
