Working With the Default Site

The Default site is a fully functioning, out of the box e-commerce site that helps businesses get up and running so that they can sell their merchandise quickly. The Default site comes with expected e-commerce site functionality, plus a few extras. This includes browsing, searching, site map, profile management and registration, address lists, lists, cart and mini-cart, order review, checkout, split shipping, advertisements and discounts, and order history, plus Live ID and Virtual Earth integration.

The Default Site comes with a color-neutral skin. Site designers can quickly re-skin the site to the look and feel that you want by using templates and SharePoint’s Master Pages.

The Default Site contains numerous pages, designed with the Web Parts from six functional areas.

The site pages include:

  • Catalog pages that handle the display of products.

  • Management pages that handle customer service information and store location.

  • Marketing pages that handle marketing (advertisement, discount, special offers, and so on) display capabilities

  • Orders pages that handle the order completion process.

  • Profile Administration pages that handle shopper logins, account, addresses, credit cards, and so on.

  • Search pages that search both the e-commerce site and any static content, to display the search results, and enable your shoppers to page through several pages of search results

A site page usually consist of Web Parts from two or more of the functional areas, such as displaying a product (catalog Web Parts), showing the current shopping cart contents (orders Web Parts) and if the shopper is signed in to the site, some personal information such as name may also appear (profiles Web Parts).

With SharePoint, you create shopping site componentization by using a combination of pre-defined (but customizable) template pages coupled with existing SharePoint Web Parts by using XSL templates.

To modify the Default Site for your business, we recommend the following steps:

  1. Adding logos

  2. Skinning the site

  3. Adding relevant 'static' text, such as contact numbers, terms and conditions, more verbose instructional text, etc.

  4. Integration

  5. Deployment

Note

If you are using the Default site, you must have JavaScript and cookies enabled.

Note

The Default site supports SharePoint site collections created at the "root" level, and any subsequent sites that are created within that root-level site collection. Site collections that are created in locations other than the "root" level are not supported, and may result in inconsistent behavior with the Default site.

Dd464422.alert_caution(en-US,CS.90).gifImportant Note:

We do not recommend using NTLM authentication in the extended zone your shoppers will use because some of the Default site functionality that requires a shopper log in will not function correctly when logging in under NTLM. This includes functions such as registration, profile management, login and logout, to name a few. This occurs because of a synchronization limitation of profile information between the Windows account, Commerce Server 2009, and SharePoint. However, primary browsing, shopping, and checkout functions are not affected.

Note

Whenever you have Anonymous enabled on a Web application:

  • In a Windows 2008 deployment, the anonymous identity must be set to "use application pool id"

  • In a Windows 2003 deployment, the anonymous identity must be manually configured with the user name and password of the application pool identity

In This Section

See Also

Other Resources

SharePoint Commerce Services