Hosting support

Support for the hosting business is provided in Websphere Commerce through the extended sites business model. You may publish the ExtendedSitesHub.sar store archive with your ExtendedSites.sar in order to see an example of a hosting site provided with WebSphere Commerce. Use this sample to get started on setting up a hosting site where you will be able to host sellers with a partitioned catalog (that is, independent catalog).

This sample illustrates the following features:

• Self-provisioning features:
  • Sellers self-register from the hosting hub.
  • Once approved, Sellers can create a store using the Store Creation wizard.
  • Sellers have store management capabilities such as changing store look and feel, marketing, product management, and others.
  • Sellers have organization and user management capabilities.
• Store locator features from the store directory site:
  • Seller-created stores are automatically added to the store directory.
  • Customers can locate stores based on store category.
  • Customers can locate stores based on products.
• Catalog management features:
  • Partitioned catalog (for hosting independent stores)
    • No shared catalog data preloaded for the stores.
    • Sellers load their own store-specific products for sales in the hosted stores.

Extended sites hub provides all the pages and features necessary for a functioning B2B indirect Hosting online site. It is packaged with WebSphere Commerce as a store archive. All that is required to view the starter store is to publish the archive to the WebSphere Commerce Server using the publishing tool provided in the Administration Console. It is based on a typical hosting flow. The starter store pages can be customized. All Commerce Hosting Hub starter store pages use JavaServer Pages and XML to load the necessary data.