This is a series of AbleCommerce posts that will introduce the AbleCommerce Gold platform, architecure and features. My name is Anthony Antony and I am a Sr. Project Lead for the Application Development group at Dunn Solutions Group.  This first post will focus on AbleCommerce Gold and the benefits of using this platform.

To get us started here are some of the general types of businesses that utilize this platform:

1.       Suppliers, accessories and boutique stores.

2.       Global and diversified consumer products companies. 

3.       Non-profit organizations.

Interesting fact: there are more than ten thousand AbleCommerce stores world-wide! 

What is AbleCommerce Gold?

•  AbleCommerce Gold is a fully customizable and extensible real-time electronic commerce shopping system, with built-in content management written in ASP.Net. It incorporates an online store building utility that simplifies store management. All system-level and merchant-level administration runs entirely from a web browser.

• With AbleCommerce Gold, you can dynamically create and update your product inventory in real-time while using the built-in interactive and preview features necessary for product construction. You have the ability to manage tens-of-thousands of products, or just one.
• A relational (hierarchical) database allows inventory to be organized into unlimited levels of categories for easy page-by-page navigation.
• AbleCommerce Gold enables merchants to easily create and modify store elements (headers, footers, css, product descriptions, etc) using the included WYSIWYG editor with spell checking for browser based editing of web page content. Merchants can edit the look and feel of websites using the wizard based interface. Content and layout can be modified without any knowledge of html and scripting languages.
• Integrated sub-modules include shipping, taxes, discounts, order retrieval, product kitting, product options, cross selling, and reports. AbleCommerce has complete integration with third-party applications such as AvaTax, UPS OnLine® Tools, UPS World Ship, FedEx, CyberSource and Certitax.
• At the core of AbleCommerce Gold is the CommerceBuilder® engine, a set of compiled modules that can be accessed via popular web scripting languages. These modules provide the functions necessary to e-commerce, such as user tracking, product management, and online payment processing. Support for many third-party real-time credit card processors is included, and the interface is fully extendable for integration with most other payment gate­ways.

Running AbleCommerce Gold

To run AbleCommerce Gold you have the option of using AbleCommerce premium website hosting services or purchasing and installing the software locally in your server environment. You have the option to purchase the source code if you plan to make any modifications to the CommerceBuilder® engine or have a copy of it due to your department’s compliance requirement.  If you choose to install the software locally, you will need a network environment as listed in Figure 1 to be PCI DSS compliant.

* The computer's hardware and software must meet the same minimum requirements given for the Microsoft .NET Framework.

Conclusion

AbleCommerce Gold software is a mature and complete shopping cart system that will add value to your enterprise software portfolio. The online merchant administration is a secure ecommerce solution with features to help you manage orders, process payments, maintain shipping providers, manage your customers and maintain an organized product catalog.  With AbleCommerce Gold, you will have the opportunity to customize your e-commerce site to your specific needs and integrate with 3rd party functionality in the future as your needs grow. In my next post I will be delving more into the features of AbleCommerce Gold beginning with the Merchant Dashboard.