1.2. What will be in our CMS

After reviewing existing commerce sites, we need to define the functionality of our future CMS. Obviously, we need to allow users to find and view products in various categories. Users should be able to order these products by adding them to the cart and going through the checkout process, filling in order details to calculate shipping, payment, and taxes. We will also build an admin panel for managing orders and products. Below is a detailed list of all features:

Products

We need to implement the following functionality for products:

• Product search: we need two ways to list products — a category catalog and a product search.
• Product view: once the user finds a product and is interested in it, we obviously need to allow them to view it in detail. So we must be able to provide relevant product information (price, weight, dimensions, description). It would also be useful to allow users to rate and comment on products.
• Create a wishlist so users can save products they may want to purchase in the future.

Checkout

The checkout process will include 3 stages:

• Collect products into an order
• Confirm the order and, if paid, confirm the payment
• Collect shipping information

Admin Panel

We also need to implement an admin panel for the site that:

• Allows the shop to be administered
• Allows customers to manage their orders and account information

Framework

We will build our CMS based on a foundation, which we’ll refer to as a "framework" going forward. This framework will help us solve tasks more quickly and with cleaner code. Also, in the future we won’t be limited in functionality and can add new features as needed. Here’s the minimal feature set we’ll implement in the framework:

• Display and manage products
• Display and manage product categories
• Embed products, lists, and categories into other parts of the site
• Customize products for clothing stores
• Product search
• Filter products by parameters such as manufacturer, color, and so on
• Create wishlists where users can save products to buy later
• Generate recommended products based on previous purchases
• Send email notifications when new products appear in the store
• Publish ratings and reviews for products
• Use a cart to store products before checkout
• Calculate cost based on:
  weight;
  shipping address;
  custom rules (e.g., free shipping on orders over 2000 rubles)
• Calculate tax
• Manage discount codes
• Manage gift certificates
• Manage referral discounts
• Integrate payment systems
• Allow users to edit their accounts
• Allow the admin to manage the store

Additionally, we will learn how to:

• Deploy changes from the development server to the live site
• Back up the store and restore it
• Enable secure SSL connections for safe purchases

And if time allows, we’ll cover how to integrate third-party services such as Google, Yandex, and others.