Overview
A map of the Aero platform, the developer surface area, and the order these docs are intended to be read.
In this guide
Introduction to Laravel PHP Framework
The Aero platform is built using the Laravel PHP framework.
Before developing with Aero, we recommend that you become acquainted with the core concepts of Laravel. We recommend the following resources:
The official Laravel documentation is a great place to start. Laracasts offer an on‑demand library of screencast video tutorials.
What is an Aero Commerce Agora account and why do I need it?
To get started you'll need an Agora account.
Your Agora account is used to download the platform and create projects. You can register for an account here.
Projects are assigned unique credentials which allows them to purchase themes and modules. These credentials must not be shared between projects as doing so will invalidate them.
Without valid credentials, a project cannot receive platform updates and security fixes.
Introduction to the admin
The backend admin (the "admin") is the password-protected back office where administrative tasks can be performed. This includes managing the store's catalog (products, categories, manufacturers, etc.), viewing and processing orders, managing discounts, viewing reports, editing the content of the storefront (promotional imagery, menus and SEO content, etc.), and much more.
What is the storefront?
Your Aero storefront is your customer facing front-end.
Storefronts are built using a component based structure. This greatly reduces both your development and maintenance effort. Using components allows you to make store-wide changes quickly and efficiently.
A storefront uses a theme to control how the content is displayed. This content can be both static text or dynamic product information. The advantage of using a theme is that it can be easily changed to show a new design - ideal for website re-designs. For more information on themes, see Introduction to themes.
Introduction to permissions for developers
As an agency, you will likely need to restrict the information and actions of admin accounts belonging to the retailer.
This is easily set up using our user configuration page. For more information please see "How do I set permissions for users?"
As a developer you can expand on these permissions in order to add anything else you may need;
Introduction to collections for developers
Collections are not what the developer might associate with Laravel’s immutable structure, but a collection of rules being applied to the listing on the store’s frontend.
Aero has a variety of collection rules which can alter the filters, more specifically, the search filters that usually would be modified by the customer where products are listed. These include:
Collection rules
- Which tags to filter by
- Which manufacturer to filter by
- Which price range to filter by (from-to)
- Which price status to filter by (e.g. Reduced price items only)
- Which DateTime range to filter by (range from-to or by days)
For more information about collections please see our admin documentation for collections