We.Retail Reference Implementation

Last update: 2023-09-21
  • Created for:
  • Developer

Introduction

We.Retail is a reference implementation and sample content that illustrates the recommended way of setting up an online presence with Adobe Experience Manager.

We.Retail uses the latest Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) technologies such as HTL, responsive layouts, editable templates, core components, and much more.

While it illustrates a retail vertical, the way the site is set up can be applied to any vertical, and only the product catalog and cart features are retail-specific.

Features

As AEM’s standard reference implementation, We.Retail showcases some of the most powerful features of AEM.

Feature Description Interested?
Globalized site structure We.Retail includes language masters which are live-copied into country-specific sites. Try it!
Responsive layout All pages feature a responsive layout to adapt dynamically to screen and device size. Try it!
Editable templates All pages are based on editable templates, allowing non-developers to adapt and customize the templates. Try it!
HTML Template Language All components are based on HTL
eCommerce capabilities Features a product catalog
Communities sites Allowing visitors to join in community discussions, read blogs, and much more
Core Components All components are based on the new core components and are more usable and user-configurable out-of-the-box Try it!
Content Fragments The We.Retail Experiences section showcases the power of reusing content by way of content fragments. Try them!
Experience Fragments An Experience Fragment is a group of one or more components including content and layout that can be referenced within pages. Try them!

Getting Started

We.Retail is delivered as AEM’s sample content. To use, simply start AEM as you normally would, making sure that sample content is not disabled.

CAUTION

Do not install We.Retail on production instances. Production instances should be started in nosamplecontent run mode.

CAUTION

We.Retail is based on the latest AEM technology and therefore does not support classic UI authoring.

Latest Version

Although We.Retail is distributed with the AEM release, updates to the content and its features may be made after the release. Therefore it is possible to download the latest release from GitHub and then upload and install it as a package on your AEM instance.

First Steps

  1. Once AEM is started (and/or We.Retail is installed), the site We.Retail is available in the Sites console.

  2. For example, the following page can be opened and it should look as displayed in the appendix below:

    https://<server name>:<port number>/editor.html/content/we-retail/language-masters/en.html

We.Retail & Geometrixx

Geometrixx and its many incarnations served as sample content in earlier versions of AEM. Since version 6.3, We.Retail has been the sample content delivered with AEM and serves as the new standard reference implementation.

We.Retail is technically more robust and exploits the latest AEM technology to be more flexible and scalable, while also demonstrating the newest features of the product.

Feature Comparison

The following table gives an overview of the major features that are available in We.Retail as compared to Geometrixx.

  • Available means that examples of the feature are found in the sample content.
  • Not available means that examples of the feature are not available in the sample content, but does not mean that the feature itself is not.
Feature We.Retail Geometrixx
Globalized site structure Language masters live-copied into country-specific sites Not available
Content Fragments Available Not available
Experience Fragments Available Not available
Responsive Layout For all pages Only Geometrixx Media
Editable Templates For all pages Not available
HTL All components Limited
Targeting For all pages Only Geometrixx Outdoors
Screens Available Not available
Mobile Not available Available
Manuscripts Not available Available
Carousel viewer, downloads, and chart components Not available Available
Column control Replaced by layout container Available
Forms Not available Available
Campaign No email samples Available
NOTE

This list strives to be complete, but should not be considered exhaustive.

Contribute

We.Retail has been released as an open-source project and the latest version of the source code can be downloaded from GitHub.

CODE ON GITHUB

You can find the code of this page on GitHub.

The latest release can also be downloaded directly as an installable package.

If you encounter problems, file a GitHub issue.

Feel free to fork or to contribute with pull requests.

Preview

Preview of the We.Retail welcome page:

screencapture-localhost-4502-editor-html-content-we-retail-us-en-html-2018-08-17-14_33_32

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