Setting Up the Instance

Last edit:  Jan 17, 2019

Contributors:  pavelloz diana-lakatos Slashek

This guide will help you prepare a development environment for building an e-commerce site on platformOS.

Requirements

To follow this tutorial, you should be familiar with basic platformOS concepts, the topics in the Get Started section, and the sample scenario of the e-commerce use case.

Steps

Setting up the Instance for an e-commerce site is a five-step process:

Step 1: Create new instance

Set up your development environment, create a new Instance, and create the codebase as described in the Get Started section.

Step 2: Add version control

We strongly recommend using a version control system. Set up your version control system, create a new repository, and commit your initial version of the code.

Make sure to add the .marketplace-kit file to ignore list. It contains access keys used for deploying, specific to your user.

Step 3: Enable sync

Configure your local environment for working with the remote Instance. Use marketplace-kit to add a new development environment and then run

marketplace-kit sync development

to automatically update your Instance with changes made on your local machine.

Step 4: Add application layout

At the end of the design process you usually get a number of HTML files that represent sections of the site. This example uses only pure Bootstrap styles and scripts, hosted on their CDN.

Running the marketplace-kit init command provides a sample layout and some partials. They are a good starting point for implementing the application layout.

Create a file views/layouts/application.liquid to create a default layout for all pages. A good rule of thumb is to keep common sections of HTML (e.g. <head> or navigation) that should appear on every single page in separate partials. It will help you to stay DRY whenever you want to add a new layout file.

You can learn more about application layouts in our documentation.

Step 5: Create homepage

You can now start adding page placeholders with static HTML, that will be gradually transformed into dynamic content in the following parts of this tutorial. Start with the homepage that will be shown at the root URL of your website.

marketplace_builder/views/pages/home.liquid

---
slug: /
---
<h1>Welcome!</h1>

How to create a homepage has been described in detail in our documentation.

Next steps

Congratulations! You have set up the instance. Now you can go on and configure the data schema.

Questions?

We are always happy to help with any questions you may have. Check out our Help page, or contact us.