The storefront application is the web application that runs your site. As shoppers interact with your site, the storefront application interfaces with your theme files and with the API to respond to specific requests. The following table provides a brief summary of the major components of the storefront application:
| Component | Description |
|---|---|
| Routing engine | Handles routes to resources, such as obtaining the login page when the In addition, interfaces with the API and with Admin to gather tenant settings, catalog information, model data for the theme, manage authentication and shopper sessions, serve resources like images, scripts, and stylesheets, execute operations on CMS documents, and interface with order data, among other examples. |
| Custom routing | In addition to the default routes, the storefront application executes user-defined custom routes on your site. |
| Hypr templating engine | Accesses theme files and renders Hypr templates. |
| Resource pipeline | Processes resources for use on your site. Namely:
|
The Storefront Process
The following is a simplified summary of how the storefront application works, meant to give you a basic idea of how it keeps your site up and running:
- A shopper clicks the My Account link on your site.
- The routing engine obtains the correct resource for the shopper.
- The routing engine checks whether the shopper is logged in.
- The routing engine obtains necessary data from the API or Admin.
- The Hypr templating engine obtains the template for the page.
- The routing engine provides required data to the Hypr model.
- The Hypr templating engine renders the template.
- The resource pipeline creates CSS, manipulates images, and compiles scripts as needed.
- The routing engine serves the My Account page to the shopper's browser.
- If applicable, the routing engine responds to additional shopper actions, rendering new data requested through JavaScript on the shopper's browser.
Best Practices
If you have planned promotional activities that may result in a significant increase to server traffic through the Storefront and/or API requests in a short period of time, Kibo recommends the following best practices:
- Do not send out a major email or text campaign to everyone in a large audience at the exact same time. Instead, space your emails and texts out over a period of time (1-2 hours).
- Send your emails and texts at a time that does not already have high traffic. For instance, most sites see a steady increase in traffic from 7am to 11am Central, so we would recommend that you do not send out an email campaign to several million customers at 8:30am.
- Please read and understand our recommended best practices for API related processes.
Doing the above will ensure the system can best scale on its own to meet your needs and avoid potential problems. In the event that a large spike or increase in traffic/requests cannot be avoided, please notify Kibo Support. Support will work with the developer teams to ensure Kibo has the resources in place to support the increase in traffic without being surprised by unexpected system load and negatively affecting performance.
Examples of these planned promotional activities include:
- National television or radio campaigns
- Publicity events such as sponsor interviews
- Spots on morning television
- Email marketing campaigns or widely advertised sales