Developers' Quick Start Guide

1. Download the Community Edition
   Even if you're looking to the Enterprise Edition, starting out with the Community Edition is a good way to become familiar with SoftSlate Commerce. If you make changes to your installation of the Community Edition and later buy the Enterprise Edition, you can drop an upgrade file on top of your existing project to add the Enterprise Edition features. If you go with one of the Hosted Editions, contact us and we'll set your project up on our servers.
2. Test Drive Using the Standalone Distribution
   You can have SoftSlate Commerce up and running locally in just minutes by downloading and launching the "standalone" distribution file. It comes embedded with a Winstone server. Simply unzip it, and run the launch script that comes with it. SoftSlate Commerce will fire up within seconds, and you're on your way to getting started. (Visit http://localhost:8080 after launching to get to the SoftSlate installation page.)
3. Do You Hg?
   If you're a Mercurial (Hg) fan, you're in luck. The Community Edition's source control repository is hosted on BitBucket.org. Simply visit the project page for the cloning URL. After cloning the repository, change into the WEB-INF/build directory and run the build script to compile the project.
4. Do You EC2?
   If so, we have registered a public AMI that has the Community Edition already configured, running under Tomcat 7. It is all set up and ready to go. The AMI ID is ami-0fbb8c76f6f2009fe. After launching it, log in as the "ec2-user" and check out the README file in the home directory.
5. Eclipse Much?
   

   If you use Eclipse the distribution files come with a .project file and .classpath file for use as an Eclipse project. Go to File -> Import... -> General -> Existing Projects into Workspace, choose "Select archive file", and locate the SoftSlate Commerce .zip file.

   Watch the video showing how to import SoftSlate Commerce into Eclipse.

6. Run Under an Eclipse Server
   

   If you use Eclipse, use the Servers tool to create a Server running SoftSlate Commerce within Eclipse. Install SoftSlate Commerce by creating an empty database and hitting the application in a browser.

   Watch the video showing how to install SoftSlate Commerce within Eclipse.

7. Start Customizing
   Follow our Simple Rules for making customizations in such a way that installing upgrades is as painless as possible. Lots more information is available in our Documentation.
8. Need help?
   Here is a list of other ways to get help.