Magnolia CMS Module

Magnolia CMS is a content management system that powers the websites of government as well as leading Fortune 500 enterprises in more than 100 countries on all continents of the world. It is a leading Content Management System favored for its ease-of-use and availability under an Open Source license.

Magnolia CMS

KonaKart and Magnolia developers have jointly developed a module for easily integrating eCommerce functionality into a Magnolia powered web site. The module makes use of KonaKart Tiles ( documentation ) to provide an intuitive and seamless integration.

What are tiles?

KonaKart tiles can be regarded as building blocks for creating an eCommerce application which can be easily integrated into a front end system such as a CMS (Content Management System) or portal. Each tile (or aggregation of similar tiles) has a template, a style sheet and a JavaScript file which control the look and feel as well as the functionality. The tiles communicate with a KonaKart server using the KonaKart JSON APIs called asynchronously from the JavaScript using AJAX.

What’s the purpose of tiles?

KonaKart has been designed to provide loose coupling between the storefront application and the eCommerce server. The eCommerce server is a service (which may also be cloud based) that provides all eCommerce functionality through JSON APIs. This architecture lends itself well for the integration of the functionality into existing front end systems. A typical approach for displaying products and adding a shopping cart into a CMS is to call the KonaKart APIs from the CMS and to manually integrate the data received from KonaKart. KonaKart tiles greatly simplify this process because they provide an integration point at a higher level than the pure APIs. They provide functional widgets that already have a template based UI design and that autonomously capture events and communicate with the KonaKart server.

How can tiles be used?

In the case of a CMS, the tiles may be placed anywhere on a page in order to provide seamless integration with the other content on the page. For example, in one page you may wish to provide a carousel of scrollable products that match the content described on the page.

Magnolia Documentation

Magnolia documentation for installing and using the connector module is available at https://documentation.magnolia-cms.com/display/DOCS/KonaKart+Connector+module .