All guides are listed at the bottom of this page. This text is an overview of the customization guide, and the AFCommerce software. Version 2 had a tremendous number of improvements, which most of you have already seen with your own websites. However, most of the best features and aspects of the software were not being used by anyone because they were unaware of these abilities. I have been talking about how great this software is and how I feel it's the best in the world, and now that there is a large amount of documentation written, you can all finally find out the true secrets of AFCommerce's "Custom Development Environment", which not only makes customization of your online store MUCH easier, but is also a spring board for new features and even completely separate software that you may include into AFCommerce.
Customizing the look of the cart is easy because there are very few files to edit, unlike other software that has many included files, which not only makes customization harder, but even after you figure out which files to edit, there is no documentation to walk you through it, and their included files were not developed to allow complete layout redesign unless you really know what your doing.
This is where AFCommerce is different. There is only one main developer, me, which means that the entire software was written with one programming style, meaning that once you learn my programming structure, you will be able to follow all of the free features, as well as, all of the add ons. So if you read through the docs, you will not only learn how to customize your online store and learn how to create new features / functions, but you will also learn how to become a better programmer / designer because my methods are not overly complex, and my best programming skill is how to design large complicated systems, so since I see the big picture with this software, and can shed more light on why and how I did something. All customizable files are well commented so you will understand what's going on much better.
These guides will explain how and where to create your own custom functions. The functions that are encrypted are fully documented on how to use them, so they become similar to normal php functions, where you use them to do simple tasks within your own functions, and programming new features becomes much easier. Just like normal php functions, they can complete a large task, like figuring out a customer's total basket amount, and getting all of a member's information into an array, etc. All you have to do is add one line of code calling my functions, and your scripts can do all of these tasks for you, and more than half of the work you would normally have to do writing a feature for other software, or writing one from scratch will no longer be necessary. In the free version, I encrypted the functions that do not need to be changed, and while they do not need to be changed, you can buy the open source version for our extremely low fee. This fee and our add ons is how this project is supported, unlike almost all shopping cart providers, many of which that simply steal free software and try to sell it. The AFCommerce shopping cart is a completely original algorithm that I wrote from scratch to allow unlimited feature development in to one solid structure. Every time I write a new feature, it integrates in to the AFCommerce software seamlessly, so that it never becomes a mess with patches and an overly complex structure to achieve a simple task.
