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Glossary

The words this documentation uses — and means precisely — from Shopper and Store Owner to Port, Capability and Minor Units.

The storefront’s code, its tickets and these docs share one vocabulary. When a term below is capitalised in the docs, it means exactly this.

People

Term	Meaning
Shopper	Anyone browsing or buying on the storefront, including anonymous visitors.
Store Owner	The merchant who runs the store. Exactly one. Manages everything in wp-admin.
Staff	People the Store Owner gives limited admin access to (in WordPress).
Vendor	An independent seller on a marketplace. Only exists with the Multivendor capability, which is on the roadmap.

Term	Meaning
Storefront	The Next.js application shoppers use.
Companion plugin	The Retail Store Companion WordPress plugin. Adds the StoreFront menu, sign-in, settings and payment hardening.
Backend	The commerce platform behind the storefront — today, WooCommerce.
Demo Mode	The storefront running with no backend, on an in-memory store. See Demo Mode.
Additive plugin	A WordPress plugin that only adds data (for example PDF invoices); the storefront shows the extra feature when the data is present.

Term	Meaning
Canonical model	The storefront’s own commerce vocabulary (Product, Cart, Order, Money…). The only model pages use.
Port	The typed contract between the storefront and any backend.
Capability	One segment of the Port — Discovery, Cart, Checkout, Reviews, Wishlist, Theme… A backend provides it or declares it absent.
Adapter	The code that implements the Port for one backend: the WooCommerce adapter, the Fake (demo) adapter.
Composition root	The one module that chooses which adapter runs.
Contract suite	The tests that define Port behaviour; every adapter must pass them.
Identity / Session	Identity is sign-in and tokens (through the Port); Session is the storefront’s own cookie state. They never mix.
Minor units	How money travels internally: integer cents (or the currency’s smallest unit), formatted only for display.

Term	Meaning
Cart-Token	The secure cookie that keeps a Shopper’s cart across visits.
Processor	The payment company moving the money: Stripe, PayPal, or the Demo Processor.
Embedded payment	Paying on the storefront’s checkout page in the processor’s own UI — never a redirect to WordPress.
Shopper action	A step the Shopper must complete before an order is paid, such as a 3-D Secure bank challenge.
Express checkout	Buying with a wallet button (Apple Pay or Google Pay) from the product, cart or checkout page.
Lost placement	A placement whose answer never reached the storefront; it is recovered to the existing order instead of charging twice.
Shipping package	A group of cart lines that ship together with one delivery choice.
Free-shipping progress	How far this cart is from free delivery for the Shopper’s own shipping zone.
Address book	A signed-in Shopper’s saved addresses (up to ten), with default billing and shipping roles.

Term	Meaning
Trust badge	One reassurance (for example “Secure payment”) in the row under the product page’s Buy now button.
Payment & Security card	The note under the product gallery with accepted payment methods and payment-handling copy.
Primary category	The category a Store Owner marks as a product’s main one; it decides which category’s badges apply.
Product video	An uploaded, YouTube or Vimeo video shown in the product gallery, with a poster image.
Review media / Review thread	Photos and videos on a review; replies under it (two levels, with a Seller badge for the store).
Policy page	Returns & Refunds, Shipping, Privacy, Terms or Cookies — written as WordPress pages.
Product preview	An unpublished product shown to editors on the real product page through a one-time link.
Custom scripts	HTML the Store Owner pastes into wp-admin (analytics, pixels, chat) that the storefront places on its pages.
SEO fields / SEO pattern	Per-item SEO values, and the defaults used when an item has none.

Term	Meaning
Theme	Per-store presentation data from WordPress: colour tokens, header, footer, tab bar, page settings.
Color scheme	Light or dark, chosen by the Shopper; each has its own colour tokens.
Mobile tab bar	The app-style bottom bar on phones and tablets.
Template family	The store-wide look for home, listing and product pages. `default` ships today.
Locale	A language the deployment serves; the first one is unprefixed, the others live under `/{locale}`.
Direction	Left-to-right or right-to-left, derived from the locale.

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