I am going to create a multi store setup and thought I would bounce this off some of the more learned users in doing this.
Currently I have 1 store on one domain which has just been for the shop called Clear Prop. I have a 2nd domain which is my absolute main domain in that it has my email accounts and everything and currently has just a hello world index page doing nothing and is called Jackaroo.
I a range of 5 IP addresses on my dedicated server and Clear Prop is on its own dedicated IP. Jackaroo is on a shared IP in the group.
I want Jackaroo to be my main General Products shop and my current shop Clear Prop, which is aviation products, to be a sub domain of Jackaroo. I thought that I should make Jackaroo the main shop (i.e. where cs-cart is installed) as it will have many more products in it than Clear Prop, and the products in Jackaroo will be general and not subject specific like aviation is in Clear Prop.
So I thought I would:[list=1]
[]Assign Jackaroo a dedicated IP
[]Copy Clear Prop cs-cart over to Jackaroo and make it Jackaroo
[]Create a sub domain for Clear Prop
[]Create a new store called Clear Prop as a clone of Jackaroo i.e. all products shared
[]Create new categories Jackaroo
[]Adjust products so they are either just in Clear Prop categories or shared in both Jackaroo and Clear Prop categories (some aviation products can be general products as well) and change the store ownership as applicable
[]Set different themes for each store
[/list]
My concerns:[list=1]
[]The changing of IP address of Clear Prop resulting in down time however all domains point to the same ns1 and ns2 name servers as in my dedicated server which then farms out the traffic to the respective domains so name servers will not be touched
[]If products are shared across 2 stores is the stock control still managed as one as in if store 1 sells a product does the inventory of that product also drop by 1 in store 2?
[]On a little test run I noticed a hell of a performance hit having 2 stores…wonder if that will improve as the cache builds up
[/list]
Are there any issues that I haven't thought of and should I change anything in the approach I am taking?
[quote]
My concerns:[list]
[]The changing of IP address of Clear Prop resulting in down time however all domains point to the same ns1 and ns2 name servers as in my dedicated server which then farms out the traffic to the respective domains so name servers will not be touched
[]If products are shared across 2 stores is the stock control still managed as one as in if store 1 sells a product does the inventory of that product also drop by 1 in store 2?
[*]On a little test run I noticed a hell of a performance hit having 2 stores…wonder if that will improve as the cache builds up
[/list]
Are there any issues that I haven't thought of and should I change anything in the approach I am taking?
[/quote]
Suggest you setup Jackaroo as the primary domain in your new environment.
Create your second store with a temporary domain name of devprop.jackaroo.com
Do your styling and other UI type changes you want in both domains.
Once you're happy, do your store import and share the products from Jackaroo to clear prop
Change your DNS for clear prop to point to the same IP as jackaroo (or have clear prop document root be same if using different IP).
Inventory levels will be shared across your stores for shared products. If you create new products, you will need to share them if you want and if you create a product in clear prop and want it to remain private, just don't designate it as shared.
If I missed what you were asking, let me know.
Thanks…good to know I was on the right track