Post by opencartisalright » Mon Feb 21, 2011 4:58 am

Hey Guys,

Just started using the Multi-Store feature and I must say it's really fantastic! Although it could definitely be improved upon (like making the modules site specific and allowing site specific SEO for products and categories) I really really like this feature. It for sure saves me time as I had OpenCart installed on several domains and it was becoming a PITA to manage all those different instances of the script.

Had a look on the forums before I went ahead with it and the information on Multi-Store is quite intimidating. It seems a lot of people are confused on how to set it up and get it working properly. Maybe that's why not so many people use it now (although I think the "official" statistics might be kinda low). I think it's a pretty damn nifty feature!

Anyway, thought I would write a guide on how I went about setting it up in case someone would find it useful. Please note I'm using a linux server with cPanel, my original install of OpenCart is in my root directory, and I used addon domains to set up my other shops, so this guide will only apply to you if your situation is similar. Here goes.

Step 1

Log into cPanel and look for this.
Step 1.png

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Step 2
Step 2.png

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Step 3
Step 3.png

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Continued.....

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Post by opencartisalright » Mon Feb 21, 2011 4:59 am

Step 4

Now log into your OpenCart Admin panel and follow these instructions.
Step 4.png

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Step 5
Step 5.png

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That's it! After you have completed these steps then your 2nd store should show up with it's own front end but same back end. You can use whatever theme you want for your front end. You can also go into your products and categories and assign them to each and every shop that you have set up. For example you can set Product A to only show in shop 1 and Product B to only show up in Shop 2 and so on.

Again, it's a really cool feature and not at all hard to set up and manage. It's great if you're selling goods from the same stockpile but you'd like to target different niches of customers and offer specific products to them.

Thanks again to all the devs of OpenCart! You really do make it an amazing cart!

Peace
Last edited by opencartisalright on Mon Feb 21, 2011 5:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by opencartisalright » Mon Feb 21, 2011 5:21 am

Johnathan wrote:Nice guide -- I'm sure it will be helpful for beginners wanting to learn how to set up multi-store.
Thanks man. Yeah it's definitely simple enough for beginners. I thought it was gonna be a lot harder than it was but not at all. Pretty easy for the most part.

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Post by i2Paq » Mon Feb 21, 2011 2:57 pm

This is a nice guide. I will convert it into the documentation when I'm home tonight.

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Post by philbydevil » Mon Feb 21, 2011 6:57 pm

Is there any way around having to have a separate SSL certificate for every store? I'm thinking no.

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Post by opencartisalright » Tue Feb 22, 2011 10:30 am

i2Paq wrote:This is a nice guide. I will convert it into the documentation when I'm home tonight.
Cool. Thanks man!
philbydevil wrote:Is there any way around having to have a separate SSL certificate for every store? I'm thinking no.
If you wanted an SSL cert on 1 cPanel but with multiple domains, you could purchase a Multi-Site SSL cert. Only problem is it's hella expensive. With my host it costs $150 for the first 3 domains and then $25 for each additional domain. The catch is they count www and non www as separate domains, so if you're running a shop from 4 domains, you're gonna end up paying to have 8 domains secured (www and non www). Kinda sucks. But if you can afford it then it's a good way to get SSL certs for all your domains while still using the Multi-Store feature on 1 cPanel.

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Post by philbydevil » Tue Feb 22, 2011 12:57 pm

opencartisalright wrote:If you wanted an SSL cert on 1 cPanel but with multiple domains, you could purchase a Multi-Site SSL cert. Only problem is it's hella expensive. With my host it costs $150 for the first 3 domains and then $25 for each additional domain. The catch is they count www and non www as separate domains, so if you're running a shop from 4 domains, you're gonna end up paying to have 8 domains secured (www and non www). Kinda sucks. But if you can afford it then it's a good way to get SSL certs for all your domains while still using the Multi-Store feature on 1 cPanel.
Hmm.. that's interesting. I don't know if it would be worthwhile for me to do this but it's good to know. I've got a bunch of domain names that just have a splash page that encourages people to my store, but was considering putting my store directly on each domain.

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Post by RonA » Tue Feb 22, 2011 1:02 pm

I just set up a multi-domain SSL from GoDaddy for $89.00/yr - for 5 domains. If you look around though, you can find 20% off coupons for GoDaddy which makes this a real bargain. (My site is on HostGator so I then had pay them $10 to install the certificate.) It works beautifully and was a lot easier to setup than I thought it would be.

As far as www and non-www domains... set up something like this in your .htaccess file so that your page always defaults to one or the other no matter what your customers type in their address bar. This will save you a lot of money too.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomainhere.com$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "http\:\/\/www\.yourdomainhere\.com" [R=301,L]
Hope this helps!

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Post by opencartisalright » Tue Feb 22, 2011 1:24 pm

RonA wrote:I just set up a multi-domain SSL from GoDaddy for $89.00/yr - for 5 domains. If you look around though, you can find 20% off coupons for GoDaddy which makes this a real bargain. (My site is on HostGator so I then had pay them $10 to install the certificate.) It works beautifully and was a lot easier to setup than I thought it would be.
Oh wow, GoDaddy is definitely cheaper then. But I found this info from Host Gator's website
For installing a Multi-Domain SSL purchased elsewhere, we charge $25 + $5 for each additional domain after the first 5.
But still if you're hosted with Host Gator it seems it's cheaper if you buy your Multi-Domain SSL cert somewhere else and then have it transferred over.
RonA wrote:As far as www and non-www domains... set up something like this in your .htaccess file so that your page always defaults to one or the other no matter what your customers type in their address bar. This will save you a lot of money too.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomainhere.com$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "http\:\/\/www\.yourdomainhere\.com" [R=301,L]
Hope this helps!
Did GoDaddy give you the option to only buy the www version of your domains? If so then yeah that would be ideal cuz you'd save a lot of money!

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Post by RonA » Tue Feb 22, 2011 1:57 pm

I might have just lucked out with the price... I put in a support ticket with HostGator to have the SSL installed but it didn't ask if it was a single or 'multi-domain' certificate. They installed it in under an hour and sent me a bill for $10. plus $2.00 for the dedicated IP you have to have.

Re: the domain names, I chose one primary and four non-primary 'SAM' domains - on the GoDaddy application and simply typed in the http://www.mydomain.com format.

(The only bummer is that when I received my thank you email from GoDaddy it had a 20% off coupon for any purchase over $75. Let me know if you need it and I'll forward it to you.

PS... if for any reason you can't get the SSL to work, GoDaddy will give you either a full or a full minus $15 dollar refund - depends who you talk to. (within 30 days.)

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Post by vang » Fri Jun 24, 2011 2:10 pm

My multi-store setup works great until the secure page for the second store is called.
Have any of you had any problems when switching to a secure page on one of your other stores and it display your first store?

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Post by billyljren » Mon Jun 27, 2011 11:33 pm

Hi,

I need a little help here. I'm trying to use this cool multi-store feature using subdomains. Here's what I've done so far:

1. Added a sub.domain.net and pointed it to the same directory as domain.net
2. Added a New Store in OC with http://sub.domain.net

Now the problem is, when I navigate to sub.domain.net...I see is the exact same thing as domain.net! (the products are the same, clicking on the links on sub.domain.net also brings me back to domain.net) what am I missing here ? :-\ I read guides posted by several other sites and followed exactly, but it doesn't seem to work

I'm trying to setup using OC 1.5.0.5.

Thanks

EDIT: Fixed, didn't know that it requires trailing slash at the end for it to work...guess I was half asleep for overlooking that instruction

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Post by harmhero » Thu Jun 30, 2011 10:25 pm

Yes, I aslo want to make a multi vendor site out of opencart. Is that possible? So one domain, multiple vendors with their own accounts, like for example etsy.com

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Post by Ascagne » Thu Jul 14, 2011 3:42 am

This solution works for cPanel, but does it work for directadmin, how do you set that up?

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Post by thinkingforward » Fri Jul 29, 2011 8:25 pm

can you have the multi stores i.e. site 2, 3 and 4 check out via site 1 so that you only need the one SSL?

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Post by rmi » Tue Aug 30, 2011 3:47 am

Is it possible to install multi-store just to different folder? Like domain.com/mainshop and domain.com/subshop? I'm running v.1.493

How do you redirect subdomain or folder in DirectAdmin?

I'm still missing something to understand multi-store, do you need to have multiple installations of oc? If not how does it work?

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Post by Cellunlimit » Mon Sep 05, 2011 4:47 am

we have several domains we have opencart 1.5 running on the main domain when we did the tutorial when we goto our other domains it will show the homepage for the main store not the domain we are accessing

and all the links point to domain1 as well we have set it up in admin we are running on ARVIxe linux with ther cpanel thanks

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Post by kuleszko » Wed Apr 11, 2012 8:56 am

I have main domain with opencart script working without problems but i have another domain on the same server i like to set up multistore option , how to assign new domain to existing . Should the new domain assingn to admin folder or just parked or create new folder .I have no experience and thanks for any help.

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Post by liamcaff » Fri Apr 13, 2012 1:32 am

I am totally lost - not a clue how to use this multistore thing!

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Post by DavidF » Fri Apr 13, 2012 1:59 am

Hello,

I'm sorry if I am assisting in a 'necobump' or just a bump in general, but I have recently began using the Open Cart system for a company I am working with. I originally uploaded the base OpenCart onto a 'test' URL /CartTest is the URL for the base of it, but we have gotten a little more familiar with the software and feel it may be the ideal solution for our business. The only problem is that I've created a subdomain that links back to /CartTest and created a second store for our primary usage. The problem here is that the Modules for the Features Products, Partners, etc do not show up on the main website. I'm attempting to modify the modules to show up but unfortunately it is not working as I can not select which store(s) the Modules show up at. I have tried to duplicate as many settings as I could over to the main store from the Test store, but it still does not work.

We are using OpenCart Version 1.5.2.1, which was a fresh install. Anyone care to help me? If I am required to open a new thread please let me know, Moderators. I replied in here since this is related to Multi-Store feature.

EDIT:

Looking into this 'Multi' Store options, I feel it may be ideal if we re-installed the OpenCart onto the main site. I do not have the same options as the 'default' store. I'm still interested in the answer as we hold special events which may be able to take advantage of this.

Thank you,
David

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