Same site for multiple stores with different products, need ideas.

First of all sorry if I am in a wrong section.
Hello,

We got multiple stores in multiple towns and I want to create an ecommerce website for our stores.
The problem is we will cover a limited area with each store so I want to show products based on location.

What I want basically is when you visit the website for example mystore.com the website will be asking for a location and you will choose like Kurdzhali and
based on your choose the ecommerce site will show only the items that are available in your local store.

I am pretty good in PHP, good enough to code my own scripts with help of google.
Basically not a professional but also not a beginner.



My Questions are
1. If there are a such feature or plugin for *************
2. If there is not, do you got an idea how can I do this?

I know I can use seperate installations for each region and seperate them with a subdomain such as mg.mystore.com, kj.mystore.com but I don't wanna administer multiple installations.
The other thing I am thinking of using the tags, for example with a little modification I can add the tag "momchilgrad" and make it default, also add this tag to all the products that are available
in this location.

Idk I'm not familiar with this script and I am looking for ideas.

Sorry for my bad English and Thank you in advance.

I'm not familiar with this script and I am looking for ideas.

well, that's not really a good bases to start with, but let me still give you some idea,
on how such could be achieved. Still, better don't expect someone here, to just assist,
for the plain fun of it, if you cannot do it by yourselfs, you just need a Pro, to get it done.
Good Luck!
Ernie
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Switch Database - Switch between Opencart databases
https://www.opencart.com/index.php?rout ... on_id=7902
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Multisite with different databases and images
https://www.opencart.com/index.php?rout ... n_id=24666

Ernie, in fairness they are looking for ideas not complete solutions.

One idea;
If you set up a multistore, so
Kurdzhali.yourstore.com
Location2.yourstore.com
etc.
You can specify which products appear in which store by selecting which stores in each product. However, you cannot specify individual stock levels for each store without a mod

Idea: each product has a 'location' field. If you are also a bit handy with javascript you can hide products not in 'location' after a visitor chose the store location (which is another custom little script)
You do have to add the location (id) to the product list + grid html markup and probably add the location to the product array in each controller displaying products (oc likes repetitive code )

Going a multistore route opens a whole new can of worms, personally not sure if this is a good option

Sure I was looking for Ideas, that's, what the Poster meant !
And since one never can be sure, how much others understand about OC,
I just try to show them, what technically exists. And I am very sure, that a dual
DB would be a famous Solution, if one really knows, how to handle it.
But unfortunately, this DUAL-DB Matter is out of my reach, otherwise, I would
long ago have implemented such an Option, because it would open many new
ways of doing things.
But since I never played around with Multishops, I don't know, if i.E. SPECIALS
can be displayed on one Shop, and not on others, like the fellow here asked for:
viewtopic.php?f=182&t=185207
But somebody has to reply on such, once in a while, and since no-one else did,
I at least try to...
Ernie

Having a single site redirect to a subdomain or other specific store is difficult to do automatically. Most browsers don't come with GPS coordinates, so you're left with IP address mapping to a geographic area. That tends to be too granular to be of much use below country size (and even then, it's not foolproof). A visitor could be asked to show on a map, or pick from a list of cities, where they are, and be assigned to the proper physical store. Large chain stores in the US often have a mechanism where they make their best estimate as to where you are, and assign the nearest store. Sometimes they'll ask you for a ZIP (Postal) code to narrow down the choices, or let you pick on a map. Normally, you are able to override their choice, if you don't like the closest store, or they picked wrong. So, this kind of thing has been done before. I constantly see sites which are asking permission to store my physical address, so they can customize ads and so on to my locality. Have you tried googling to find suggestions on how these algorithms work? You could then add information about the nearest store to the customer address entry, or drop a cookie (but be careful not to run afoul of anti-tracking cookie laws).

Maybe this would be a good point to pause and ask yourself why you are doing this. Are your physical stores independent enough that they don't share specials and sales, or even the full product list? All they share is the name on the marquee? Is it difficult to transfer inventory from one store to another, if a customer wants to pick up something stocked in store C, but is closest to store A? Sure, it's extra work for you, but the increased sales from having a common product list and virtual inventory might outweigh the costs (and you could keep just one store site rather than multiple sites). If they must be kept independent of each other, as discussed it might be feasible to assign/choose physical stores, but at least let the customer look in the other stores if their local store doesn't stock the desired item. It might even be better to have a common store site, with all the products, and tag each one with what store(s) it's available in (or is not available in). If you can't shift an item to the customer's local store for them to purchase, at least you can let them know that just a little further away is a store that does stock the item. This still leaves the issue open on individual stores running specials and sales. It would probably be too confusing to customers to mix them together on one site (multiple prices, multiple promotions). Has anyone considered consolidating specials, sales, and advertising to deliver consistency across the public face of all the stores? It could save money to do this, but I don't know what your ownership and management structure is.

Finally, are you doing actual ecommerce here (delivery directly to the customer, without their having to visit a store), or is this just an online catalog system for brick-and-mortar stores, and the customer must physically visit a store to make a purchase?