Multi-Shop

Hi

Thanks for replying, what will Opencart let me do ?

Are there any mods that will help me achieve what I want to do ?

Kev

A more comprehensive analysis would suggest the following to me (from what I know so far):

You could create a Multi Store installation and have the following:
- Shop for the public that you run
- 'Shop' for Trade customers that you host - possibly using a different domain, that they have accounts for.
- 'Shop' that your Franchisees use (could be the same as Trade shop?)
- Shops that you manage on behalf of your customers...

Advantages:
You have one stock management system to work from and you could have more sophisticated stock reporting tools and analysis built for you.

Using customer accounts you can control the pricing the customer sees and pays. Maybe controlling payment options (credit for Franchisees, money up front for Traders)

You streamline your business so customers

Disadvantages:
I think running shops for others would be a pain - I can't yet see how they could run their own shops independently without making problems for you as shopping options seem to be controlled centrally assuming ONE business owner holding the accounts with couriers etc.

Also the other retailers would be unable to add other products without affecting your system...

So if you run it as a way of selling from your business to others but not on behalf of others it looks possible.

That is the front end presentation side of the business...

I have not yet tested the back end in a Multi-Store installation as there may be problems with invoice/order numbering, controlling and restricting shipping options, managing customer accounts (if a customer attempted to sign up at more than one 'store')...

But I think a lot of what you would like to do might be possible and the rest may involve paying someone to customise the system for you. This may cause some problems with upgrading in future - but you don't have to upgrade, you could take the system as it is and develop it onwards to meet your needs.

In my business we have had to work around a very inflexible system for years that has eventually held us back - the thing that appeals to us about OC is that while it won't deliver every feature we dream of out of the box, it can be adapted to do that... But there will always have be a compromise at some level - the real world and virtual world rarely meet seamlessly! :-)

I'm so glad to see this topic. I'd like to provide information regarding a current web project I'm working on. I'd also like to post feedback on something another user mentioned in regards to the "crafting" community sort of thing. The affiliates multi-shop story sounded really cool too!

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Client with *custom* translations for currently English, German, Turkish, French and Italian languages

Top Level: Wordpress using WPML http://wpml.org

This plugin recently changed from free to non-free and intend on having customer purchase the plugin with the next WP upgrade. It's a pretty affordable plugin and works great. One has multiple pencil (edit) icons for each page/post to create the custom language. They also have a translation service one can purchase right from the sidebar of each page or post - if the client wanted to utilize WPML's translation services (hire someone from WPML to translate a page for you).

Cart/Shop Subdirectory: Opencart

This is the point where I am, installed the English version and looked into the language modules, but they would of course not support custom translations which the shop owner requires as part of the project.

I'm now looking into how the multi-store operates, to see if this would be a feasible solution. Just put language (shop) links at the top somewhere and add the custom translation to the multi-store areas. I'd like to read up somewhere to see what all the multi shop does. Read in this thread that there's 1 database which is cool.

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One thing that I'd like to say is that I really love the fact that you don't have to edit paths in the .sql of opencart if you move it to a different directory. I'm going take the multi-store for a spin on xampp and see how it works! I bow down in appreciative gratitude of the developers that maintain this project! Every time I see Qphoria's avatar I laugh because I know how that feels. Can't even begin to imagine what he deals with on a regular basis in regards to programming/troubleshooting. I am a lowly n00b. If I was rich I'd buy that guy (and the other maintainers) a brand new Camaro.

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Next Topic: Indie Artsy Craft Community sort of thing

I recently signed up for a digital scrapbooking site that allows users to create an account to sell their goods. Well...lol. Two days later I went to log in and upload products and saw a bare directory with a file list. I took a peek at the readme.txt and it showed information for this script: http://www.iscripts.com/multicart/

I think something of this nature tied to opencart would be really cool -- even if there was a premium price attached. Just my two cents on things.

Misc Non-Related Rant:

I'm sort of frustrated with the scrapbook shop mentioned above, because apparently she reinstalled her application and overwrote the database, lol! After I emailed and told her that her index.php was renamed to index_backup.php and her default / dir was bare - displaying a file list, she said she'd fix it. Well the shop looks all new and it looks like I'll have to create a new login to have an account there. Definitely bad biz/dev practice as I found the shop from a google adsense link! Advertise on google while your cart is still in alpha?

I know that's an old thread but just wanted to share how the multi-shop feature helped me.

The multi-shop can be very helpful when you have a customer that require a shop with regional pricing rather than using the currency conversion rate.

I have done that for my customer but the only problem is that you will have to duplicate each product and have a custom field that you show to which shop the product is allocated.

Now I am left on the sales report where the customer want to have it sorted out by currency not difficult to do as I have already done the editing for the sorting out of sales order by currency.

So that's how I am using multi-shop feature.

Cheers.

I am a total newbe (idiot class ) to opencart, installed it yesterday and it took me about 4 hours to get a template working today - (shopperland bought of themeforest. - So take anything I say with a a huge scoop of salt, I have no clue really...

Have had minor success with cubecart selling items but have decided to push the web sites more. I own 3 bm small, rural, sportshops.

Re: Multi-shop

I have a bunch of domains - all sports related. What I would like is one main domain, under that would be a lot of smaller more specific domains - but these would have more info on the sport. My idea is that these smaller domains, being more specific with maybe more pages, rss feeds whatever about that specific sport would do better on rankings?

So one Main shop with everything feeding a bunch of smaller, sports specific websites would be a good thing for SEO? I have tried it and it seems to work - but I have products that can sometimes fit in 3 categories. Ie a soccer(football) boot could be in the main site - then rugby, soccer and field hockey sub-sites. trying to do it manually would be a pain - having one site that feeds the others would be a breeze.

Hi im using version 1.5.1.3 and have set up 3 stores using multi store. Each store sell different products. The issue I am having is that a customer will log into store one and then add a product to his cart but not check out. He will then visit store two and once in store two the product he added to his cart from store one is still sitting in the cart. How can stop this from happening. I don't want that product to be in his cart when he visits store two.

If anyone knows of a solution I would really appreciate it if they could let me know.

Thanks

Pap_sak wrote:I am a total newbe (idiot class ) to opencart, installed it yesterday and it took me about 4 hours to get a template working today - (shopperland bought of themeforest. - So take anything I say with a a huge scoop of salt, I have no clue really...

Have had minor success with cubecart selling items but have decided to push the web sites more. I own 3 bm small, rural, sportshops.

Re: Multi-shop

I have a bunch of domains - all sports related. What I would like is one main domain, under that would be a lot of smaller more specific domains - but these would have more info on the sport. My idea is that these smaller domains, being more specific with maybe more pages, rss feeds whatever about that specific sport would do better on rankings?

So one Main shop with everything feeding a bunch of smaller, sports specific websites would be a good thing for SEO? I have tried it and it seems to work - but I have products that can sometimes fit in 3 categories. Ie a soccer(football) boot could be in the main site - then rugby, soccer and field hockey sub-sites. trying to do it manually would be a pain - having one site that feeds the others would be a breeze.

so you mean something like this ?
soccer shop
baseball shop
badminton shop
Volley shop
other

I hope we can have better multi shop features if many people sharing what they do/ modification here.

As for multi-store
That’s what I am using and find very useful, except for a few issues I still have not figured out yet.
how I use multi store - for my main domain outlet they sell All my different ranges of products, retail cost products, payment up front.

For my sub domain this is for my distribution 30 day payment account outlets for a product range that I have exclusive sole rights to import and distribute in the UK. they only see these products at the trade prices, and order on this site.

The issues I have are that on the checkout pages both sites show - worldpay payment and 30 day invoice payment,
still have not figured out how to show only the worldpay payment cart on retail products
and show the 30 day invoice on the trade payment cart, in other words make one of the payment carts invisible if using trade or retail.
If someone could point me in the right direction for this or supply a code snippet for this I would be grateful.
also is there away when someone goes to the sub domain site they cannot get onto the site until they sign in first so no one can else can see the trade prices.

as regard invoices, retail customers get a vat customer receipt, and trade account holders get a vat invoice.
looking at the coding, and not yet at that level to change, alter and install a duplicate and code for two different invoices, (Customer Receipt, and VAT Invoice) on the same installation, I have temporally used filemaker pro and download from the server and import to two alternate templates, Customer Receipt and VAT Invoice, at present I have a better control on the layout of these docs to what on them and how they are laid out. this is not really the way I want to go.

Daniel, if you read this what is your take on this. BTW. You have and are doing a damned good job with OC

I might not be an experienced programmer, still learning, but at my age I have been working in small business's for over 45 years and have a better feel for how the small business works and to streamline it and not to incur to many overheads, hooray for computers

Multi shop is a good way of trading....Here you can get many things in single place..I have seen the website and go through the links you have shared..It's really nice..The products you have featured are amazing..

I have a question about multi shop think. Can we place discounts system separately or each shop?

multi retail locations
multi warehouse locations
multi employee stations

would love something like this

needed for an international franchise operation

I have a website that stocks over 8000 items. I want to use multi store to have separate sites for a couple of the categories. However, I have no idea were to start. Is there a guide I have overlooked?

Your help is much appreciated.

Thanks labeshops

I am still clueless. I am on plesk so have no idea how to use and setup using different dmain names. Has anyone got any tips.

Much appreciated.

try http://forum.opencart.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=98202