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MulitStore for different domains


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I have two stores that I would like to manage items for and would like to try and use the MultiStore feature of PS 1.5. However I don't know if it will work for my requirements.

 

I have two domains, e.g. www.domainone.com & www.differentdomain.com

 

Is it possible to use the MultiStore option for these two domains and to manage and share products between them? If so, how do I go about this, do I have to install PrestaShop twice and configure from one store, or is just one install required?

 

Also, would this negatively affect SEO results? I currently have really good search-engine results and don't want to loose this.

 

Any help would be great...

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here is the official PS multishop document:

http://doc.prestashop.com/display/PS15/Managing+multiple+shops

 

as for SEO, you should become familiar with this document:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=182192

 

Be very careful about having same content on two gTLD (global Top Level Domains), i.e. two .com's. It makes no difference if you use a multishop, as search engines will view each domain as distinct entities.

 

Multishop coupled with PS product catalog by country....is the perfect storm. :)

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Thanks for the quick reply elpatron,

 

I hade read that PS doc, but I couldn't really figure out if it could do what I want. Also, it doesn't explain how to implement for my requirements, I don't know if I need to install PS twice or just once and how to configure this etc...!

 

Thanks also for the SEO doc, I am not interested in displaying my sites in multiple languages, but do want to duplicate some content.

 

Basically one store will have a range of different motorcycle products for various manufacturers etc. This is a .com domain. The other site, which is a .ie domain (both sites have completly different names), will specialize in parts for only 3-4 models of motorcycle and all of these parts will be duplicated from the first site, which will also display these parts.

 

I currently have this setup implemented but not in PS and not as mulit-stores. Both sites are independent of each other and receive really good search engine results.

 

Do you think it is a good idea to move to this PS setup and is it possible with PS MulitStore?

 

Many thanks in advance...

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If it's not broke don't fix it. As for the google doc, I hear that each time I suggest it, you need to read and understand the entire document, don't get fixated by the language...the key, and what you stated, not having more than one gTLD, you would not be penalized for duplicate content, which is different then your original post.

 

You can do what you described with ps1.5.2, I'd would install a test site and work with importing your products and getting the general lay of the land.

 

I had not realized you were not already on ps...you may concern then would be changed links, for all those embedded links that may be floating on the www keeping the same or having rewrites to the new shop would be your main goal.

 

ps is pretty nice...and worth taking the time to get some hands on experience.

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I am actually using PS for a couple of other sites, so do know it is a good solution. This is the main reason I want to move these two sites to PS, that and the possibility of being able to manage these two sites from the one admin panel :)

 

I will have to see about the links though. I will look to add a redirect to all "www.mydomain.com/whatever-link" maybe just to my home-page.

 

Just on the setup, I think what I need to do is to add a redirect on my domain, I am using shared (helm) hosting. Do you know if when I add the redirect will the address bar show the domain of the added (2nd) store, or will it show the domain of the main (1st) store?

 

Thanks again for your advice...

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm still having some difficulties setting this up.

 

I'm testing multishop.

And i have something like wwww.domain1.com and created a subdomain test.domain1.com.

 

The prestashop is in domain.com/store/

And in the BO, I have something like:

group: Default

- Shop1

- - www.doman1.com/store/

group: test

- test

- - test.domain1.com/store/

 

I have set different themes for each shop. Both work, but it always show one the one in shop1 even if i enter the test.domain1.com/store

I use Zettahost (it was cheap for testing). The subdomain has the following options:

Hostin Path (Local)

Frame Redirect (Hide target URL)

Header Redirect (Show target URL)

 

I have choosen the 2nd one. point it to the PS folder.

What it i did wrong? And whats the solution to do what i want (at the moment is to get different themes depending on the URL)?

 

Thanks for you pacience...

Pedro

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Check out this post, I managed to get it working. However I actually gave up on trying to use a MultiStore for now, I found too many things would go wrong with it!

 

Here are some of the issues I noticed while working with a MultiStore:

  • Modules dropping from 2nd store - For some reason some modules would just stop working in the second store and I could not get them working again, even though they were configured correctly in the BO.
  • Categories order gets mixed up - The order of the categories displayed on the left menu bar gets messed up. When I did a category import first time they looked fine. However after doing additional category imports, the order of these categories got mixed up and cannot easily be re-ordered.
  • Select required categories on 2nd store, don’t display right away. - I had to do an additional import of the categories to make the selected categories display only for the second store.

This was enough to make me just build two separate stores. This is how I will manage it for now, until I can be sure the MultiStore option works a bit better.

 

Sorry I can't be of any more help...

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