[SOLVED] PS 1.5.2 Multi-Shop domain question

[rturner]

Right now I've got two shops set up and functioning pretty well. In the cpanel domain of the first shop, I parked the domain of the second shop. Then I added an SSL certificate for the first shop. Both shops are set up in /, no subdirectories.

 

Adding SSL for the second shop seems to be trickier. Since it's a parked domain, and I can only have one SSL cert. per cpanel, I first had the idea to create a separate cpanel for the second shop and add SSL that way. Since the domain would remain the same, and the only difference being I'm using 2 cpanels instead of 1, it should work, right?

 

Or maybe not. Reading the 1.5 docs, it seems that the two shops are running from the one database with URL-rewriting accomplishing the two shops. So I'm wondering what happens when I add the second domain to its own cpanel. It's no longer parked and it points to a dedicated IP address (for SSL). Does the magic of URL-rewriting keep it chugging along? Or should I possibly create a c-panel just for the SSL and make it a subdomain. (not sure if I can create a cpanel for a sub-domain). ? I know the developers designed it to run a bunch of stores, and each store needs SSL, I'm just not sure how to do it. Any experience? Thx.

Edited December 5, 2012 by rturner (see edit history)

[rturner]

I finally solved it. I'm sure others will run into this once the multi-shop feature starts spreading.

 

First I tried removing the second shop domain from parked domains in cpanel. Then I created another account with that domain name hoping my second store would "just work". If it did, I could add an SSL certificate to that account. Unfortunately, it didn't work, so I closed the account and went back to parking the second store domain on the first store's domain. I still needed SSL, but I can't have 2 dedicated IPs and SSL certs in one cpanel.

 

So I created another account in whm: ssl.storenumbertwo.com. Then I added an SSL certificate to that subdomain. Next I created a 301 redirect from the ssl.storenumbertwo.com to https://www.storenumbertwo.com. It still didn't work, but wait, there's more.

 

At the same time, I was playing with Cloudflare. Your host has to have it installed on your system, then you can open free accounts at cloudflare.com or pro accounts (which can do SSL). You change your name servers to theirs. You add your IP addresses to their DNS setup. So, storenumberone had it's own SSL and it was set up nicely with cloudflare after a bit of testing on my part. With storenumbertwo, I created a CNAME record for ssl.storenumbertwo.com and entered my two IP addresses, one for www.storenumbertwo.com, which was still parked on storenumberone.com and the other dedicated IP address I created for ssl.storenumbertwo.com and had its own cpanel.

 

Then I created two Page Rules for storenumbertwo. https://ssl.storenumbertwo.com/ was forwarding to https://www.storenumbertwo.com/* https://www.storenumbertwo.com/* had the Cloudflare Apps button clicked off for simplicity's sake. We don't want anything messing with our SSL.

 

Back in the Prestashop Advanced/Multi-Shop configuration area, I typed in www.storenumbertwo.com for the SSL URL. Remember, DNS is forwarding ssl.storenumbertwo.com to www.storenumberone.com.

 

That's basically it. It took two days of messing around and trial and error. Hopefully not so long for someone else.

[sactonet]

Thanks for posting this, I'm also trying to setup multiple SSL domains. I have one question though, is your SSL certificate a wildcard, or for a single host/domain? (*.store.com vs. www.store.com)

 

Thanks.

[rturner]

No, my SSL certs are for single domains. I think the newest version of PS can handle ssl sharing, which I'm interested in.

[sactonet]

Oh I meant whether it was one of the more economical SSL certs that basically just covers www.store.com, vs a wildcard that covers subdomains like www AND ssl.store.com. The wildcard SSL's are really expensive.. around $150 vs $10 for the other certificate. The Multi-Domain ones are even more, but seem like they're easier to configure with this multistore setup.

 

I'm definitely looking into the SNI Multiple Domain SSL certificates, but our server doesn't support it yet. (still on an old version of centOS), and I'm trying to use your steps to get ours working on multiple IP's.

 

Also when you said you created two page rules above, did you do this in cloudflare? Could you elaborate on that step a bit more? I really appreciate your help here! Thank You.

[rturner]

I'm not using Cloudflare now, so I'm going from memory. You basically set up a CNAME to run your site through cloudflare. I had set up ssl.domain.com in a separate cpanel so that I could install a dedicated IP and certificate in addition to the dedicated ip/cpanel I had set up for the main domain in the multi-store setup. In Cloudflare, I created Page Rules (easy and explained in Cloudflare) that pointed ssl.domain.com to www.domain.com (remember, I had domain.com parked in the main cpanel of the multi-store, so ssl.domain.com had a different IP address and a separate cpanel) Cloudflare page rules made it so that I had SSL in my second store whenever I needed it, either with a www.domain.com call or an ssl.domain.com call) Hope this isn't confusing. I went through all this to get separate ssl certificates on each store in a multi-store environment. Since last December, I've been running PS 1.5.* sites as individual installs, no more multi-store for me. But it did work when I had it.

[sactonet]

Great... I'll give it a go. Thanks for your time and for clearing that up!

[S7 Media Ltd]

Thankyou. I'm going to add this to my favourites.