activex Posted February 15, 2013 Share Posted February 15, 2013 (edited) Hi, If I have 2 stores both on separate domains, using prestashop. www.shop1.com www.shop2.com And I am trying to connect them using the "fantastic" multi store feature. But despite what prestashop claims, I cannot set these up so they connect. It seems more and more now, as if you can ONLY set up multiple stores on the SAME domain.......which is not what I want AT ALL. If I run many different shops. I want to connect them and run them all through 1 back office.....JUST like prestashop have promised IS fully possible. But there is no way of connecting them. Nowhere to input any external database or login info. So how could they be connected at all? I just don't see the logic here. And the strangest thing is, that it seems nobody else have run into this. I google and google but NO questions or answers about this. Which to me seems very strange. I have been waiting literally for years for this feature. So naturally when it was announced and finally came, I was overjoyed. And as I had hoped for, Prestashop brags about being able to run as many shops as you want, EVEN external ones, through 1 backoffice. Well, now I have upgraded my stores for this sole purpose. To finally be able to have customers share carts between my shops, to finally make all my product, price and stock changes in one and the same place. But then, when I try to set up my shops in multi store, I find that it is in no way possible to do so..... What the hell......? Am I missing something here? Why have no one else commented on this? It HAS to be me, right? It's gotta be something I am missing completely......at least I truly hope so. If it IS somehow possible to connect several external domains together, so that it IS possible to actually have completely separate shops and manage them all through the same backoffice....then why on earth is there NO documentation on this? Nothing, not a word anywhere.... If I have for example a NIKE shoe shop on www.nike.com, and also a camera shop selling cameras on www.cameras.com, then obviously I don't want my nike customers to have to go to www.cameras.com/nike to buy their shoes. So answer me this, how can prestashop CLAIM that you CAN use their "fancy" multi shop solution to run both of these from one backoffice, when I can't? So, to sum up: I have absolutely NO need for multiple "shops" on the same domain. That's not even multiple shops, it's just ONE shop running different variations in sub-folders, making it APPEAR as different shops. Which seems very pointless to me, at least in my case. So I ask you guys, have I completely misunderstood their advertising of the use of their "multi shop"? OR have I completely missed something crucial in the setup of these multi stores, and it actually IS possible to connect external domains.....? If so.....where on earth is the documentation to explain this procedure? Best regards, Completely Confused Edited February 15, 2013 by activex (see edit history) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Patron Posted February 15, 2013 Share Posted February 15, 2013 http://doc.prestashop.com/display/PS15/Managing+multiple+shops Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Patron Posted February 15, 2013 Share Posted February 15, 2013 I think what you are confused about is that the PS MultiShop is one installtion with multiple shops. Having different installations is just that...different installations, each with their own back office. I don't know of any information claiming you could (or would even want to) have different installtions from one back office. And if you read the documentation they pretty much right off tell you that you can not share carts across stores.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trip Posted February 16, 2013 Share Posted February 16, 2013 (edited) First, there is a lot possible with multishop but when you work with an upgraded shop I can copy that some things are at least misleading. After bombing the bug tracker as I had the impression some features like the category generation seemed at least inconsistent I came to the solution that you generate a new shop group, enable the features you want (share customers, products, etc.pp) and generate new shops if desired, as copies from your old in the default group. After that change the main url in the default group shop to "nowhere" and start configuring the new shop in the new shop group and forget about the default group Whatever setup you wish I strongly suggest you to test this on a local installation like I did, if necessary 20 installations and repeat the steps untill you are confident and satisfied with the result. Last but not least, read the manual . Multishop is cool but to understand the concept needs some time. You should be aware that a wrong setup/design might become hard if not impossible to fix espacially if you don't understand the concept 100% and maybe have some knowledge about the database structure. Good luck, trip Edited February 16, 2013 by Trip (see edit history) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jan Jansen Posted February 16, 2013 Share Posted February 16, 2013 Multishop is indeed a HOAX. "Well, now I have upgraded my stores for this sole purpose. To finally be able to have customers share carts between my shops, to finally make all my product, price and stock changes in one and the same place." This is something you cannot do: share the cart/login. I also have the same feeling about Prestashop. They say that they provide a real multishop function in version 1.5, but there is no real multishop at all. There is no shared cart and there is not a shared login. I made a post at the bug tracker about this subject: http://forge.prestashop.com/browse/PSCFV-7676 And I made thread over here: http://www.prestashop.com/forums/topic/221964-shared-cart-for-all-my-websites-in-the-multishop-group/ Another person made a thread about it here: http://www.prestashop.com/forums/topic/219137-several-shops-same-cart-what-would-you-do/ And a another one over here: http://www.prestashop.com/forums/topic/200209-multi-shop-different-domains-config/ Not a single reply of the Prestashop staff.. After all our input and after all the confusion. I feel very sad about this because I put ONE YEAR of development in my shops. And I found out that the cart/login is not shared when I enabled the multishop. I hope that there will be a solution. The information in the backoffice: http://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/images/stories/edu/prestashop1.5/Advanced_Paramaters/Multistore/share-orders.png is VERY misleading and makes no sense at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trip Posted February 16, 2013 Share Posted February 16, 2013 (edited) -- I have todo more tests. Sorry. Under some circumstances I had that working on a test installation but after I added a third shop instance it throws new errors ... so hope dies last. I will stay tuned. Greetz, trip Edited February 17, 2013 by Trip (see edit history) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jan Jansen Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 -- I have todo more tests. Sorry. Under some circumstances I had that working on a test installation but after I added a third shop instance it throws new errors ... so hope dies last. I will stay tuned. Greetz, trip Wow Trip! I was on vacation for a week, so I missed your post. You had the cart shared over 2+ shops?? Instable; but it worked? Please keep me/us updated, thanks for everything! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trip Posted February 23, 2013 Share Posted February 23, 2013 Sorry. I must keep expectations low. Last week I downloaded a developement version where it seemed to work but only when shops had the same root category. I downloaded a version today and could not reprodruce it. Maybe it was some strange coincidende like old cookies. I have no idea atm. Sorry if I raised wrong expectations. Best regards, trip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jan Jansen Posted February 23, 2013 Share Posted February 23, 2013 Sorry. I must keep expectations low. Last week I downloaded a developement version where it seemed to work but only when shops had the same root category. I downloaded a version today and could not reprodruce it. Maybe it was some strange coincidende like old cookies. I have no idea atm. Sorry if I raised wrong expectations. Best regards, trip Still thank you so much for trying! Please don't be sorry, any input to this subject is always more then welcome and much appreciated. If I found out something myself I will share it of course. Kind regards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trip Posted February 24, 2013 Share Posted February 24, 2013 Hi Jan, unfortunatly I am not such an expert on this topic. As Elpatron stated in a PM, cookies are bound to a domain. There are workarounds, iframes, a dedicated third cookie domain and others like described here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2956214/cross-domains-sessions-shared-shopping-cart-cross-domains which might be a start. You can see when you uncomment line 270 in classes/cookie.php printf("\$content = %s<br />", $content); that id_guest, id_connections, id_cart and the checksums are different for every shop instance. In general I think someone might be able to create a hack to make that happen but the multi-shop design from ps imo has a really flexible approach but is not made for the portal like site structure you might have in mind. For most people it would have negative effects. PS multishop is designed that every shop instance can have own staff, payment options, own warehouses and so on. If someone might be able to checkout on a different shop how will these orders, payments be split? What I want to say is you can not have all the features available at the same time. I do not know but I guess the shopping carts that have these features lack the possibilities PS offers or they have to catch a lot of exceptions when which setup can be enabled or not. You should also keep in mind that you need a custom search function which works over all domains and maybe other customisations which are not build in. But anyway may I ask you what exactly is the purpose of your approach? How many product do you have? How many shops are you planning to build? Best regards, trip 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jan Jansen Posted March 1, 2013 Share Posted March 1, 2013 Hi Jan, unfortunatly I am not such an expert on this topic. As Elpatron stated in a PM, cookies are bound to a domain. There are workarounds, iframes, a dedicated third cookie domain and others like described here http://stackoverflow...t-cross-domains which might be a start. You can see when you uncomment line 270 in classes/cookie.php printf("\$content = %s<br />", $content); that id_guest, id_connections, id_cart and the checksums are different for every shop instance. In general I think someone might be able to create a hack to make that happen but the multi-shop design from ps imo has a really flexible approach but is not made for the portal like site structure you might have in mind. For most people it would have negative effects. PS multishop is designed that every shop instance can have own staff, payment options, own warehouses and so on. If someone might be able to checkout on a different shop how will these orders, payments be split? What I want to say is you can not have all the features available at the same time. I do not know but I guess the shopping carts that have these features lack the possibilities PS offers or they have to catch a lot of exceptions when which setup can be enabled or not. You should also keep in mind that you need a custom search function which works over all domains and maybe other customisations which are not build in. But anyway may I ask you what exactly is the purpose of your approach? How many product do you have? How many shops are you planning to build? Best regards, trip Hi Trip, Thank you so much for thinking together with me! For some odd reason I did not mention your post earlier... Sorry about that. I don't have any PHP experience unfortunately, I have completely designed the shops without programming PHP myself (only made some very small PHP changes). Prestashop is indeed very flexible, because I made everything, besides the shared cart and login, exactly as I wanted from the start. I started 100% from scratch and I designed my shops/platform in a graphic design program like Photoshop initially. Now 1 year later I got the shops exactly looking and functioning as I designed initially. I did not have to make any compromises. So besides the big disappointment of the shared cart and the shared login. Prestashop has been a great solution for us. Our plan is to release a platform which functions like www.mp3shop.nl. But then with shops that have completely different products as they sell. So specialized shops: each shop has one type of product. Like MP3shop.nl has: MP3players. We got for example: tableshop.com and we sell tables. But for chairs we have chairshop.com for example. For the consumer this is the best way to shop online, because most consumers are looking for 1 specific product and they search for that on the internet, if they find a specialist in that area then they will keep looking in that specialized store. It is also good for SEO, because the product name is in the domainname. But if the consumer goes from tableshop.com to just take a look at chairshop.com, and they find out/mention that the table that they just added to the cart: is gone. Then the consumer will not understand this and click our shop away.. So for that reason I'm really desperate to get this feature implemented before we launch the shops. Also consumers that like our store should be able to login 1 time, and keep shopping at all stores without having to "re-login" every time for every new domainname. I can't disclose our exact productline yet, but we have plans to build over 10+ shops in the near future. So the shared cart and login is really a must for us. I will share the shops with you in pm, when we have launched our platform(and this problem is fixed). You can try to make a order at: soap.com or mp3shop.nl (take some products from the other shops too), then you will see exactly what the purpose is of this approach. The fact that the search function isn't shared between the shops isn't a big obstable for us, no other customusations are needed for us besides the shared cart and login. Thanks again for the great suggestions Trip, and if you found something more, please let me know! If you found a solution I will donate something to you. Kind regards, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trip Posted March 2, 2013 Share Posted March 2, 2013 Hi Jan, I understood the concept already. Unfortunately google seems, at least with the last update, give super strong credibility to top keyword domains (again?!). Even if there are, what I would call lame, doorway pages they outrank my top positions. I myself made one test which I stopped after two months as I have seen building these pages not necessarily encourages the customers to go to the main shop pages so what happens I downrank my own pages where I really wanted to be found. So if you really have a functioning shop on that domains, chances are high that people will buy there except for people like me who smell the fish . So I understand the concept and see that it is temptive. I for myself rented some top keyword domains but just to avoid that they are be taken over by competitors. There are a couple of disadvantages. Do not get me wrong, I don't want to discuss away your need but I've seen competitors with similar approaches, mirroring there shops on keyword domains which slight changes in layout, keywords and so on and despite the "this is duplicate content penalty" warners they are or were partly successful with this approach. The problem is a) most people do not know the concept of shopping over different domains. Maybe you have one or two successfull examples but in 99% I would suggest that people are confused. If you don't have a universal search it is relatively pointless because I don't believe many people will buy there tables on table.com than change to chair.com to add a chair und than goto cushion.com to find a cushion. This might have more disadvantages than pros. You can not use features like recommend products in a way this chair and this table are fitting together and I doubt most people like the domain hopping approach. What happens if google changes it's algo again? Let's say google bot recognizes 10 top keyword domains on one ip address, all interlinked together -> conclusion, keyword spammer -> mission failed. The thing is, maybe your example built the site over years adding domains in a "natural way" or already had the domain authority that google trusts the domain besides the construct is fishy. From a SEO point of view it is much more complicated to build authority for x Domains than for one. As I said atm, the top keyword domains have imo to much authority allready but you can not rely on that. Maybe next month they are all ranked into the nirvana and to be honest, I would appreciate that. I am really getting tired of those pages and some people might feel decieved too. c) Imo it is more importand to build a strong brand. People will not memorize or it least will find it quite unsexy to tell their friends I bought a table from table.com. In your example they will say I bought it from cool blue or whatever. As you said one time they are leaders in NL so they have a strong brand name allready. They do not have to worry but you at least have to keep that in mind that you need a main site with you company brand and that customers have access to the products of all shops. So anyway, I can give you a lot more cons and really just a few pros on the cool blue approach. You always should keep in mind google suggests build sites for humans not for SEO. Some people allready say SEO in a classic way is dead. Googles focus goes strict in the social direction. So even if your approach is partly successfull all you visitors spreaded over 10 domains telling google that it is a less importand site. From my experiece after a couple of years over 50% of my customers are searching for my shop name not for the keywords and although I might be able to build other shops on keyword domains I would never risk that kicking my main shop from my top positions and I am quite positive that many people will smell the fish when they recognize that a shop is placing their products over different domains and find it quite annoying. These were just a few thoughts, I do not want to bring you away from your idea and maybe you have all that taken into consideration. The approach might sound temptive but with my experience I would never do that even if I could .... but on the other hand I must say I have some niche products so I was able to get good serps without those techniques but maybe with other products it is the only chance to get a good serp when you have to compete with amazon or cool blue?! I don't know and doubt there is a 100% clear answer All the best, trip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jan Jansen Posted March 2, 2013 Share Posted March 2, 2013 (edited) Thanks Trip for sharing your opinions with me. I thought about most of these things before I started to work on this project, the search algorithm can indeed change fast, so I can't be sure if I get top ranking with this type of approach, but also with a regular website it will be hard to get good SEO. So I share some of the same concerns with you about the SEO. This is my biggest worry about my approach (besides the shared cart/login). I want to add the following to A: your worries about the consumer. My website does not look even a bit as a normal Prestashop website. I designed everything 100% myself, the concept is very very clear, and we own really great domainnames with the same ending for all keywords that we plan to use in the future. I am sure that the concept itself won't fail in the eyes of the consumer. Because the way the concept is build up; the navigation through our sites is even more clear then the navigation on the websites from our competitors, that sell the same products on one website. B> a another example from the Netherlands has nr.1 position in Google for several highly competitive search terms. I tracked the IP of their domainnames: they all have the same IP adress. For them it didn't seem to influence their ranking in Google at all, because they have the best positions imaginable. But this can indeed change, if Google makes some changes, every webshop owner need to be very careful about this subject. It is indeed very difficult to get a good position on the high competitive domainnames now. The example is: telescoop.nl, verrekijker-expert.nl, expert-shops.nl C) True, behind the different shops is 1 strong brand. In the design I really focused on this point. In the end I am still very convinced that this is the right approach. So I'm still searching and searching to a solution to get the cart and the login shared between our shops. Any input is welcome, thanks again Trip! Edited March 2, 2013 by Jan Jansen (see edit history) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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