Digital goods and multiple stores

[pelliott67]

I posted this question a couple of days ago in a long thread that hasn't had and traffic for a while. I've had no response so I thought I'd try pulling it out into its own thread.

We're about to launch one store. Client now has reasons for licensing and running a second store from the same database. (I've reviewed all the information in this post viewtopic.php?f=42&t=8285) and others related to running multiple stores.)

The stores would share a huge amount of digital goods, and we don't want to duplicate the source files because of server space issues. I'm assuming that we'll need to have two separate AbleCommerce installations. Can both stores pull files from the same \App_Data\DigitalGoods folder?

Any help from AC development (or anyone else) would be greatly appreciated. The client is prepared to spend the additional $995 right now but there's a seasonal window after which it won't be worth it. We're not willing to recommend that they buy the additional license until we have some basis for believing we can access the same digital goods from both installations.

[mazhar]

Can both stores pull files from the same \App_Data\DigitalGoods folder?

No, you may need customization to handle this. One solution could be to do customization and provide your own code for download support in the download handler. You can also try to find out some way to create some symbolic link for App_Data folders so that App_Data folders actually point to a single physical path.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_symbolic_link