Multiple Able Sites

[Tomgard]

I plan to purchase addition Able Licenses for additional sites but is it possible to use the same item/product database for the site (Images, Pricing, Product Specs, etc). Each site will have its own template, customers, order sequence, etc but I would just like to maintain one database of images and descriptions.

Can this be done?

[mazhar]

Templates could be different and database could be same for two Able stores but you can not have different order sequence and customers for both stores. Both stores will share all database stuff nothing different.

[jmestep]

You can run some SQL routines or the dataport utility to copy the catalog info from one database to the other.

[Robbie@FireFold]

So I could have one signal database with multiple sites feeding from it?

Would all orders go to the same order manager?

[mazhar]

So I could have one signal database with multiple sites feeding from it?

Would all orders go to the same order manager?

Yes, the multiple sites will just change the look and feel of the web site. All store will share the same information exposed by single db. Similarly all store admin sides will mange single database information.

[Tomgard]

Mahzar -
If each store shared the same DB is it possible to hide/ghost a category in 'Store A' but have it visable in 'Store B'?

Also, if a customer signs up for a mailing list in 'store A' they are also going to be signed up in 'store B'????

[Brewhaus]

I am actually working on running multiple stores from one DB (just started). If memory serves, you set up your mailing lists, so you should be able to manipulate which mailing list signup is shown on each store.

As I make some headway I will post my results to left everyone know if this is feasible, and just how involved it will be. So far I do know that in order to make changes to items such as the header, you will need to manipulate the files on the server- you cannot make changes to the second store from within the Admin area. Also, your theme folder (and all files) will need to have the same names.

[mazhar]

Mahzar -
If each store shared the same DB is it possible to hide/ghost a category in 'Store A' but have it visable in 'Store B'?

Also, if a customer signs up for a mailing list in 'store A' they are also going to be signed up in 'store B'????

Please read the following thread, some ideas have been already discussed here.
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=8285

[Brewhaus]

We are in the process of putting the second store onto the DB, but are having a problem getting the e-mail list subscription to place the customer into the correct list. By looking at the file it should simply be a matter of changing 'default="0"' to the correct list (in our case, default="2"). This does not seem to work. Are we overlooking something?

[mazhar]

You can also specify the EmailListId as below

Code: Select all

[[ConLib:SubscribeToEmailList EmailListId = "Your desired EmailListId here"]]

[Brewhaus]

This still puts the customer into Email List "1" (the default list). Do we need to change anything in the aspx.cs file to get this to function correctly?

[mazhar]

It seems that in your case there goes something wrong and EmailListId always gets 0 value and following code gets triggered.

Code: Select all

if (_EmailListId == 0)
        {
            _EmailListId = Token.Instance.Store.Settings.DefaultEmailListId;
        }

[Brewhaus]

I do not believe that we made any customizations to our ConLib file, but will double-check to make sure. If we still have problems, can we simply change

_EmailListId = Token.Instance.Store.Settings.DefaultEmailListId;

to
_EmailListId = "2";

on our second site, seeing as it uses its own set of Scriptlet and ConLib files?

[Brewhaus]

I actually had to change the ID in both the .aspx and .cs files, but it is functioning now.

A different issue that I was hoping would be a little easier to overcome is the Featured Products grid. In the Products table, the only options for the IsFeatured field are 0 and 1. Can we add an additional column to the table (for example IsFeaturedStore2) that we can use to pull the featured list for the second store? And, if we can add a column without messing anything up, what change do we make to the Featured Products Grid to pull from the new column instead of the current column?

With that issue resolved, I believe that we will successfully have two stores running on one db, and without a great deal of customization.

[jmestep]

Since there is no built in way to use store ids, you could make another featured products conlib and put an if around the code to get the featured products based on the store id
psuedo code;
If storeid =1
{
ProductList.DataSource = ProductDataSource.GetRandomFeaturedProducts(0, true, this.Size);
}
or something similar.

[Brewhaus]

I was actually thinking of something even simpler- create a 'new' featured grid, which would display a category. We could then set up a category where we would place products we wanted showing in the grid.

The biggest thing will likely be how to get the products organized by random instead of by name, price, etc.

[jmestep]

I think if you didn't put them in a different category, but filtered on the store id, they would still be random and you wouldn't have the work of putting them in a category. Maybe I'm not interpreting what you are doing correctly. In Able 5, two stores in the same database had a different storeid.

[Brewhaus]

Able tells me that the system will not operate multiple stores on the same db. This is something that is in the works, and they basically added the fields into the db for when the version arrives, but that it is still quite a way out.

Assuming that to be the case, we cannot pull the featured items based on store ID. Besides, products are given a store that they go into, so I assume if we used a different store ID we would not have those items for the 'other' store showing.

Besides, setting up a category to use for the featured items is not a hassle. We set the category up, and can control which items show by adding them to or removing them from the category. I assume that we could basically use a copy of the category grid that we use throughout the store, and then find a way to make the list show at random instead of in a specific order.

If anyone can find problems in my line of thinking, please let me know before I put a bunch of time into it.

[Brewhaus]

Is there a way to (easily) alter the FeaturedProductGrid to pull from a specific category instead of pulling based on the IsFeatured field?

[mazhar]

Here is the code line which loads the featured products

Code: Select all

ProductList.DataSource = ProductDataSource.GetRandomFeaturedProducts(0, true, this.Size);

You can change it as below to load featured products from specified category

Code: Select all

ProductList.DataSource = ProductDataSource.GetRandomFeaturedProducts(categoryId here, true, this.Size);

Just replace the categoryId here text with the actual category id.

[Brewhaus]

When I try to change 'categoryid here' with a category ID, I still pull from the featured list, but the number of items shown changes. It does not change to items from the category matching the ID that I enter.

[mazhar]

After this change it should list only the featured products belonging to that specific category.

[Brewhaus]

What we actually need to do is to list items from a new category, and not pull from the IsFeatured list at all. If that is not possible (or relatively simple), then we may be able to mess with this to make it work for two separate stores.

[mazhar]

Well in this case you can update the following line of code

Code: Select all

ProductList.DataSource = ProductDataSource.GetRandomFeaturedProducts(0, true, this.Size);

with below code

Code: Select all

        CommerceBuilder.Catalog.CatalogNodeCollection nodes = CommerceBuilder.Catalog.CatalogDataSource.LoadForCategory(categoryId,true);
        ProductCollection products = new ProductCollection();
        foreach(CommerceBuilder.Catalog.CatalogNode node in nodes)
        {
            if(node.CatalogNodeType == CommerceBuilder.Catalog.CatalogNodeType.Product)
                products.Add((Product)node.ChildObject);
        }
        ProductList.DataSource = products;

Now it will just load the products form any category you mentioned.

[Brewhaus]

There is only one more thing to do (I believe) in order to complete the project and get multiple stores operating across a single database- the e-mail confirmations. I cannot find where the e-mail references are made so that we can create separate e-mails for things such as order confirmation. This e-mail templates appear to be maintained in the database, but there must be a file that actually selects the e-mail to send out to the customer.

Is there a file where we can alter the e-mail being sent? For example, can we somehow add a flat figure (such as 20) to the e-mail ID being sent?

One other small issue is the search results. Is there any way to have searches return only matching products that belong to specific categories? This would allow for different search results for the separate stores.