Multisite - an installation success story

**nsspyder** · 15 Jun 2011, 02:02 AM

I'm using a variety of promotional mods - some from here and some from the software guy. I had to get pretty creative to allow different promotions on the different sites. The lifesaver turned out to be "include". Using that and the select_site feature, I am able to "include" different promo sets to each site.

I am pleased so far and getting ready to turn on the second site. Probably one night this week.

I hope I do not have to remind folks of the value in backups. I start every day by doing a full backup of the files and db. I never know and don't always remember what I will change of have changed. The backup has saved me hour and hours.

Christina, wife & business partner, knows nothing about internals. She stands as proof that you do not need to know internals to run a Zen shop. On the down side, some of her "simple" requests become 100 hour projects.

As for the "Sports Nutrition" industry, thousands of them are running ZenCart with good results. We have been in the industry over 30 years and take great pride in being pioneers in products and techniques. Our first on-line store was in 1997 using FrontPage of all things.

I will pass along links as soon as the second store is live. It isn't multisite until there is more than one

It is time for me to buy the ZenCart team a another cup of coffee. Then, a nap and back to preparing to merge customers and orders from the second site.

Lots more to follow.

**kobra** · 15 Jun 2011, 02:13 AM

I hope I do not have to remind folks of the value in backups. I start every day by doing a full backup of the files and db. I never know and don't always remember what I will change of have changed. The backup has saved me hour and hours.

A method that I use is to have a full file set on the local PC, and a recent zip of the files.

I only make changes to the local set - - then FTP them to the server
As a result, my local set mirrors the server set actively so that I do not need to back them up all the time

I cron the DB to backup daily and email me the resulting compressed file

**pfabrick** · 16 Jun 2011, 10:44 PM

In our recent upgrade, the core salemaker component wasn't working across multi-site appropriately. I've modified the table & query to use the site_name and added some functionality within the admin in order to be able to get site data associated with the sale. Just PM me if you would like those files.

As far as backups, I also follow Kobra's method and always zip up a copy of those local files before working on any major changes. Since Multi-site changes can have site-wide implications that may not be noticed immediately, I like to have stable "break-points" to fall back on if I find a problem later.

I'm following your adventures closely....wanting to see how it all turns out!

**nsspyder** · 17 Jun 2011, 04:47 PM

Whew! I turned on the second site. Christina, wife and partner, is now going through the products and cleaning up some of our bad habits.

We use Cross Sell. But, before we had it, we had links embeded in the product descriptions. She is going through the products and removing those. Christina is our product expert and views the site only as a tool. And she tends to fit the one tool mold. "When you have only a hammar, all problems look like nails". She knew links from her "FRONT PAGE" experience and did not fully understand the implications. She is on the program now because the burden of clearing all those broken links falls to her.

We selected our two lowest traffic sites for starters. This is allowing us to sanitize things before the higher traffic sites hit.

The second site was activated Wednesday evening and took its first order within about an hour.

We use two editors HtmlAREA and CKEditor. We like the image manager function in HtmlAREA. But, prefer the other features in CKEdit. I discovered, the hard way, that all images are easier to access and display if their pointer goes to the "parent" URL rather than the site URL.

As promised, here are the two domians operating under MultiSite at this point. They are not all that "pretty" yet as there is quite a bit of touchup remaining:
www.bodynfitness.com
www.sustevol.com

I will issue updates as things progress.

**kobra** · 17 Jun 2011, 04:56 PM

For future reference you might prefer not to have Google index your sites to the forum

Post sites like www dot bodynfitness dot com

**nsspyder** · 20 Jun 2011, 06:56 PM

This past weekend was demanding but rewarding. More of the enhancement modules were added. It is somewhat challenging to someone who is php disadvantaged to modify many of the modules to be site selective or to have different promotions for the different sites.

This is particularly true of additions to the "order total modules". I embedded the site select code into function selectors and created different functions for each "site". Then I execute the functions within "if" statements based on the current site.

The sites are presentable but still need visual touchup. Work is progressing on the next two sites.

**nsspyder** · 24 Oct 2011, 08:04 PM

Have been running 5 Domains under MultiSite. This exercise is not for the impatient. It is a bit of, "All questions are easy once you know the answer". I had the good sense to create everything on a fresh domian name, get it working, and then move the sites to the MultiSite. I did quite a bit of mixing. I have the actual "Mall" entrance, one Company Promotion, and three retail sites running. I have cut my site maintenance in half which allows more time to product promotion. I want to thank everyone who makes "mods" available. There re so many great aids and information available. ZenCart rocks!

**NWFAP** · 29 Dec 2011, 07:44 AM

Just read through the thread here - Looks like you are having good success with the Multisite module. That is great to hear it, I'm currently trying to set up the Multisite module on my website for multiple stores I'm running:

Store 1: Sells printing services to anyone who comes to our site / on this site I offer "Pros" a discount to professionals who are reselling my products

Store 2: Sells printing services through retail stores throughout the US that have websites with our products embedded into their site and we process them.

Store 3: Sells printing services and acts as a CMS for most my products.

Originally Posted by nsspyder

There are two sets of instruction materials. Bothe are available here. Find them and get them onto your machine. You will read them many times.

- Can you tell me where the two manuals are, I can't seem to locate them!

Originally Posted by nsspyder

The version of multisite that I installed, the latest one available at the time, had an incorrect admin/orders page. I had to retrieve a corrected on from an earlier version of multisite.

- Can you please tell what was incorrect about the admin/orders page? I'm currently using Super Orders mod with Multisite - will this not be an issue for me?

**ozprodesign** · 22 Mar 2012, 12:43 PM

Originally Posted by NWFAP

- Can you tell me where the two manuals are, I can't seem to locate them!

The instructions are here
http://www.thisdomain.net/dev/

**ozprodesign** · 22 Mar 2012, 01:04 PM

We are building a new 1.5 site with the multisite module installed. We had the guys at www.numinix.com update the multisite module to suit 1.5. We have asked them to upload the module to the add ons for everyone to use.
We were encouraged by nsspyder's great commentary on his experience with building their site to have go ourselves.
We shall keep you all posted