Can this be done?

[mikey2012]

Hi,

I'm sorry if this is posted in the wrong section but this seemed like the most logical place to post.

I've come in search of advice to see if what I want to do is possible with Zen cart and how easy / hard it will be to set up if it is possible.

I'm using Zen Cart 1.5.1 by the way.........

What I want is 2 or 3 shop fronts listing completely different products but with a shared customer registration and ordering system so that the users and orders are all handled in one place.

EG, customer signs up to site A which automatically signs him up with Site B.
Customer makes an order with site A which is processed at a central point.
Customer returns later to order from site B and signs in with the details he signed up with at site A.
Customer places an order from site B which is handled at the same place as the order made earlier at site A.


Any ideas anyone?


Since the two main product types I will be selling are unrelated, I can't lump them together and I can't really market them to their full potential without a dedicated sales point for each product type.

This means I've either got to set up multiple zen carts and manage each and every one with probably hundreds of items or come up with some eleaborate means to share one zen cart admin with about 2 or 3 shop fronts somehow so I can show one lot of products on one site and another on another but handle all the customers and orders (and maybe stock levels too if possible) in one place.


Sorry if that's confusing.. Maybe I should have just wrote out what I wanted in logical pseudo code or something.. I'm rubish at describing complicated things in normal sentances lol


Thanks!

[stevesh]

There used to be a Multi-Site mod which did at least some of what you want to do, but I don't see it in the Plugins, so it may have been withdrawn. As I recall, it wasn't all that stable, anyway. There isn't any way to do that otherwise that I'm aware of.

Edit: here it is: http://www.zen-cart.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=378 but I would be surprised if it worked with Zencart version 1.5 without updating.

Other than the cutomer login 'bridge', I don't see why having two separate admins would be all that difficult - I often have more than one site's admin open in the browser. I usually change the styling (colors, mostly) in one so I can tell at a glance which one I'm working with.

[mikey2012]

Thanks for replying Stevesh.

I did look at that multisite module but drew the same conclusion as you.. Too outdated but I may look at it again later to see how difficult it would be to bring it up to date with Zen Cart 1.5.1 if I can't find any other solution.

I've got some ideas floating around at the moment after you mentioned a bridge and it's gotten me thinking.....

Going to go have a rethink about this and maybe aproach it from an entirely different angle :)

[dturnertms]

If you were to set up 2 separate carts and then have a program written that copies over the orders and customers to a 3rd master cart then you'll have the problem of the same customer and order id's overlapping. To get round this you could through admin Tools, Store Manager set the Order Id to start in one of the carts at a high value and the other start at 1 so they don't run into each other but you'll also need to ensure the product ids and category ids don't overlap aswel before you set them all up.

The customers sit in the zen_customers table and the orders in the zen_orders table so pooling these would be quite simple but you're still going to be left with the problem of displaying all the details of those orders becasue you want to see the product information which sits in multiple product tables.

Possbily the simplest approach, but still quite involved, would be to :


1. Set up 2 separate carts ensuring non-overlapping product, category, order and customer ids (and if your products have attributes further ids to deal with)

2. Set up a third cart and have a routine to import all the product data from the first 2 carts

3. AS the 2 carts go online have a routine that periodically exports the customers and orders data from both carts and imports them into the third

4. If there are any changes to the product or category data in either of the 2 carts then this will require the same alterations be made to the third

5. For the customers another routine would need writing to keep all 3 carts with identical customer table


You would then be able to log in to the 3rd cart and see all the orders from both store-front carts and all the customers in one place. Logging into the admin area then of each of the order carts would mean you'd see all the customers but only the orders which were placed through the particular site. If you process orders through the 3rd cart then the customers won't get to see the order status as they don't have access to the 3rd cart data so this might be a snag. If, however, you aren't bothered about giving customers the ability to do this then the above might be a solution. If though your products have attributes then this is going to complicate things more.