Share a database between stores

[damonp]

To get a list of files to edit, grep the source for TABLE_CATEGORIES. Pretty much every category query needs a

and top_category = ...

[rknepp79]

Thanks for the heads up. I was able to use the Developer's toolkit to find most of the locations. I've also modified several queries that pull all products regardless of category (thus the category table was not found with the toolkit). And finally I created a sidebox that lists the departments (which is how I am using this concept) and allows the user to change to whichever view they want.

All in all, it was much easier than I first thought it would be. I've also developed a few secondary pages that allow me to administer the departments via the frontend as well as assign/modify categories to the departments.

Now that the bulk of the work is done, I want to go back and winMerge compare the files with the originals because I know there were several places where I modified the originals instead of the overrides (ugg!). I'm also starting to pickup on some of the Zencart API... honestly, I'd rather write stuff myself, but it's nice to know that stuff... is there any detailed documentation on the Zencart API????

Once the system is ready from a data standpoint, I want to modify it to use a different stylesheet depending on the department selected. So if someone is in the Toys department, they will see bright colors and matching header images, but while in Electronics department the colors will be more metalic and the imagery more techo... at least that's the plan.