Hi everyone. This is my first post here, although I've been sneaking around in the shadows for the past few weeks. I'm glad I found ZenCart as it making my new business much easier. :) I'm an experienced web developer and have found the code to be very clean and useful for me.

I have a question although I'm not sure how to word it. Hmmm... I need multiple store departments using a single install of Zencart. What I would like to have is each department acting as if it were it's own store, with it's own templates, styles, define pages, sideboxes, products and categories.... the stores would share admins, customers, and everything else.... it would be real nice to set this up with subdomains: i.e. store1.mydomain.com, store2.mydomain.com, and store3.mydomain.com, each sending the customer to the respective set of product categories. Of course it would be better based on my hosting/SSL if I could just pass the department via URL.

Basically the departments would be the top-level categories in the admin. But I don't want the store to use top level categories in the categories sidebox or in the header. Instead, depending on whatever department is selected, the second level categories are *considered* the actual categories (i.e. they show up in the cat header and sidebox). I currently have plans to create a new sidebox that displays the departments (just links to the top level categories) seperate from the deeper categories.

Hmmm.. another way to word it? I do not want top-level categories.. instead I want several stores, each starting at the second level categories.

To put this into perspective, my business is hobbies. I (currently) have 3 distinct departments, each targetting specific customer types (thus the look and approaches will be different for each departments) - radio control, arts and crafts, and games.

Ok, that's probably confusing more than explaining what I want... :)


I've been reading up some threads and found some very useful info (for those interested in doing similar things):

Top Level Categories
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=40711

Multiple Stores
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=36709

Category Setup
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=41682

More Top Level Categories
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=30618

Different Stores One Checkout
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=23016

Limited Category Access
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8024

So are those the recommended ways to do what I want? Or are there other ways? Any suggestions on how to proceed?



------------

After that comes integration into shipping info modules and a project I'm looking forward to, integration with GoogleCheckout Level2. I'd rather code that one myself since I know I'll have some strange requirements... fun fun... GOOD DAY! end_ramble

Thanks!
- Bob