Quote Originally Posted by damonp View Post
As each of my sites has a different category and product layout, I created a top level category for each site, then modified the the category and product SQL to only look under the current site's top level category.
This is exactly what I planned on doing with my site. I want one installation with one database. I'm wondering though, how much work this includes.

I have 4 departments to my store. Each department will have it's own template, products, and categories. They will all share the same customer data. Each department will only show featured/all products from the correct department. I want all of these products and categories to be managed from within a single install of the admin tool.

It was suggested to me earlier that I just make 4 top-level categories (and the appropriate products inside them), however I found the visual results to be ugly. I do not want the top-level categories to show up on the page (in the header or in the sidebox) nor do I want the listings/displays to include products from other top-level categories.

So, if a customer goes to the ARTS department, only the second level categories are displayed (as if they were top-level) and only those ARTS products would be displayed in the many pages. When the customer wants to go to the SCIENCE department, they choose that option and are sent to the index.php page that now shows a different set of (second level) categories. All cart data and whatnot is shared since it is the same site.

I will make a custom section (sidebox or header) that sends the customer to the different departments. This could work in several ways. First, I could pass the value via URL to set a global var. I could also store settings in the DB. Either way, the customer is always assigned to a department which should affect the categories and products that get displayed.


Other sections I feel I need to visit (and modify sql, etc):
- breadcrumbs - (might not want to show department level)
- search (and advanced search) feature - (might just combine all departments)
- featured/all product listings and sideboxes - (limit to current department)
- site map - (might just combine all departments)


I have also been looking at the http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showth...ultiple+stores thread which I suspect it does something similar to what I want to do. The problem with this is that it isn't released as of yet.