Malls & Shared cgis

[Bethl]

If I set up 2 separate stores in a mall, can the look and shipping options be set up differently in the shopping cart for each store? All I can find is that stores in a mall share cgis, but I don't know if they can each be customized according to each store's needs. Thanks in advance for any help!

[Jim]

Stores in a mall situation only share the cgis for the shopping cart and merchant interface. The database, configuration files, html files, images etc for the stores will be in separate directories for each store. (assuming the stores were installed correctly).

[Bethl]

Thanks, but still need a little more clarification (please).

Can "Store-A" have shipping based on total dollars ordered, and then "Store-B" have shipping based on overall order product weight -- in the shopping cart that is shared?

[Jim]

Yes, those would be settings that are configured for each store individually.

Note that the 2 stores are not sharing the shopping cart, each will have its own shopping cart with its own look and settings. The stores would just be using the same cgis for the shopping cart.
For example the urls for the store would be something like http://store1.com and http://store2.com. On the server the stores will be configured so that the shopping cart url will be something like http://store1.com/cgi-bin/sc/order.cgi and http://store2.com/cgi-bin/sc/order.cgi or it could be something like store1.shared_domain.com/cgi-bin/sc/order.cgi and store2.shared_domain.com/cgi-bin/sc/order.cgi. However it is configured, the cgi-bin/sc/order.cgi will be the same executable. All data for the shopping cart screen will come from the separate data directory for each store. Also all orders for each store will go to the data directory of the appropriate store.

The advantage of using a mall installation is that it takes up less disk space for the cgis since they are shared. The ShopSite cgis typically take up 50-75 megabytes of disk space. A hosting account may give you 500 meg or more of diskspace, many give you 200 -500 gigabytes and some give unlimited diskspace. So with the disk space allowed on most accounts the disk space used by the cgis is rather insignificant. The html content, images, data etc for the website would be much larger than the size of the space used by the cgis.

Hosting companies that have thousands of ShopSite stores typically use the mall installation because 1000's x 75 meg is a lot of diskspace. So using shared cgis allows them to have more stores on a server and makes them more money.

However, sharing cgi's has disadvantages too. Since all stores in the mall use the same cgis, when one store owner wants to upgrade their store to a newer version of ShopSite all other stores would be affected. So hosts who use the shared cgis are reluctant to upgrade a store. Also there are some features in ShopSite that allow you to use external scripts to process data for a store such as custom shipping, custom tax, custom order handling etc. The scripts to do the processing must be in the same cgi directory as the cgis used for the shopping cart by all stores. Allowing someone to place custom scripts in a directory used by others has security issues. What if 2 people use the same name for a script, one would be replaced by the other one. If a script is poorly written it could affect the functionality of other stores. So hosting companies that use a mall installation do not allow scripts created by merchants.

In general I would go with independently installed stores rather than a mall install since it will be easier to maintain the stores separately and avoid some of the issues I mentioned above.

[Bethl]

That answers my questions. Thanks so much for your reply, Jim!

[commerceking]

glad this post is here, i was having some similar issues, thank you.

[Bethl]

Jim, I am finally getting ready to set up another store and my web host says that I "cannot have 2 Shopsite licenses on the same domain."

What I want to do it have 2 stores that have separate data with separate shopping cart settings (such as shipping methods) on the same domain, i.e. www.mydomain.com/store1 and www.mydomain.com/store2. Can this be done?

Both stores are related to our business -- one is for consumers, the other for the foodservice industry -- so I want to use the same domain and the same SSL certif.

Thanks for any help you can give!

[Jim]

Each store must have its own authorization file with a separate url to the store. So you would be able to have a store at www.mydomain.com/store1 and www.mydomain.com/store2. (We do this with demo stores where there are more than 100 at the same domain but in different directories.) All of our demo stores (that are the same ShopSite version) share the same set of cgis. Your host could also configure the server so store1 and store2 would share the same cgis. When the cgis are shared each store still has its own data and html directories, so they operate entirely independently, other than using the same cgis. Secure certificates are issued for domain names so there should be no problem using the same secure certificate if both stores are using the same set of cgi and just have different media and data directories.

Some hosts may not want to allow this but it is entirely possible and has been done for many years by some hosts. If your host has questions about this have the contact the ShopSite sales or support staff for assistance.

[Bethl]

Thanks. I will pass this info on. I hope they will do it!