new twist on multi-store problem

[habelson]

Hi all!

I am relatively new to oscMax and osCommerce, but I am a quick learner. I have a need for multiple stores, and I managed to get the multi-store contribution up and workign the way I would like it to work.

However, I don't want to have to copy a set of files for each new store. The only difference between the different stores for me is the appearance which I can handle nicely in the BTS.

My question is, is there anyway to pass a paramter into index.php of the store such that I can tell it which store I want to see?

for instance, www.mydomain.com/index.php?store_id=1

obviously I now how to do that much, what I'm hung up on is preserving that parameter thorughout the session. Ideally, I would be able to set the STORES_ID variable form the multi-store contrib. But still, I can't figure out how to get it remember which store I'm visiting.

I would appreciate any suggestions

thank guys... this site and community is really quite impressive

[habelson]

OK,

good thing I'm talking to myself... because after working on this a bit more I realize it's a stupid question.

I followed the advice in other threads to use symbolic links to setup the other store fronts and I have done that successfully.

For the sake of posterity, for those of you that don't have shell acess to your host, you can always use the symlink function in php.. that's what I had to do.

Thanks All

[MindTwist]

I remember once having to do something like that with postnuke, to run several websites (sub1.domain.com sub2.domain.com etc) on just one postnuke installation. Every web site would show a different skin/template, have a different config (show news related to a given category, while the main web site would show all of them...), etc.

I did need to create some symbolik links too, which I did with php (I do not even remember how). I would say it was something like I had a config on each subdomain, which would actually reside on the main web site (sub1.cfg), and then a directory on / which would actually be a symlink to itself, like /sub1/ was actually a symlink to /.

For the sake of posterity too... Since I think I will have to come back here sometime soon, to set up more stores, hanging from my main one, with same database, same products, maybe some categories will be visible on one but not the other ones, template changed a little bit, etc...

[habelson]

in my case, in the folder for the second store, I created a symbolic link to every files in the distribution except for database_tables.php and configure.php. Those two files I made copies of and configured accordingly. After that the multi-store contrib lets you choose which products go to which store and which template you use.

[MindTwist]

Mmmmh that is quite a nice solution, you did symlink for evey single file on your store installation...? That should actually probably work not just for OSC, but also for PN and many more kinds of websites.

I have not even looked at multistores (yet), but I am quite sure I will have to sometime, so your hint is appreciated and hopefully will come in handy sooned or later

[habelson]

Linking every single file wasn't necessary. I had to do every single file in the root folder and the includes folder. For the rest, I just linked the folders at the root level. (like images) so I didn't have to link each file inside.

By linking the images folder, when you upload a product to your store, you dont have to copy the images to each store. So that works very well for me.