The Dropship Forum .co.uk

[diddlse1]

So looking out beyond eBay I'm setting up another webstore. Again like previous posts it will be a department store.

What I would like to do is, could I create several different installations for PrestaShop, for different categories, i.e. Home and Garden, Women, Men's, Electricals, Computing, etc but they can use the one account and shop through the different departments without it affecting their basket. I would maybe like to use different templates for each department. Is this possible?

I tried using categories/subcategories, however, when I do it like this, I am getting the whole category in one list, I hover over Home and Garden, All the Subcategories and further subcategories are displayed, i.e. home and garden, bedroom, beds, wardrobes, living room, tv units, wall units, coffee tables, etc

Now I'm stuck and I was doing sooooooo well!

[DJBenz]

Personally I'd stay away from the 'department store' concept and focus on a related and common product line. Unless you are actually a department store, websites set up to sell "everything" rarely look like anything more than someone who can't decide what to sell.

I'd imagine what you want to do would require some kind of module for Prestashop, if one even exists. Jhnstcks is pretty hot on Presta though, so I'm sure he'll post up if there's something available.

[diddlse1]

I've decided that it is what I want to do rther than concentrate solely on a product line. I have been in contact with a company to provide credit services to my customers also.

It's kind of along the lines of a catalogue (WITHOUT the rediculous prices they charge... some often cheaper than in the general High Street Stores) nor these huge great big books they send you. I have a sound marketing plan for my business.

I can see your point though "someone who cant decide what to sell", however, that is deffinately no the case, I have selected lines for each department from a vast array of products to suit the image of my business, and it is definately not the quantity you would find in a catalogue (maybe around quarter or a little over).

Bearing that in mind, I will still run other webstores which will concentrate on single range products.

[Baa]

Before you make up your mind, think of the following:

Who is your ideal customer?

What and how does he or she buy?

Does this fit with your multi department theme?

Who is this idea really benefiting?

Your site should be geared entirely for your customers.

[grgr]

[JhnStcks]

This function currently isnt possible with Prestashop, only cart i know that its possible with is magento as mentioned above.

[diddlse1]

Thanks, dont like magento though prefer prestashop over all the carts I find it much easier to use especially editing programming etc

[scotserve]

x-cart can handle this type of function but is not an open source cart

[r35id3nt]

you could do this by using a shared user databse

you would have to modify one installation to use the database of your users table.

[PeteVA]

There is a cart that is designed for this type of "mall" setup - AShop. You can have different vendors with a central checkout. Set up each of your departments as a different vendor.

There is a cost, in the $200 to $300 range, if I recall correctly.

Also, Open Cart has a Multi-Shop feature, I can't say much about it, but you can check.

There are several threads in the Presta forum specifically saying "NO".

[r35id3nt]

If im not mistaken, Zencart installs using a database prefix??

If so an easy way would be

Install your main department Shop (make note of your prefix)
Install a second zencart and use a different prefix
for example

zen1 - main store db prefix
zen2 - one of your depts

now you will need to look at the cooding for zen and replace all user query strings to that of your first zen cart prefix
for example

Code:

"SELECT * FROM zen1_users";

instead of

Code:

"SELECT * FROM zen2_users";

I hope that makes some sence to you as im not really that good at explaining things.

[JhnStcks]

[JhnStcks]

I have managed to run 2 prestashop installations from one sql database, but there are a lot of problems and it takes a lot of customisation of the code to make it work properly.

The CMS pages (about us, T&C etc) are saved in the database so this area can be tricky aswell.

You wouldnt be able to use a normal category block as this would display all the categories from both shops. But if you used a horizontal nav bar you can define what links are displayed, so one shop you could specialise one category and the other shops display different categories.

Different themes are easy as you would just need to manually edit the settings.ini.php file and change the theme code there. If you did this in the backoffice it would change both shops to the same theme.