Magento Multi-Store - What to be aware of?

Question

So I have somethings I am wondering about using the multi-store capabilities of Magento. So we just got Magento CE 1.8 setup for my company's main brand. It is running great and we are loving it. Now, the marketing department is working on getting another brand launched. It will have it's own website and visual style. We want to have the store portion of that site run on Magento as well. I think we should give the multi-store option a try, but some of my colleagues feel that this is out of the question. They are worried that modules we have purchased will either not work with multiple stores and/or that we will have conflicts.

What I am wondering is, what do we need to be aware of for using multi-store? Can it host a second store that has it's own unique theme and style, and that is on it's own domain? Will I have to worry about modules breaking on the second (or both) sites? Are there things that I should know or check for that I have not even thought about?

I would really like to give this a try on our store, but frankly I would need to convince my colleagues it would work. I want to jump on it and have a multi-store setup on one of our dev servers, but I want to be sure I do that properly as if it doesn't work there, then my idea will be axed.

Thank you!

Answer 1

Sure. Magento provides multi-store options and it is really simple to use. If you know how to make a store in magento through admin side, then it will be very easy to maintain multiple stores in magento.

We can create different sites, stores and store views in magento. Suppose you have a site and you need to set two different site views for that site, then you just need to create two store-views for your site. There is lot of tutorials available for this. Just google for it. However I will give you small hints about it.

To create a site, store, store view in magento, you just go to system -> manage stores. There you have option for create a site,store and store views. Create a site, make a store for your site and finally make store views for your site. Repeat it if there is multiple sites. Now if your sites have different catagory menus, then set them it through catalog->manage catagory option . Now you need to set different home page, error page etc for your site through CMS -> Pages. Now go to system -> configuration. All configuration for your site is set through this. In your design tab in that page, you need to set all urls, package and theme names of your site correctly. You are done. Your multi stores will work perfectly.

For more info, please go to this link:(https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3362041/in-depth-explanation-of-magentos-store-store-view-website-layers)