Multiple Stores and One Checkout (One Cart).

The reason I wrote this instructional tutorial, is that some other online forums, tutorials, and blogs, are not showing how to share the same cart with multiple Magento stores. Multiple stores with one checkout is an extremely important feature. This tutorial is also for people who search for titles like, "How to setup up Multiple Stores in Magento", but their article doesn’t show how to share the cart. For example, one tutorial says to create a new website scope in Magento; which unless you edit some expensive core magento files, is not the correct way for a multiple store shopping cart sharing solution. Another article, by someone who seems to be a convincing webmaster, says you can not share a cart with different domains; he’s crazy. You can share a cart with multiple stores, with any shopping cart web application, i.e. Zen Cart, osCommerce, CRE Loaded, X-Cart, Miva, and any web application. Magento, just facilitates this dream without having to buy any plugins, extensions, addons, or hire a programmer.

Anyways, I hope my in-depth tutorial here gives you instructions and answers to those comments and helps you get the job done. The following tutorial is based on a tested and live environment with a shared shopping cart solution on two stores, on one IP address, two domains, and with one SSL certificate (optionally two or more certificates).

The Environment

Main store alias is magento-main.com, and the second store alias is magento-2nd.com.

1 - Dedicated Server (you physically own it and can access it remotely or locally)
1 - LAMP or WAMP (Linux or Windows)
1 - IP address
1 - magento-main.com - virtual host www root directory for main store
1 - magento-2nd.com - virtual host www root directory for 2nd store
1 - Magento Admin Control Panel which is your main store.
1 - SSL certificate
Option 1. Two SSL certificates on one IP Address, by adding another secure port of 444 to 2nd Store.
Option 2. One SSL certificate, for your main store. Any secure request in your 2nd store will redirect to your secure main store.
Option 3. No SSL certificates.

A word of advice, "if possible" stop using hosting solutions which limit your admin powers in C-Panel, Plesk, etc.., and set up your own server, unless of course you are geographically limited. If you have gotten this far with ecommerce, I am pretty sure you can set up your own server.

Preface

You will not be installing another Magento installation for your 2nd Store. Your current installation of Magento is your Main Store. And you will be sharing everything needed for one checkout with multiple stores, including sessions with your current installation of Magento. All this with two or multiple domains, and with 1 and optionally with 2 or more secure domains. In this tutorial there is no instructions for multiple IP addresses. Although this is the case, I gather you can use my tutorial to write your own comment or tutorial on multiple IP addresses.

Let’s get started.

Help Links to AWStats and WAMP

Until you are ready, always work on a development environment, when testing.

Login into your main site magento-main.com Magento Admin.

Step 1. Catalog Section

• Set up a Root Catalog
  Magento Admin>Catalog>Add Root Category
  Name it, Root Second Store
• Set up Subcategory
  Magento Admin>Catalog>Add Subcategory
  Name it, Second Store SubCategory
• Apply a Product to the new Subcategory, Second Store SubCategory
  Magento Admin>Catalog>Select, Second Store SubCategory
  Select, Category Products Tab
  Click on drop down, and change from Yes to Any (if it’s not already set to any)- hit enter if it doesn’t fetch
  Check the radio button on the product you want to add to this category
  Click on, Save Category
  Do the same for, Root Second Store

Step 2. Manage Stores Section

• Add 2nd Store
  Magento Admin>System>Manage Stores
  Create Store
  For Name enter, Second Store
  For Root Category, select Root Second Store
  Save Store
• Configure Language/Store View
  Magento Admin>System>Manage Stores
  Create Store View
  For Store, select Second Store
  For Name, enter English
  For Code, enter second_store_en
  For Status, enter enabled
  Leave sort order alone (optional)

Step 3. System Configuration Section

• Change Base URLS
  System>Configuration>Web
  Change Current Configuration Scope (top left) to Second Store > English
  Select Unsecure. For Unsecure Base URL and Base Link URL, uncheck radio button and change to http://magento-2nd.com/
  Select Secure. For Secure Base URL and Base Link URL, uncheck radio button and change to https://magento-2nd.com/
• Option 1. Two or More Certificates and One IP address:
  You’ll be able to run two SSL certificates on one Ip Address, by changing the port. So, go to System>Configuration>Web choose Second Store scope and for Secure, instead of entering https://magento-2nd.com/ you would enter https://magento-2nd.com:444/ This way your main site magento-main.com will use the normal 443 secure port and your 2nd store will be redirected to a new secure port of 444. The downside is 444 will be showing in the URL. So to hide (mask) the 444, I suggest you google "hide port number in url" through the use of apache module mod_proxy. You will also need to configure your secure vhost file to listen and respond through port 444 requests only on your 2nd site. If you want to run more secure sites on the same IP, than increment the corresponding ports.
• Option 2. One SSL Certificate and One IP address:
  There is two ways to accomplish this.
  

  The first way to accomplish this is, you can simply do a redirect (as I did) from your 2nd Store for all secure request, to redirect to your main store, magento-main.com. In other words, when ever the customer selects a secure link on the 2nd store, it will send them over to your main store. To do this, go to System>Configuration>Web choose Second Store scope and for Secure, https://magento-2nd.com/ you would deselect the radio button for, Use Secure URL’s in the Frontend, and change the drop down from yes to no. Open your magento-2nd.com/.htaccess file with any text editor and insert the following in between the existing <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> and </IfModule> section.

  RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
  RewriteRule ^customer(.*) https://magento-main.com/customer$1 [R,L]
  RewriteRule ^checkout/onepage(.*) https://magento-main.com/checkout/onepage$1 [R,L]

  So any of your clickable secure links on the frontend of magento-2nd.com will redirect to corresponding URL in secure magento-main.com.

  The second way to accomplish this, go to System>Configuration>Web choose Second Store scope and for Secure, make sure https://magento-main.com/ is in the base_link_url and the base_url. Make sure to select the radio button for, Use Secure URL’s in Frontend, to yes.
  So any of your clickable secure links on the frontend of magento-2nd.com will redirect to secure magento-main.com. This is Magento’s preferred way of redirecting.

  Either way will work, just depends on your setup and your needs.

• Option 3. No SSL Certificates:
  To do this, go to System>Configuration>Web choose Second Store scope, and for https://magento-2nd.com/ you would deselect the radio button for, Use Secure URL’s in Frontend, and change the drop down from yes to no. I am not going to say anything, do what you want.

Please Note: To save you time please understand how Apache works. Currently, in order to run multiple ssl (secure) sites on the same server securely and correctly, you only have two choices; using multiple IP’s or somehow changing the port as in option 1.

Step 4. WAMP or LAMP, change index.php and create symbolic links.

No need to install another Magento installation. Even though I am showing WAMP here, I strongly recommend you build it on a Linux Server. Magento and most all Open Source Web Apps are built and tested for Linux. The reason we chose WAMP, is strictly because the customer has IBM BladeCenters, which at this time does not support Linux Ubuntu Server, if it did we’d only have BladeCenters

• For WAMP (Windows Apache MySQL PHP, Server)
  http://www.wampserver.com/en/

  Using a wampserver installation with the following directory structures.

  wamp\www\magento-main.com\
  wamp\www\magento-2nd.com\

  We are going to do symbolic links, which Windows does not support, so we have to install additional software tools.
  Download and install HardlinkShellExt http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html

  Pay Attention Here:
  Right Click on your wamp\www\magento-main.com\404 directory and select, Pick Link Source
  Right Click on your wamp\www\magento-2nd.com directory and select, Drop As > Junction

  Do this for wamp\www\magento-main.com\app, downloader, js, media, report, skin, and var directories. You will now have 8 aka symbolic links in your wamp\www\magento-2nd.com directory

  Now go to your wamp\www\magento-main.com\ and copy both the .htaccess and the index.php into wamp\www\magento-2nd.com\
  Using any text editor, open wamp\www\magento-2nd.com\index.php, and change:
  

  $mageFilename = 'app/Mage.php';

  to this
  

  $mageFilename = '../magento-main.com/app/Mage.php';

  Change this:
  

  Mage::run();

  to this:
  

  Mage::run('second_store_en','store');

• For LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP, Server)

  It’s very simple for a LAMP server with the following directory structures.

  /var/www/magento-main.com/
  /var/www/magento-2nd.com/

  Do symbolic links (for each) with command line:

prompt>ln -s /var/www/magento-main.com/404 /var/www/magento-2nd.com/404
prompt>ln -s /var/www/magento-main.com/app /var/www/magento-2nd.com/app
prompt>ln -s /var/www/magento-main.com/includes /var/www/magento-2nd.com/includes
prompt>ln -s /var/www/magento-main.com/downloader /var/www/magento-2nd.com/downloader
prompt>ln -s /var/www/magento-main.com/js /var/www/magento-2nd.com/js
prompt>ln -s /var/www/magento-main.com/media /var/www/magento-2nd.com/media
prompt>ln -s /var/www/magento-main.com/report /var/www/magento-2nd.com/report
prompt>ln -s /var/www/magento-main.com/report /var/www/magento-2nd.com/report
prompt>ln -s /var/www/magento-main.com/skin /var/www/magento-2nd.com/skin
prompt>ln -s /var/www/magento-main.com/var /var/www/magento-2nd.com/var

• You will now have 8 symbolic links in your /var/www/magento-2nd.com/ directory. Now go to your /var/www/magento-main.com/ and copy both the .htaccess and the index.php into var/www/magento-2nd.com/. Using any text editor, open /var/www/magento-2nd.com/index.php, and change:
  

  $mageFilename = 'app/Mage.php';

  to this
  

  $mageFilename = '../magento-main.com/app/Mage.php';

  Change this:
  

  Mage::run();

  to this:
  

  Mage::run('second_store_en','store');

Step 5. Take your new Ferrari out for a Test Run:

Go to http://magento-2nd.com/ - you will see the new site with the following message, "There was no Home CMS page configured or found".

Go to http://magento-2nd.com/second-store-subcategory - you will see the one product you chose. (please note: second-store-subcategory would be the default url, but it might be different for your install check Admin>Catalog>URL Rewrite Management> for the correct URL.)

Go to http://magento-2nd.com/second-store-subcategory - add the product to your cart. Go to magento-main.com and add any one product to the cart. You will now see two products in your cart, in either magento-2nd.com/checkout/cart/ or magento-main.com/checkout/cart/

If these url’s work than, than pat your friend on the back, and skip Step 6. TroubleShoot and Solutions and go to Step 7 Tidy Up.

Step 6. TroubleShoot, and Solution

• http://magento-2nd.com, is not resolving.
  Rename index.php to index_.php and create a new blank file and name it index.html. If it still doesn’t resolve, than it has nothing do with this tutorial. 1. Check your Web Server (WAMP or LAMP) log files, for troubleshooting. 2. If it’s local copy of magento-2nd.com, make sure you change your system host file to reflect your server IP Address.

• http://magento-2nd.com is displaying 404, http://magento-2nd.com/\404.
  1. Check above tutorial, and make sure you didn’t leave out or misspell something. This also probably means everything works on your WAMP or LAMP, but http://magento-2nd.com/magento is somehow not connecting to http://magento-main.com/magento. 2. Make sure you didn’t alter any core magento files in the past, which may be affecting the connection. 3. If your running, linux it could be it’s not allowing relative URLS, so change the above ‘../magento-main.com/app/Mage.php’; to an absolute url ‘/var/www/magento-main.com/app/Mage.php’; 4. Make sure you have the correct PHP/Apache modules, settings, and/or extensions enabled. 5. Also, 404 can mean infinite problems, so report them here to see if I can help.

• Cart sharing doesn’t work.
  This can mean many solutions. If you chose file based session (which is the default) when you first installed magento, delete all the sessions content of your http://magento-main.com/var/session directory. Refresh your browser on your https://magento-main.com site and your https://magento-2nd.com site. If you see two session files in the session directory, than this probably means your http://magento-2nd.com/index.php or your magento admin panel > system > manage stores configuration is incorrect, so report here to see if I can help.

Step 7. Tidy Up

Here are some things you might want to do next:

Quick solution to change your 2nd store theme.
Depending on your theme setup this may or may not work for you, or you might have to do some tweaking. But I’ll show you how to quickly change the theme with the following directory structure:

magento-main.com\skin\frontend\magento-main_theme
magento-main.com\app\design\frontend\magento-main_theme

Make duplicate copies of both magento-main_theme into corresponding directory and rename them to magento-2nd_theme. Your directory should now look like this:

magento-main.com\skin\frontend\magento-main_theme
magento-main.com\skin\frontend\magento-2nd_theme
magento-main.com\app\design\frontend\magento-main_theme
magento-main.com\app\design\frontend\magento-2nd_theme

Go Magento Admin>System>Configuration>Design
Change Current Configuration Scope (top left) to Second Store > English
In Package, for Current package name uncheck both radio buttons and change, to magento-2nd_theme

Please note, this may or may not work for you, depending on your theme setup.

Thanks for reading my blog.

I really hope my instructions helped. Also, there are many more tidy up tasks to do after creating your second store. So, if you know of any, please feel free to comment on these ‘tidy up tasks’ or any other related issues.

Bookmark to: