Magento is a highly recommended platform to develop e-commerce websites. You will see that this platform allows you to develop fully functional websites as it has been typically built for these purposes. In earlier times, separate back ends were used to develop separate stores.
Basically this simply meant, you could not develop multiple stores using a single platform which meant more development cost and time and also a lot of servers if you had too many stores. Interestingly, Magento understood the importance of developing multiple stores using single platform.
Now, with the new developments, creating and maintaining stores using Magento platform has become easy. Here are a few tips and tricks that will help you setup and maintain multiple stores using Magento platform.
Get Your URL Structure
When you are planning to run multiple Magento stores using a single backend, you need to structure your URL accordingly. That would ideally be your first step towards setting up a store. You can use a single domain and set up two different directories. This is also possible and, you can even try to set up multiple domains on a single server.
You can even use the sub domain structure to run multiple Magento stores. The example of subdomain structure would be shoes.store.com and beauty.store.com. This is an apt way of running multiple Magento stores.
Once you have chosen the URL structure or domain for your store, you have achieved class in the first part. It is always good to choose separate URL for the separate websites as it works well for SEO.
Steps To Add Another Magento Powered Store
There are three major steps involved in adding another Magento powered store to your existing platform and server. This is done especially when you are planning to have two major domains for your separate shops and planning to run it using a single back end server.
Create The Categories
This is your first step to setting up another Magento powered store. To create a category, you will need to login to the admin panel of your Magento site. Go to Catalog>Manage Categories tab in here.
You can either allow both domains to use the same default category or create a new root category for each domain. Depending on how you want to do it, there are two options, add root category or add subcategory that you can use to begin creating your categories.
Once you are done, tick the option “Is Active” under general information tab and “Is Anchor” under display settings. Now, you can end your process by saving the category you have just generated.
Configuring Your Store
Once you are done with creating a new category, your next step involves configuring the new store. Here is how you can do it.
- Go to systems tab in your admin panel. Click on Manage Stores tab in here
- Next, you will have to click on the “Create Website” button in here. Here, as part of the details, you will need to enter the name of the new website and the code which will be used to point the server to this domain name
- These details will help set up the server for the individual domains involved in this Magento store
- You will need to save the website details before proceeding ahead with the other parts
- Your next step would be to create the store. You can go to System>Manage Stores and click on Create Store button here
- Here a drop down will appear. You need to select the name of the store, the domain name you just created, for which you need to build the website
- Enter the second website’s name and then select the root category you have defined for this store and save the store details
- Now go to system>manage stores> store view to view the store you have just created
- Select the store for which you want the store view to appear. Also select the name for this store view. You will need to enable a store code for this store view.
- You will need to check for the store status, “enabled” or “disabled” for viewing the store. Once the details have been entered and the status set, save these details
Configuring The Store In The Server
This is the third and final step in setting up another Magento store which will help run multiple stores run using single server! Here you will be adding another Magento store to your existing backend thus enabling multiple stores using single server.
- You already have a server and a Magento store running on that server. Now, you have built another store Magento2 which you need to configure in the server. For this you will need to access the Magento directory of the existing server and create a new sub directory for this new store
- For this purpose you will need to copy both the index.php and htaccess file from the existing store folder to the newly defined store folder. In case of different domains, you will need to copy the files to the root folder
- In the index.php file there would be a code $mageFilename=”app/Mage.php’;”. You will need to change it to $mageFilename=’,,/app/Mage.php’; and save it
- Next you will need to visit the copied version of the htaccess file. At the end of the code you will need to add the following codes
SetEnvlf Host. *base.*MAGE_RUN_CODE=”base”;
SetEnvlfHost.*magento_site_2.*MAGE_RUN_TYPE= “the name of the second website”;
and save the changes made - Your next step would be to visit the General tab in System configurations. Check for default configuration and then select web. In the URL options in here, set the “Auto Redirect to base URI” as no
- Now select web for the default configuration in the default configurations setting. You will need to select both secure and unsecure tabs and will need to use both by uchecking the “use default store view” option
Once these three steps have been performed successfully, in the order mentioned, you have set up another store on the existing Magento server. Remember you should not miss out on a single step while setting up the store as it would create major issues.
Similarly, you can add more stores and run them using a single server without affecting the loading times of any of your website. Make sure you are hosting these stores on a dedicated server hosting as this way you can keep them secured while ensuring fast loading time.
Thanks!