Has anyone ever merged multiple sites onto one domain?

[abbi_newbie]

My question is has anyone ever merged multiple sites onto one domain?

We have a number of shops selling different things and would like to be all on one domain....

However, ideally we want to do so WITHOUT putting them all onto the same website installation in sellerdeck.

We have all the sites on a business plus multi-user account and would like to put each of these into a folder on the existing domain...

e.g.

SHOP1.com
SHOP2.com
SHOP3.com

become...

SHOP1.com
SHOP1.com/SHOP2
SHOP1.com/SHOP3

Any thoughts/experience in doing this?

Thanks

[I-CC]

So, what you mean is that you want to operate multiple shops under the single domain, as separare entities/checkouts?

If so, then thats easy enough to achieve by changing your business settings so that the website address is: www.abc.com/shop1/ - www.abc.com/shop2/ and so on...

Then, change your nextwork settings to work under the single domain within its sub-folder.

You will no doubt need to use differing cgi-bin script numbers as under a single domain they will no doubt use the same cgi-folder, so shop one would be 1, shop two would be 2 and so on.

Another alternative is to use sub-domains if your hosting provides this ability, where you would have: shop1.abc.com, shop2.abc.com - like is used here: http://www.ioncamera.com/, http://uk.ioncamera.com/, http://usa.ioncamera.com/, http://za.ioncamera.com/, http://tr.ioncamera.com/ and so on.

[jont]

You may risk the possibility of cross "contaminating" orders between the different sites ... 2 items from shop A added in the basked and 1 from shop B will not make for a single checkout experience.

[graphicz]

I have several Sellerdeck sites on my test hosting.
1. Create a folder per site, Chmod 755 (My hosting company doesn't allow 777)
2. In each folder create two folders, one called acatalog one called cgi, both 755
3. Network settings for each site like this:
HTTPPROXYMODE 0
HTTPPROXYADDRESS
HTTPPROXYPORT 80
HTTPPROXYUSER
HTTPPROXYPASSWORD
FTPPROXYMODE 0
FTPPROXYADDRESS
FTPPROXYPORT 21
FTPPROXYUSER
FTPPROXYPASSWORD
SCRIPTID 1
SCRIPTEXT .pl
SMTPHOST localhost
WEBSITEURL http://www.domainname.com/site1/
IGNOREPASSIVEERRORS true
USERELATIVECGIURLS false
PATHTOPERL /usr/bin/perl
USEENHANCEFTP true
FTPBUFFERSIZE 4
FTPCLIENTTIMEOUT 15000
FTPRETRYDELAY 3000
FTPKEEPALIVEINTERVAL 30000
FTPSILENT false
FTPMAXRETRIES 3
FTPCONNECTTIMEOUT 25000
SMTPAUTHREQUIRED false
SMTPUSERNAME
SMTPPASSWORD
COMPRESSIONPACKETSIZE 1024
COMPRESSEDUPLOAD false
CATALOGURL http://www.domainname.com/site1/acatalog/
ONLINESTOREFOLDERNAME acatalog
CGIBINURL http://www.domainname.com/site1/cgi/
PATHFROMCGITOCATALOG ../acatalog/
FTPHOST ftp.domainname.com
FTPUSERNAME domainname.com
FTPPASSWORD PaSsWoRd
PATHTOCGIBIN public_html/site1/cgi/
USEPASSIVEFTP true
FTPPATHFROMCGITOCATALOG

You can use different script id for each store if you wish.

Each store can be catalog only or brochure and catalog.

You could have one store in the root with or without a catalog and link to the other stores from that

cgi-bin
public_html
index
- acatalog
- site1 - index - acatalog
- site2 - index - acatalog
- site3 - index - acatalog
- site4 - index - acatalog
**************************************
Of course, if you want people to be able to order from the different sites as one deal then they need to be in the same instance of Sellerdeck. But that is no problem.
Create Sections in Catalog named as each of your sites.
Change sites to site1, select and copy all your sections/products.
Change to Main site. Right click on the appropriate section and paste. It will take a few minutes maybe but your sections will come across. NB. You do need to copy the images across first and all the tax and shipping stiff must be the same.
Keep doing this and you have built a site of sites. If you want different page designs for each site/section they can be copied across as well from one design library to the other, but again, you will have to copy images and styles across too.
Finally, you can create a Variable "Show in Menu" value true, wrap a 'blockif' round any top level section menu links (Show in Menu == True) and change the site/sections to false if you wish them to be linked from elsewhere.