Multiple Shops, One Basket / Checkout?

[fibonacci-d]

I have a client interested in building, as an example, 4 separate Actinic shops, selling 4 separate types of the same goods (pets goods for dogs, for cats, for rabbits and for fish... as an example).
They are interested though in having one basket / checkout for all shops - so a user could have a look at some dog products, add them to the basket then go to the linked cat shop and add items to the same basket, then pay for them all in one checkout.
Is this sort of idea possible using Actinic at all?
Chris

[leehack]

Yes but create the whole idea within one store using interlinks to move between the 4 parts (4 main TLS's) of the one store.

[fibonacci-d]

yeah - thought that may be the answer. just a little concerned about the potential size of the site then - i.e. if there are many products in each 'section' then it may become a bit of a slog when publishing...
cheers lee.

[leehack]

You won't get one unified cart any other way i'm afraid. You can have 4 independents running alongside using one PSP for all 4, but buying one product from all 4 shops results in 4 complete checkouts to be completed.

[fibonacci-d]

Yeah - thought that may be the case but i still have quite limited knowledge of Actinic - particularly the more complex stuff in the background. thanks for letting me know with finality the ability of Actinic in this regard
Chris

[MJS]

Lee, you say you can create different top level sections that only show sections in relation to the part of the shop you are in,
question is how would you set that up please? I have 2 different shops that I would like to use the same basket...

[pinbrook]

I have 2 different shops that I would like to use the same basket...

2 shops equals 2 baskets.

the alternative is one shop with 2 sections

[leehack]

If I had 4 Shops and I wanted them all to be in the same overall shop, I would create a TLS for each and then have the departments for each part of each store sitting within its own TLS. You then need to understand how to setup actinic variables and how to use blockifs which shouldn't take too long as there are posts and tutorials already explaining how to do this in the forum. That then allows you to show certain things in certain conditions, so if you had selected Shop 1 for example, you can set things so that Shops 2-4 do not show.

You can see a site working in a similar way here - http://www.superlogo.co.uk/ - you can even take it a step further and have each area of the business color coded and have the tab which selects it also coloured. Red for Shop1, Blue for shop2 etc.

Have a read of the tutorials provided by GabrielCrowe.

[MJS]

Sorry just revisiting this thread,
This is exactly what I am looking to do as per superlogo site....

I have read Gabes superb tutorials on the block statements and I understand the concept and what they do but i'm not sure where to start from the beginning, ie on a new actinic store how do I differentiate between the top level sections and the sub sections within that section?
Do I have to create a new inner layout per top level section?

I know what I want to do, but can't just get my head around the workings of it yet

Any help or advise would be muchly appreciated.

[leehack]

Read this one first - http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=35340 - see if that helps.

[MJS]

Thanks (again) Lee, great help as always