Pseudo Multi-store

I've got a Pseduo Mutli-store solution going, and so far, haven't run into any errors. I wanted to see if anyone had any thoughts on why this does/doesn't work before I go live.

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-Two copies of the same code, nop 1.9, on different but similar domains.
-Both copies of the code share 1 database, and the same "look" - same theme.
-Both stores have unique SSL certificates.
-Email is hosted via Google Apps, so outgoing and incoming email comes from one of the domains associated with the Google Apps account
-So far no software/database errors.

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So far I haven't had any errors appear in the new domain that is running off the original database, but I might not be thinking about this clearly, can anyone point to where I might encounter some issues in the future?

Does anyone know if my Paypal and Google Checkout 'gateways' are going to start complaining?

Both orders from the original domain, and the new one should appear in the the 'admin' interface for either store, since it's database driven.

Thoughts?

Going to start trying to figure out how to do a different theme on each store

Updates:

1. Fired off orders from my Paypal Direct, Google Checkout, and Paypal Standard, all this worked normally. Emails were also generated normally.

2. Setup a "Google Analytics Switcher" so I can view domains separately, per this post: https://www.nopcommerce.com/boards/t/7320/google-analytics-for-multiple-domains-same-store.aspx

3. Remembered: Image cache needs to be the same on both file systems or your have errors when cached images are pulled, so I'm copying the image files from one directory to the other to ensure they exist in both domains.

2011-14-1

4. Broke out SEOTitle, SEODescription, SEOKeywords to individual setting entries, again just using the basic "Request.Url.Host" setting to decide which domain I was on.

I think the most concrete way to switch between domains might be to create a completely duplicate data-context that is set once at initialization and than selects settings based on some defined characteristics, example: SEO.Keywords.Context1 etc., than a firm list of all the places that unique characteristics need to appear and attach all those points.

Thoughts?

Concerned: Duplicate content and organic search --> I've read I might get black-flagged for duplicating content across multiple domains if the content is similar enough across two domains. So I've started with meta-data and am working my way up from there --

For the time being I'm going to start using "301 redirect" to SEED the new domain as I've done some more reading today and very concerned about being punished for 'duplicate' content until a more complete unique interface system

>> Both copies of the code share 1 database . ..

I was thinking of doing this too. Is this possble? thanks

MikeMCSD wrote:

Hey Mike-

I put this project on the back burner while I work on a few others things

Initially, I was very concerned about having my domains black-listed for duplicate content, and the fact that a lot more logic was going to be required to make the sites appear completely independent of one another.

Than when I moved the same content to the newer domain my Google Adwords campaigns were totally destroyed (AHH! I hate you Google).

Anyways, I think version 2.0 of nopCommerce offers a lot more potential for implementing something similar to this given it's extensibility. So I'll keep posting here if I start to implement this again using 2.0

Also any thoughts are really welcome.

jbcholdings wrote:

I've seen a lot of web sites that do this. I think they do it so they appear more in search engines.

For example, one of the sites in the NOP Showcase right here is doing this.
They have the exact same products in two web sites with different domian names :

http://www.deskoffice.co.uk/prod/226/cobham-luxury-mesh-back-office-chair.aspx

http://www.chairoffice.co.uk/prod/226/cobham-luxury-mesh-back-office-chair.aspx

I was thinking of doing this but with four different domain names (but with the same database).
Is this bad for SEO? How would google know that each domain is "related"?

I'm still not sure about this and will be investigating this further.

I am going to assume that the reason you share the database is to have a central catalog / orders.

That being the case, I have found that it is less complex to configure two distinct instances of Nop ( databases and everything ) and have a +1 administration site that is aware of the distinct databases. The +1 admin site is only concerned with 'pushing' updates to the catalog and 'reading' aggregate information like orders.