• Overview: How Multiple Websites & Stores Work
• MultiStore and Multiple Domains problem – /app/Mage.php was not found
• How To Setup Multiple Magento Stores
• Magento for Designers: Multi-Store Functionality

Notes

• This assumes a standard LAMP setup. In our case, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Apache 2, MySQL 5 and PHP 5.3.
• It’s necessary to create some symlinks on the filesystem, so you’ll need access to do that. You don’t really want to be trying to run Magento
  on a shared host anyway, so this shouldn’t be a problem.
• The stores are on different domains, although the principles are the same if it’s a subdomain, subfolder or other configuration.

Magento is powerful and flexible, but not terribly well documented, so figuring out the best way to accomplish something can take some digging
and some experimentation. I needed to set up two stores to run off the same Magento installation as two catalogues (one a subset of the other)
from the same retailer.

There are two broad approaches:

• A single VirtualHost with aliases for the various domains, with logic added to the root index.php to decide which store to load.
• A VirtualHost for each domain, linked to one core Magento installation.

I took the multiple VirtualHosts approach, as it seemed a little more logical to me (a matter of taste, really). It has the advantage of each
domain having its own .htaccess, which might be handy if you’re doing other things alongside Magento.

When running multiple stores from one Magento instance, they all share the same back office and catalogue. Once you set up a second website,
store or view then anywhere they need to differentiate the option appears to use the default config or to apply a site- store- or view-specific
setting. This means that themes and extensions for the various stores all live together.

A side note: websites, stores and views

You’ll need to decide whether your new store is a whole new website or a new store of the same website. Broadly
speaking, from the point of view of what the customer sees:

• Websites are separate entities
• Stores are distinct but share customer accounts and shopping carts
• Views may be the same store in a different language or layout

Although that’s pretty configurable. Websites can be set to share customer accounts, for example. And, again, they’ll all share the same admin and
catalogue.

In this case, we went for two distinct websites.

The method

1. Create a new root category for your new website. You can put a full category tree under it and add products to the categories.

2. In the control panel, go to System > Manage Shops and create a new website, then shop for that website and view for that shop. Take note of the
   code you assign to the website – you’ll need it later. Assign your newly-created root category to the new store.

3. Create a new VirtualHost for the new website. Note that the Magento files will need to be accessible to PHP from this VirtualHost,
   so pay attention to any restrictions on your server.

4. In the new VirtualHost block, you need to set two environmental variables:
   
   SetEnv MAGE_RUN_CODE "your_new_website_code"

SetEnv MAGE_RUN_TYPE "website"
   
   If doing this in the VirtualHost is a problem, your server configuration may allow you to do it in the .htaccess file below.

5. Copy index.php from the document root of the existing site to the document root of the new site. Find and modify the following variables to point
   to the files in the Magento installation:
   • $compilerConfig
   • $mageFilename

6. Copy .htaccess from the existing document root to that of the new site. Check it for any hostname-specific rules that have been added, and
   modify them as necessary.

7. Create symlinks of the following folders in the existing site’s document root to the same locations in the new site’s document root:
   • app
   • errors
   • includes
   • js
   • lib
   • media
   • skin
   • var

   For example, ln -s /path/to/existing/document/root/app /path/to/new/document/root/app.

8. In the control panel, go to System > Configuration > Web, select hte new website from the dropdown in the top-left corner, uncheck
   Use Default by the Unsecure and Secure Base URLs, then correct the URLs set to those of your new website.

9. Reindex everything.

10. Optionally set the theme for the new site under System > Configuration > Design.

11. Job done.

If, after doing this, the home page of the new website is showing a default Magento 404, then check that the code for the new website
is set exactly the same in the control panel and in the server environment variable. A typo in the control panel setting lost me 45 minutes.
That was frustrating.

Also note that as we’ve edited a core file or two (index.php and maybe .htaccess), keep an eye on them if you upgrade your Magento instance.

A birthday, and the attendant (generously given, gratefully received) gifts have led to a few new things to feed my not-so-modest stationery addiction. Pictured here, a hint of the Field Notes subscription and the new most stealthy and gruntingly manly fountain pen to join my pen case, the limited edition, all matte black Pilot Capless (Namiki Vanishing Point in some markets) retractable, clicky goodness. It’s very nice, and really needs to be seen in person. Black as black as black.

I did have my first experience with their support team today (I should clarify that it wasn’t a problem needing solved; rather, it was to do with transferring DNS for a domain between two Nettica accounts), and they were quick and helpful. Happy there for now, then.

From a management point of view it’s often easiest to have all three of these handled by the same company, and that’s a very common setup. I’m not too keen on the “eggs in one basket” feel of that, though, and I tend to have the domain name and the hosting for any given website in different places, with the DNS taken care of by one or the other.

I have domains registered all over the place, so keeping track and making updates takes a little bit of doing. I was also thinking about getting in a complete separation, with DNS taken care of by a third provider.

So, I tweeted:

Contemplating a specialist DNS host, rather than scattering amongst domains’ registrars. DNSMadeEasy, DNSimple, who else should I look at?

I got quite a response back, both from friends and colleagues and from DNS hosts who were watching the tweets go by. My research into possible hosts, partly informed by the twitterly response, turned up a number of possibilities.

DNS Made Easy

The first of the two I was vaguely aware of, DNS Made Easy comes recommended by Aaron, who is a difficult man to please. They also sent me a friendly, not too pushy, tweet or two. For my needs, I’d be looking at US$60 a year, probably plus a few US$2s per year for domains beyond the 25 included in that price.

DNSimple

DNSimple was the other one I kind of knew about, although I can’t remember who recommended them to me. A bit more expensive than DNS Made Easy, at US$10 per month. However, that’s for 50 domains and they have a bunch of other useful features and offer a broader range of records for the DNS. They, too, sent me a friendly tweet.

Dyn

Two separate Dyn reps jumped on my tweet. The second one was a little intense. I emailed the first guy to see which of their offerings would suit my needs. They offer a few nice features, especially around import and export of sets of records, but US$95 per month is a fair bit more than I was planning on spending. (Dyn are the folks behind DynDNS, which I have a paid account with as well. That’s a good service, but not quite the same thing as I’m looking for.)

Nettica

David chimed in with a recommendation for Nettica. Their Bulk DNS service sounds pretty great, especially the template setup and the straightforward-as-a-straightforward-thing US$50/50 domains/year pricing.

Hover

Stuart, supported by Ryan, really likes Hover. It’s not really what I’m looking for, though, as it’s a registrar with good DNS management. I’m not looking to shift domain registration at the moment, and it misses the separation I’m after.

Amazon Route 53

Amazon’s Route 53 is part of the Amazon Web Services lineup, and I kind of half expected it to be the answer I was after. Pricing of US$1/domain/month, plus low per-request charges, place it at the higher end of the mid-price range. However, there’s no control panel — everything is done with straight API calls by feeding a little Perl script with XML. While I may be intrigued by the possibility of writing a decent client, I don’t want to have to faff about with that in the meantime.

Conclusions, then

I have none solid, yet. Hover’s out, as it’s not really what I’m after. Dyn is too expensive and Route 53 is too fiddly. That leaves DNS Made Easy, DNSimple and Nettica. All the services make nice, reassuring promises about uptime, with a couple of solid guarantees in there, but everyone has downtime sometimes. I’m working on the basis that a reputable provider will manage it acceptably.

My decision would be an approximate toss up between the first two, with a slight bias to DNSimple for their wider range of services, but I am intrigued by Nettica’s Bulk DNS service. A little more research is in order, then. Shifting a whole bunch of domains around is too painful to want to do it more than once.

For almost five years we got our broadband from Zen. They aren’t the cheapest out there, but they provided us with a solid service that I can only recall flickering once or twice in all that time. When necessary, their staff were helpful and pleasant.

When fibre hit our area we ended up moving away from Zen (BT seem to offer the best balance of cost and features on the service). I expected to be paying an extra month’s charges for the 30 day notice period on our contract. Instead, they sent me a statement saying I was £16 in credit with them. Today I received another letter, asking for bank details so that they could send the £16.

I suppose it shouldn’t be remarkable that a company is offering to refund a customer money that they overpaid, but it is. So, well done to Zen.

Basecamp is the web-based project management software all the cool kids apparently use. We rely on it pretty heavily at Banjax, too. I’m not much of a fan, but it’s there as an “it’ll do until someone comes up with something better” kind of option. If you’re in need of some PM workflow gubbins, the free plan has been beefed up a bit, so it’s maybe worth giving it a whirl.

Finally, Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference sold out in less than a day, yesterday. A technical conference, aimed at developers, sold out in hours. That’s nuts. Someone’s doing something right, it seems. And no, I’m not going. This year is not that year for me.

All from 5 by 5:

• The EE Podcast keeps it short, since it focuses on goings on around the ExpressionEngine content management system (which I use a lot). I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how the show keeps being worthwhile and enjoyable to listen to.
• The Dev Show talks around more general software development happenings. I’m finding it good to here about technologies outside of those I use myself. It makes me curious.
• The Conversation is more of a general talk-show type thing, with guests coming and going from the chat with the host. Easy going.

I’ve also recently discovered Huffduffer, which lets you collate audio from around the web and have it sucked into iTunes as a podcast — potentially very handy.

I spend less time in the car, these days, but when I am driving it’s usually with a podcast on the stereo. Lately I’ve been saving the music for while I’m working.

We/she/the world will benefit from a computing appliance that’s more like a washing machine: to get clean clothes, you only very rarely need to know anything about plumbing. For anyone other than the specialist or the hobbyist, an appliance is the means, not the end.

But I’m also looking forward to seeing what happens when some of the people around me lay hands on one. It seems that this thing will meet the computing needs of an awful lot of people out there — normal people, people not like me, people who don’t need the grunt for Photoshop, who don’t always have a terminal window open, people who don’t self-identify as that kind of geek. Web, email, some word-processing and some presentation prep, games, other bits and pieces. If (admittedly that might be a big ‘if’) the UK pricing is in line with what’s been announced for elsewhere, the price is certainly right. It’s a little bit more than a netbook, but it looks to fill the same gaps more effectively. It certainly looks like it’ll do it much more accessibly.

I couldn’t get by with an iPad as my only computer, not by a long way, but I know people who could.

You should go and read a post by Fraser Speirs called Future Shock. Here’s a taster:

…

For years we’ve all held to the belief that computing had to be made simpler for the ‘average person’. I find it difficult to come to any conclusion other than that we have totally failed in this effort.

Secretly, I suspect, we technologists quite liked the idea that Normals would be dependent on us for our technological shamanism. Those incantations that only we can perform to heal their computers, those oracular proclamations that we make over the future and the blessings we bestow on purchasing choices.

Ask yourself this: in what other walk of life do grown adults depend on other people to help them buy something? Women often turn to men to help them purchase a car but that’s because of the obnoxious misogyny of car dealers, not because ladies worry that the car they buy won’t work on their local roads. (Sorry computer/car analogy. My bad.)

I’m often saddened by the infantilising effect of high technology on adults. From being in control of their world, they’re thrust back to a childish, mediaeval world in which gremlins appear to torment them and disappear at will and against which magic, spells, and the local witch doctor are their only refuges.

…

Fraser then posted this tweet the other day:

Another developer, Matt Gemmell, posted these:

Finally, you should read The Failure of Empathy on the Mule Design blog:

…

They [people] want things to work most of the time, and be easy to fix when they don’t. And if the process by which it happens is “magic” they are totally cool with that.

They want the thing in the movies.

As an industry, we need to understand that not wanting root access doesn’t make you stupid. It simply means you do not want root access. Failing to comprehend this is not only a failure of empathy, but a failure of service.

My thoughts exactly.

A sample: Highlander, The Princess Bride, Aliens, The Last Starfighter, Flight of the Navigator, The Big Lebowski, Tremors, many more.

Additionally, he maintains that Voyager is the best Star Trek (when all right-thinking people know that that title belongs to DS9, or at least to the original series), has never seen Thundercats and had never heard of Babylon 5.

There’s some edumacatin’ required.

UPDATE: ‘Bob’ informs me that he had in fact heard of B5. He’s just never seen it. As if that makes it better.