Multiple skins?

[Augustin]

Hello!

Is there any way to install multiple skins and use them simultaneously, please?

At the moment, I have the Foundation set for a wholesale portal. The next step is to have a retail online shop based on the very same inventory of products.

The idea is to have a different look for the retail than the one for wholesale.

Thank you very much in advance for your help!

[bsmither]

Each CubeCart store can use one skin at a time, but have several installed. The admin can give permission for the customer to change the skin on their demand for that store. Their choice of skin is stored in their cookie-based session dataset.

Having multiple stores share a database can be done, but invites problems not easily surmounted.

As an aside, in addition to a different look, perhaps there will be a different price schedule for the wholesale customer group. This is easily done.

I can see a solution to having CubeCart choose the skin to use based on the web address used to get to the store: www.store.com vs wholesale.store.com.

If you would like to begin exploring for a solution, send me a PM with your email address. When it gets finished according to your specs, we can publish the solution in this conversation.

 

[havenswift-hosting]

While not standard, it should also be relatively simple (haven’t looked at code though!)  to associate a different uploaded skin with a customer group, so Wholesale could use one assigned skin and all other customers use the default store skin. No need for multiple stores that way !

Ian

[Augustin]

To the initial post:

at this point, I have two perfectly running instances of Cubecart v6 on the same domain, same machine, and same fix IP. Both instances work absolutely fine. One is in a folder of the main domain and the other on a sub-domain.

My hosting is a shared one at interserver.net on a Linux machine running Apache. So, I have no idea if it would work the same on a Windows machine, on asp.

Thank you Bsmither for the insights, especially regarding the usage of a common database and of sub-domains! I tried running both instances simultaneously using the same database but it is indeed prone to errors of input/output, as Bsmither was pointing out, if not handled with caution. For example, when clearing the cache of one instance while the other instance is still writing on the database.

Thank you Havenswift-hosting for the suggestion of using different skins for the two front-ends (wholesale and retail), as well! The reason I finally decided to run two instances of Cubecart is that in the near future the retail will be moved on a separate dedicated server and it will be much easier to just transfer the entire data than if having to first separate the wholesale data from the retail data in a common database.

To conclude: everything runs smoothly 

[bsmither]

From your initial requirements, a code snippet was created that will determine if the URL used was either "retail.store.com" or "wholesale.store.com".

That determination will then force CubeCart to use a specific one or another of several styles of one skin, or a specific one or another of several separate skins.

The key point is that this is still one single installed codebase using one single database.

However, "separate the wholesale data from the retail data" could be an issue depending what that data is: product pricing schedules, product availability/visibility, shipping/payment options, etc.

To conclude: glad to see it's working for you.