How To Setup Multiple Stores With Magento

Magento Multi-Store & Setting Up Multiple Magento Stores Using One Admin Area

If you want to setup multiple Magento stores and multiple domains that share the same admin area, the tutorial below will assist you in doing so. This is very useful if you have a lot of stores that share the same or related products and you wish to manage it from one central location. You will also be able to track your sales and customers without having to login to the admin area of each website.

With the latest release of Magento Commerce it is much easier to set this up than it was in previous versions. Before it required you to modify the index.php file to handle your different domains pointing at different stores and various other complicated modifications. With Magento 1.4.x it is now much easier. The new index php contains the following code:

$mageRunCode = isset($_SERVER['MAGE_RUN_CODE']) ? $_SERVER['MAGE_RUN_CODE'] : '';
$mageRunType = isset($_SERVER['MAGE_RUN_TYPE']) ? $_SERVER['MAGE_RUN_TYPE'] : 'store';

It checks two variables(code & type) and then uses them to run Magento. With the new code you’re able to set which store is supposed to be running under your main domain directly within your virtual host definition(root access required) or for our shared hosting and cPanel hosting customers you can actually now use .htaccess to accomplish this.

Creating your additional stores

If you haven’t already done so, the first thing you will need to do is setup your second store in the Magento admin area:

1. Login to the Magento admin area.
2. Go to the Catalog tab, then select Manage Categories.
3. Click the ‘Add Root Category’ button on the left.
4. On the right, for the Name, enter your secondwebsite.com. In the dropdown set Yes for both ‘Is Active’ and ‘Is Anchor’.
5. Click on ‘Save Category’.
6. Next you should go to the ‘System’ tab and select ‘Manage Stores’.
7. Click the ‘Create Website’ button.
8. For the Name enter your Secondwebsite.com, and for the ‘Code’ you should enter secondwebsite. You’ll be using this value later so make sure your note it down somewhere.
9. Click ‘Save Website’.
10. In the same area, click on the ‘Create Store’ button.
11. For the Website, select your Secondwebsite.com from the dropdown. For the ‘Name’, you can enter Secondary Store. For the Root Category, select your now created Secondwebsite.com from the dropdown.
12. Click the ‘Save Store’ button.
13. Next click on the ‘Create Store View’ button.
14. For the ‘Store’, select Secondary Store from the dropdown menu, make sure it’s for the created Secondwebsite.com. For the Name, you can enter English. For the ‘Code’, you should enter secondwebsite_en. For the Status, select ‘Enabled’ from the dropdown menu.
15. Click on ‘Save Store View’.
16. Next you will need to go to the ‘System’ tab and select ‘Configuration’
17. For ‘Current Configuration Scope’ (located near the top left), change the dropdown menu from ‘Default Config’ to Secondwebsite.com.
18. Select ‘Web’ from the left sidebar under the ‘Genera’l headline.
19. For both the Unsecure and Secure sections, uncheck the Use default box next to the Base URL item, and enter the URL for your store, e.g. secondwebsite.com. Make sure to include the trailing backslash.
20. Click the ‘Save Config’ button.

You’re almost done so hang in there!

Once you are finished creating the store, if you have not added your second domain as an add-on domain you will need to login to your cPanel account with us and create it as an Add-on domain now. Once you have done this you then need to copy your index.php and .htaccess file to the created directory for your add-on domain.

After copying over your index.php file, you should replace the following lines of code in the index.php file located only in the new add-on directory:

Replace this line:

$mageFilename = ‘app/Mage.php’;

With the following:

$mageFilename = ‘../public_html/app/Mage.php’;

Next you will need to either use the VirtualHost method(VPS and dedicated servers) or the .htacess method (for regular magento hosting / shared hosting accounts).

Using VirtualHost:

To set this up using the Virtualhost method you should simply add the following lines within your VirtualHost definition file:

SetEnv MAGE_RUN_CODE "base"  #Put your main/base website or store code here.
SetEnv MAGE_RUN_TYPE "secondwebsite"  #Here you should put 'secondwebsite' if the URL of the additional store you are adding is secondwebsite.com.

Using the .htaccess method:

If you do not have access to the virtual host file and are not a VPS or dedicated server customer, you can still use .htaccess for this.

In your .htaccess code you will need to define your main and secondary websites. For example if the URL of your main/base website is base.com and the URL of your second website is secondwebsite.com you should put the following code in your .htaccess


SetEnvIf Host .*base.* MAGE_RUN_CODE="base";
SetEnvIf Host .*secondwebsite.* MAGE_RUN_TYPE="secondwebsite";


You are, of course, not limited to using just 2 websites. To add additional stores you would simply add the additional lines of necessary code:


SetEnvIf Host .*thirdwebsite.* MAGE_RUN_TYPE="thirdwebsite";


etc.

You should now be all setup using Magento multi-stores and have multiple stores with one main admin area in Magento, without messing around with the code and the other previous lengthy methods .

If you have any questions, additions or issues with this feel free to comment.