How To Setup & Manage Multiple Stores In Magento Commerce

Gone are the days when you have to setup separate E-commerce scripts to manage & run multiple online stores. Magento makes new store creation extremely easy for the store owners so that they can have as many stores as they like still maintaining one backend (admin panel). If you are new to Magento then this tutorial will require you to read the instructions very carefully. You can create multiple stores with other E-commerce software as well i.e. osCommerce, X-Cart, Zen Cart or Miva but to have multiple stores you need to add few plugins, addons and invest in hiring a full time programmer which is painful. A single Magento installation will be enough to run multiple stores having different domain names, different IP’s and different Security certificate. You can optionally setup single checkout for each store as well.

Choose Your Preferred URL Structure

Choosing a URL structure for your individual store is your own personal choice. You can install two different stores on same domain name under different directories ie. Mystore.com/women & Mystore.com/men. You can also use single Magento installation to host two or more stores each sharing same Magento backend but pointing to different domain names as well i.e. womenstores.com & mensstore.com. Similarly you can setup more than one Magento powered stores in sub-domains i.e. women.mystore.com & men.mystore.com
Once you are done selecting a URL structure just stick to it. Typically people prefer hosting more than one Magento powered stores with one backend but each store having its own domain name (better for SEO).

How To Add Another Magento Powered Store

In order to setup another Magento powered store you need to following the steps given below:

1. Login to the Magento admin panel.
2. Go to the Catalog tab, and select Manage Categories.
3. Click on the Add Root Category button on the left.
4. We will input mystore2.com as Name. Set the dropdown to Yes for both “Is Active” and “Is Anchor”. Click Save category button.
5. Now, Go to the System tab and select Manage Stores.
6. Click on the Create Website button.
7. We will enter mystore2.com as Name and in Code field we will enter mystore2. As we are going to use this value later so keep it handy. Click Save Website button.
8. Click on the Create Store button.
9. For the Website, select mystore2.com from the dropdown. For theName, we’ll enter Main Store. For the Root Category, select the mystore2.com from the dropdown. Click Save Store button.
10. Click on the Create Store View button.
11. For the Store, select Main Store from the dropdown, making sure it’s for the mystore2.com website. For the Name, we’ll enter English. For the Code, we’ll enter mystore2_en. For the Status, select Enabled from the dropdown. Click Save Store view button.
12. Now, Go to the System tab and select Configuration.
13. For the Current Configuration Scope (located on the top left), change the dropdown menu from Default Config to mystore2.com.
14. Select Web from the sidebar on the left under the General heading.
15. 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. http://www.mystore2.com/. Don’t ignore the trailing slash. Click Save Config button. You are all set, your new store is created.

Now, as you have created another store using your Magento admin panel, you need to decide which method to use for Magento to locate your new store. There are four main methods to setup your domains which are entirely based upon your URL structure.

1. Addon Domain Method (Each store have its own domain name)
2. Parked Domain Method (New stores will be setup on Parked domain
3. Sub-directory Method (New Store will be setup in different directory under primary domain)
4. Sub-domain Method (Each new store will be setup in different sub domains)