Virtuemart Expert

We are often asked if it is possible to run two or more shops with just one Joomla / Virtuemart setup and one administration.

The default answer to this question is “No. Virtuemart does not offer this feature.”. But – yes, there is always a “but” – of course it is possible! We have done several projects with Virtuemart where the customer runs different shops with one administration. See some examples here:

Tagesspiegel (germany) is the main Virtuemart Setup:
http://shop.tagesspiegel.de/index.php
in the same Virtuemart administration, the following shops are managed:
http://shop.pnn.de/index.php
http://shop.zitty.de/index.php

Another example (german, too):
Willkommen im Online Shop der Saarbrücker Zeitung (Main setup)
Willkommen im Online Shop der Pfälzischen Merkur (managed through the main setup)

As you can see, the shops have different layouts and (much more important) different categories and products. There are also products that are sold in more than one shop.

How can this be done? With a bit of knowledge about how Virtuemart works and database know how we have created a solution, that (surprise) works without any Virtuemart or Joomla hacks! It’s a combination of advanced database configuration and a set of components and modules.

The big advantage is, that you can decide which data shall be “synchronized” between the different shops and which shall be used by all the shops together.

Example: you want to run three shops with different and identical products. Two of the shops shall share the userbase. This can be configured. You decide for each product in which shop it is visible. In the database, it is configured that shop 1 and shop 2 have the same user-table and shop 3 has its own table. The orders are stored in each shop.

This solution is very flexible and it will work with all existing Virtuemart and Joomla extensions, because all the changes we make are not “visible” for Joomla and Virtuemart. They access the database tables like always. Under the hood, the database delivers and stores the data the way we configured it.

Unfortunately, this solution is not available “out of the box” as a component. It has to be discussed, configured and integrated. But the result is a fast and easy to manage set of shops.

If you are interested in such a solution, please contact us for a quote!

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