Creating Multiple Independent Web Stores
Reasons you may want to have Multiple Web Stores
- You want to setup multiple web stores using a single domain, multiple domains, or domain pointers.
- You have too many products and / or categories for a single store and need to divide them up into smaller individual stores similar to a mini-mall.
If you want to have multiple independent stores, for example 3 different stores, then you first need to create three (3) independent copies of the XLEcom folder for each of your stores. The simple way to do this is to create two (2) additional copies (not installations) of the XLEcom folder.
For example:
C:\Program Files\XLEcom (default installation location - Store 1)
C:\Program Files\XLEcom_Store_2 (Store 2)
C:\Program Files\XLEcom_Store_3 (Store 3)
After you create the two additional XLEcom folders, you need to change Directory Folder Path Locations for these two additional stores. For Stores #2 and #3, open the XLEcom.xls files one at a time and switch to Product Design sheet and press the "Setup" button to change the directory folder path locations. For better file management, I recommend that you rename each copy of the three original XLEcom.xls files to something like the following:
XLEcom-Store-1.xls
XLEcom-Store-2.xls
XLEcom-Store-3.xls
or
Store-1.xls
Store-2.xls
Store-3.xls
For information on setting up independent stores using multiple domains on your web server, see the following topic:
Using a Single Domain
Note: The following methods are only for non-framed published websites.
If you do not want to use different domain names or domain pointers for each store and only want to use a single domain name, then utilize either of the following two options that suit your needs.
Option 1 - Three Web Stores Using three different subfolders for each of your stores
(1) Create three subfolders for Stores 1, 2 and 3 on your web server and upload the store files to each of these store subfolders.
(2) Next, create a custom home page and place it in the domain's root directory. This home page should list the names of the three stores and provide access links to each of them. You can create this custom home page manually or by using a separate web-authoring program.
For example:
Root Directory
- index.html (Your custom Home page located in the domain's root directory)
/store1
- index.html (Home Page for Store 1)
- html (folder)
- images (folder)
/store2
- index.html (Home Page for Store 2)
- html (folder)
- images (folder)
/store3
- index.html (Home Page for Store 3)
- html (folder)
- images (folder)
Creating the Links between all three of your Web Stores
To create links to each of your web stores on every page on all of your sites, you need to add the following custom code to all of your websites (all xlecom xls files).
Using the "Additional Code" utility, add the following "single" line of code (no carriage returns) to all of your websites. Add the code to both the Product Ad Pages and Support Pages "Beginning of the <body> section". You may want to change the fonts properties to match your sites.
<div align="center"><table border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td><a href="http://www.yourdomain.com/store1/index.html"><font face="Arial" size="-1">Store 1</font></a></td><td> | </td><td><a href="http://www.yourdomain.com/store2/index.html"><font face="Arial" size="-1">Store 2</font></a></td><td> | </td><td><a href="http://www.yourdomain.com/store3/index.html"><font face="Arial" size="-1">Store 3</font></a></td></tr></table></div>
This code will yield the following links to each Store:
See the following page for more information or help on how to add custom HTML code to your website:
Option 2 - Three Web Stores Using the root directory as store 1 and two subfolders for stores 2 and 3
Create two subfolders for Stores 1 and 2 on your web server and upload the store files to each of these store subfolders.
For example:
Root Directory
- index.html (Home Page for Store 1)
- html (folder)
- images (folder)
/store2
- index.html (Home Page for Store 2)
- html (folder)
- images (folder)
/store3
- index.html (Home Page for Store 3)
- html (folder)
- images (folder)
Creating the Links between all three of your Web Stores
To create links to each of your web stores on every page on all of your sites, you need to add the following custom code to all of your websites (all xlecom xls files).
Using the "Additional Code" utility, add the following "single" line of code (no carriage returns) to all of your websites. Add the code to both the Product Ad Pages and Support Pages "Beginning of the <body> section". You may want to change the fonts properties to match your sites.
<div align="center"><table border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td><a href="http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html"><font face="Arial" size="-1">Store 1</font></a></td><td> | </td><td><a href="http://www.yourdomain.com/store2/index.html"><font face="Arial" size="-1">Store 2</font></a></td><td> | </td><td><a href="http://www.yourdomain.com/store3/index.html"><font face="Arial" size="-1">Store 3</font></a></td></tr></table></div>
This code will yield the following links to each Store:
See the following page for more information or help on how to add custom HTML code to your website:
That's it.
Sam Raheb
XLEcom Program Developer
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