E Cart

Please advise. I have just completed my first PHP site with e Cart and all is now working. Thank you. I want to put in a sub site. My client runs a site for mens hair products and a second site for womens hair products. He wants to run both sites on my webserver so they can both use the same e commerce into his one merchant account.

We are putting in a category which will define whether a product is Mens or Womens so on my product listings we will filter out all proucts relating to the other sex.

My idea is that we set up a folder within the working Mens site for the Womens products. This way I can use the existing Database and Cart which is all set up and working now at Sagepay to speed up development time.

So in theory I will add a folder called "Womens" under the root - put in an Index.php with all Graphics for Women and point the Domain name to this file. The products list will be filtered so only products for women will appear.Are there any issues if I build the new site like this ? When it comes to the Cart - can I still use the same cart I have now without issues ?

Would I be best to run the entire checkout wizard again within the Womens folder so it creates a new set of Checkout Pages - ( I want to brand these also with the womens site logo ) or will this cause any problems.

Or am I better for example to duplicate the checkout files which already exist ( for example copy checkout.php as ladies_checkout.php and add womens logo and branding etc ) - and then just remap the button from the ladies site to the ladies_checkout.php so it goes through the same form as now but just with the ladies logo ?

Hope all makes sense.

as long as the domain is the same for both,
mensProducts
womensProducts

There will be no problem using the cart you have already created for the womens products and directing checkout to the existing checkout pages.

Thanks Jason - I was intending to put the folder in the same hosting space in a subfolder called womens_site.

As for the domain name - I wanted to point a different domain name to this subfolders index page via DNS

So for example womenshair.com would point to womens_site /index.php

Will this affect anything ?

John

yes, using a different domain name will result in a differant browsing session.


You would be better of having one domain name:
myhairsite/

and then having sub folders for men's hair and women's hair:

men
women

using different domain names for each site will mean you need to create a different cart and checkout pages for each domain.

Thanks Jason. However I dont think the different browsing session will affect this as I was not planning to access both sites through the domain URL - just one or the other.

The main site is called hair-for-men.com and points to the roots index.php page. This site will ONLY BE ACCESSED ONLY BY MEN through the index.php page and will only display MENS products from the database ( I will filter the products by mens and womens ) This site is built and working.

The sub site is called hair-development.com and it was my intention to point this to the following URL as its root file via a redivert from its existing hosting space.

index.php

This will be a totally HIDDEN page within the WOMENS SUBFOLDER on the mens site so there will never be a cross over - or a situation where a man wants to order both mens and womens through the one site - hence causing a browser session issue.

To all intents - the WOMENS site will operate totally in the subfolder . So THIS SITE WILL ONLY BE ACCESSED BY WOMEN - through the sub folder and will only every display WOMENS PRODUCTS

Will this still cause a problem ? I do see what you are saying but cannot see how this will cause a problem as a woman entering the site would still only have a SINGLE BROWSING SESSION - she would just come in at the different entry point into the site - would order her products and then checkout.

If you still say no - then we are back to square one and will have to make a totally different site as the mens is already built as hair-for-men.com - hardly enticing to women. Sorry but I just need to be sure.

Thank you for you help

it will become a problem when the cart display page posts over to the checkout page on the SSL server.

It will be simplest to create a totally separate site for the womens products rather than trying to use the checkout pages already created for the mens products.