Site domain specs and Improvments

[Phil -- wbtc.fr --]

(based on this, this, this, this, and this threads)

Hi guys,

Here is a resume of actual Sitedomain functions, and the suggestions already made + new ones.

Actual Specifications
- configure multiple Domains that this website is running on
- SSL URL
- sender's email for messages sent by system
- each domain can have a specific value for:
   - geo-location match - by IP or country (location)
   - primary theme (drop-down) + available themes
   - primary language (drop-down) + available languages
   - primary currency (drop-down) + available currencies
   - payement type(drop-down) + available currencies
   - available billing country (only 1)
   - available shipping country (only 1)

Future things already on Mantis
- specify which agents are allowed to be run on which site domains #883
- language specific ModRewrite URLs #638
- Domain-specific configuration variables #847

Suggestions (new and old ones)
- ability to select a default pricing group
- sitedomain drop-down on top of config pages
- root folder for each module, per site (or maybe available folders, via checkboxes in a three view?)
- permission tag for tpl to select sitedomain access

Things I'm not sure about
- "user registered on" under User Account
- sitedomain order origin
- language order origin


Waiting for your comments !
Phil.

[Dmitry Andrejev]

Hi Phil,

Thanks for all this work summarizing things ;)

This sounds very much like ability to run multiple sites / stores which are not even related to each other :)

While I like the idea of In-Portal doing this  - to be honest Site Domains is not really was meant for this.

DA.

--

Best regards,

Dmitry A.

[Alexander Obuhovich]

Outstanding job Phil.

I don't know how it's done in US, but in Russia it's a popular business model to have multiple shops end up in single database. Here is an example:

• I'm a big reseller and got 5000 products including: cars, flowers, clothes
• that's pretty stupid to sell them all in one e-shop, since they kind of not related to each other
• I create 3 sites: www.cars.com, www.flowers.com, www.clothes.com
• In "Structure & Data" section I create top categories called the same as site names: www.cars.com and so on
• I place appropriate products in appropriate categories (each of them can have their own and independent category structure inside)
• I create site domains and set, that actual root of each site domain will be one of categories I've create before

There are several limitations here:

• you can't have another site, that will allow to sell all products from other sites
  
• you can't sell same product on different sites
  

Real problem in implementing this is module root categories, that only creates useless abstraction above all this and idea to have them specified for each domain is even more frightful.

In http://groups.google.com/group/in-portal-dev/browse_thread/thread/2c337d190863bab6 discussion I'm proposing to get rid of them, so they won't be preventing site domains from expanding further.

--
Best Regards,

http://www.in-portal.com
http://www.alex-time.com

[Phil -- wbtc.fr --]

thanks guys for your positive comments.

As you have probably noticed I'm pushing things forward for this function from the beginning, because this is one of the futures for e-commerce.

Alex, your story about Russian way of doing is not surprising me at all, and I can add that if we use the "section" tab to place a flower product in a subdir of "cars" category, this would do the trick, isn't it?

There is another main reason for all this: if you run more than on website, selling the same products, then you'll mechanically take more place in google results for your products :-)

Then for all these reasons, I think In-Portal can now fit bigger projects, with a real difference on Magento, which is a good product, but needs really more resource for the same result, not to talk about complexity for installation/implementation/maintenance.

2010/10/8 Alexander Obuhovich <aik....@gmail.com>

[Alexander Obuhovich]

Alex, your story about Russian way of doing is not surprising me at all, and I can add that if we use the "section" tab to place a flower product in a subdir of "cars" category, this would do the trick, isn't it?

Nope, since url to a product will be build using it's primary category, which will match only one site domain.


We'll be working to make site domains and In-Portal better and more user friendly with each release. Documentation (of In-Portal) would be really helpful, but due the limited resources we can improve In-Portal and write documentation in same time.

[Dmitry A.]

Guys,


I have read your discussion here and have some questions to everyone:

1. Phil, can you describe what is - "sitedomain order origin" and
"language order origin"?

2, It's not very healthy to limit the option to sell / show the same
products or links (so forth) on different Site Domains. What if I need
to sell something on 2+ sites domains which have different Domain,
Theme, Language and so on. I believe it was the original approach for
SiteDomains and they way they are working now.

What are your thoughts.

DA

On Oct 12, 2:53 am, Alexander Obuhovich <aik.b...@gmail.com> wrote:
> *Alex, your story about Russian way of doing is not surprising me at all,

> and I can add that if we use the "section" tab to place a flower product in
> a subdir of "cars" category, this would do the trick, isn't it?

> *

> Nope, since url to a product will be build using it's primary category,
> which will match only one site domain.
>
> We'll be working to make site domains and In-Portal better and more user
> friendly with each release. Documentation (of In-Portal) would be really
> helpful, but due the limited resources we can improve In-Portal and write
> documentation in same time.
>

> On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 11:20 AM, Phil -- wbtc.fr -- <p...@wbtc.fr> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > thanks guys for your positive comments.
>
> > As you have probably noticed I'm pushing things forward for this function
> > from the beginning, because this is one of the futures for e-commerce.
>
> > Alex, your story about Russian way of doing is not surprising me at all,
> > and I can add that if we use the "section" tab to place a flower product in
> > a subdir of "cars" category, this would do the trick, isn't it?
>
> > There is another main reason for all this: if you run more than on website,
> > selling the same products, then you'll mechanically take more place in
> > google results for your products :-)
>
> > Then for all these reasons, I think In-Portal can now fit bigger projects,
> > with a real difference on Magento, which is a good product, but needs really
> > more resource for the same result, not to talk about complexity for
> > installation/implementation/maintenance.
>

> > 2010/10/8 Alexander Obuhovich <aik.b...@gmail.com>

>
> > Outstanding job Phil.
>
> >> I don't know how it's done in US, but in Russia it's a popular business
> >> model to have multiple shops end up in single database. Here is an example:
>

> >>    - I'm a big reseller and got 5000 products including: cars, flowers,
> >>    clothes
> >>    - that's pretty stupid to sell them all in one e-shop, since they kind

> >>    of not related to each other

> >>    - I create 3 sites:www.cars.com,www.flowers.com,www.clothes.com
> >>    - In "Structure & Data" section I create top categories called the

> >>    same as site names:www.cars.comand so on

> >>    - I place appropriate products in appropriate categories (each of them

> >>    can have their own and independent category structure inside)

> >>    - I create site domains and set, that actual root of each site domain

> >>    will be one of categories I've create before
>
> >> There are several limitations here:
>

> >>    - you can't have another site, that will allow to sell all products
> >>    from other sites
> >>    - you can't sell same product on different sites

>
> >> Real problem in implementing this is module root categories, that only
> >> creates useless abstraction above all this and idea to have them specified
> >> for each domain is even more frightful.
>
> >> In

> >>http://groups.google.com/group/in-portal-dev/browse_thread/thread/2c3...I'm proposing to get rid of them, so they won't be preventing

> >> site domains from expanding further.
>

> >> On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 2:39 AM, Dmitry Andrejev <dandre...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >>> Hi Phil,
>
> >>> Thanks for all this work summarizing things ;)
>
> >>> This sounds very much like ability to run multiple sites / stores which
> >>> are not even related to each other :)
>
> >>> While I like the idea of In-Portal doing this  - to be honest Site
> >>> Domains is not really was meant for this.
>
> >>> DA.
>

> >>> On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 5:45 PM, Phil -- wbtc.fr -- <p...@wbtc.fr> wrote:
>
> >>>> (based on this<http://groups.google.com/group/in-portal-dev/browse_thread/thread/fce...>,
> >>>> this,<http://groups.google.com/group/in-portal-dev/browse_thread/thread/448...>
> >>>> this<http://groups.google.com/group/in-portal-dev/browse_thread/thread/e84...>,
> >>>> this<http://groups.google.com/group/in-portal-dev/browse_thread/thread/cbb...>,
> >>>> and this<http://groups.google.com/group/in-portal-dev/browse_thread/thread/395...>threads)

>
> >>>> Hi guys,
>
> >>>> Here is a resume of actual Sitedomain functions, and the suggestions
> >>>> already made + new ones.
>

> >>>> *Actual Specifications
> >>>> *- configure multiple Domains that this website is running on

> >>>> - SSL URL
> >>>> - sender's email for messages sent by system
> >>>> - each domain can have a specific value for:
> >>>>    - geo-location match - by IP or country (location)
> >>>>    - primary theme (drop-down) + available themes
> >>>>    - primary language (drop-down) + available languages
> >>>>    - primary currency (drop-down) + available currencies
> >>>>    - payement type(drop-down) + available currencies
> >>>>    - available billing country (only 1)
> >>>>    - available shipping country (only 1)
>

> >>>> *Future things already on Mantis
> >>>> *- specify which agents are allowed to be run on which site domains

> >>>> #883
> >>>> - language specific ModRewrite URLs #638
> >>>> - Domain-specific configuration variables #847
>

> >>>> *Suggestions (new and old ones)
> >>>> *- ability to select a default pricing group

> >>>> - sitedomain drop-down on top of config pages
> >>>> - root folder for each module, per site (or maybe available folders, via
> >>>> checkboxes in a three view?)
> >>>> - permission tag for tpl to select sitedomain access
>

> >>>> *Things I'm not sure about*

[Alexander Obuhovich]

1. Phil, can you describe what is - "sitedomain order origin" and "language order origin"?

That's pretty obvious to me, since it's:

• site domain user was used to create an order
• selected language on that site domain, during order creation time

2. It's not very healthy to limit the option to sell / show the same products or links (so forth) on different Site Domains

How then we will overcome issue, that url to a product is build using it's primary category?

[Dmitry A.]

Thanks for clarifications Alex.

Okay, I'll try to be more direct - currently I can sell the same
product via different SiteDomains. By implementing new features this
ability will go away?


DA.

On Oct 17, 12:28 pm, Alexander Obuhovich <aik.b...@gmail.com> wrote:
> *1. Phil, can you describe what is - "sitedomain order origin" and "language
> order origin"?*

>
> That's pretty obvious to me, since it's:
>

>    - site domain user was used to create an order
>    - selected language on that site domain, during order creation time
>
> *2. It's not very healthy to limit the option to sell / show the
> same products or links (so forth) on different Site Domains*

> > > >>    same as site names:www.cars.comandso on

> > > >>    - I place appropriate products in appropriate categories (each of
> > them
> > > >>    can have their own and independent category structure inside)
> > > >>    - I create site domains and set, that actual root of each site
> > domain
> > > >>    will be one of categories I've create before
>
> > > >> There are several limitations here:
>
> > > >>    - you can't have another site, that will allow to sell all products
> > > >>    from other sites
> > > >>    - you can't sell same product on different sites
>
> > > >> Real problem in implementing this is module root categories, that only
> > > >> creates useless abstraction above all this and idea to have them
> > specified
> > > >> for each domain is even more frightful.
>
> > > >> In
>

> >http://groups.google.com/group/in-portal-dev/browse_thread/thread/2c3...to get rid of them, so they won't be preventing

[Alexander Obuhovich]

Currently you can't sell same product on 2 site domains, since both site domains will have identical category structure. Creating differently looking website with exactly same products doesn't make much sense to me.

[Phil -- wbtc.fr --]

to be honest, I'm about to implement site domain for one of my customers, but the goal was to sell the very same products on both websites, and it seems that like me, Dmitry was thinking it was one of the primary uses :)

Alex, as we discussed before, the goal is to have your own competitor, that's why it's also usefull to sell same products, while we can use another custom field to describe the product in another fashion ;-)

2010/10/18 Alexander Obuhovich <aik....@gmail.com>

[Dmitry A.]

Is there a problem setting up multiple Site Domain to have the same
Root Category?

This will do the job for selling the same products on different Site
Domains (as now), at the same time being able to sell different if
needed.

DA

On Oct 18, 3:13 am, "Phil -- wbtc.fr --" <p...@wbtc.fr> wrote:
> to be honest, I'm about to implement site domain for one of my customers,
> but the goal was to sell the very same products on both websites, and it
> seems that like me, Dmitry was thinking it was one of the primary uses :)
>
> Alex, as we discussed before, the goal is to have your own competitor,
> that's why it's also usefull to sell same products, while we can use another
> custom field to describe the product in another fashion ;-)
>

> 2010/10/18 Alexander Obuhovich <aik.b...@gmail.com>

>
>
>
> > Currently you can't sell same product on 2 site domains, since both site
> > domains will have identical category structure. Creating differently looking
> > website with exactly same products doesn't make much sense to me.
>

> >>http://groups.google.com/group/in-portal-dev/browse_thread/thread/2c3...rid of them, so they won't be preventing

[Phil -- wbtc.fr --]

Can't we add more than 1 path for a given product to mod-rewrite DB?

We'll have the same need about my request for multilingual urls, no?

2010/10/17 Alexander Obuhovich <aik....@gmail.com>

[Alexander Obuhovich]

Not entirely releated. We can have 2 site domains using same language. Product already has "Sections" tab, where we can add him to multiple sections. Are actually talking to change product's primary category on the fly based on site domain.

For example:

• you have "Product A"
• "Product A" has 2 categories "Category A (primary)" and "Category B"

Primary category is placed in url by default. However I've tested that you can access same product by 2 urls, e.g.

http://.../products/sub-products-b/sub-products-c/test-product.html

http://.../products/sub-products-a/test-product.html

So we need to specify site domain root category at least. Then in case, when current primary category of product is not within specified site domain root category, then try so select first matching category (from "Sections" tab of that product), that is within path and use it for link building.

Other scenario is that you have to manually specify what is product primary category for each site domain.

[Dmitry A.]

Hi Alex,

Can you post your sample product URLs again? For some reason I can
only see half of it.

PS. I have made this discussion as "sticky" we can work this out and
finalize the specs for this task.

DA.

On Oct 19, 3:15 am, Alexander Obuhovich <aik.b...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Not entirely releated. We can have 2 site domains using same language.
> Product already has "Sections" tab, where we can add him to multiple
> sections. Are actually talking to change product's primary category on the
> fly based on site domain.
>
> For example:
>

>    - you have "Product A"
>    - "Product A" has 2 categories "Category A (primary)" and "Category B"

>
> Primary category is placed in url by default. However I've tested that you

> can access same product by 2 urls, e.g.http://.../products/sub-products-b/sub-products-c/test-product.html<http://alex.alex-time.com/in-portal.bf/products/sub-products-b/sub-pr...>http://.../products/sub-products-a/test-product.html<http://alex.alex-time.com/in-portal.bf/products/sub-products-a/test-p...>

>
> So we need to specify site domain root category at least. Then in case, when
> current primary category of product is not within specified site domain root
> category, then try so select first matching category (from "Sections" tab of
> that product), that is within path and use it for link building.
>
> Other scenario is that you have to manually specify what is product primary
> category for each site domain.
>

> On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 11:06 PM, Phil -- wbtc.fr -- <p...@wbtc.fr> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > Can't we add more than 1 path for a given product to mod-rewrite DB?
>
> > We'll have the same need about my request for multilingual urls, no?
>

> > 2010/10/17 Alexander Obuhovich <aik.b...@gmail.com>
>
> > *1. Phil, can you describe what is - "sitedomain order origin"
> >> and "language order origin"?*

>
> >> That's pretty obvious to me, since it's:
>

> >>    - site domain user was used to create an order
> >>    - selected language on that site domain, during order creation time
>
> >> *2. It's not very healthy to limit the option to sell / show the
> >> same products or links (so forth) on different Site Domains*

>
> >> How then we will overcome issue, that url to a product is build using it's
> >> primary category?
>

> >>> > >>    same as site names:www.cars.comandso on

> >>> > >>    - I place appropriate products in appropriate categories (each of
> >>> them
> >>> > >>    can have their own and independent category structure inside)
> >>> > >>    - I create site domains and set, that actual root of each site
> >>> domain
> >>> > >>    will be one of categories I've create before
>
> >>> > >> There are several limitations here:
>
> >>> > >>    - you can't have another site, that will allow to sell all
> >>> products
> >>> > >>    from other sites
> >>> > >>    - you can't sell same product on different sites
>
> >>> > >> Real problem in implementing this is module root categories, that
> >>> only
> >>> > >> creates useless abstraction above all this and idea to have them
> >>> specified
> >>> > >> for each domain is even more frightful.
>
> >>> > >> In
>

> >>>http://groups.google.com/group/in-portal-dev/browse_thread/thread/2c3...<http://groups.google.com/group/in-portal-dev/browse_thread/thread/2c3...>proposing to get rid of them, so they won't be preventing

> >>> > >> site domains from expanding further.
>
> >>> > >> On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 2:39 AM, Dmitry Andrejev <
> >>> dandre...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >>> > >>> Hi Phil,
>
> >>> > >>> Thanks for all this work summarizing things ;)
>
> >>> > >>> This sounds very much like ability to run multiple sites / stores
> >>> which
> >>> > >>> are not even related to each other :)
>
> >>> > >>> While I like the idea of In-Portal doing this  - to be honest Site
> >>> > >>> Domains is not really was meant for this.
>
> >>> > >>> DA.
>
> >>> > >>> On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 5:45 PM, Phil -- wbtc.fr -- <p...@wbtc.fr>
> >>> wrote:
>
> >>> > >>>> (based on this<

> >>>http://groups.google.com/group/in-portal-dev/browse_thread/thread/fce..
> >>> .>,
> >>> > >>>> this,<
> >>>http://groups.google.com/group/in-portal-dev/browse_thread/thread/448..
> >>> .>
> >>> > >>>> this<
> >>>http://groups.google.com/group/in-portal-dev/browse_thread/thread/e84..
> >>> .>,
> >>> > >>>> this<
> >>>http://groups.google.com/group/in-portal-dev/browse_thread/thread/cbb..
> >>> .>,
> >>> > >>>> and this<
> >>>http://groups.google.com/group/in-portal-dev/browse_thread/thread/395..

[Alexander Obuhovich]

Posting url again won't do any good, since google shortened them somehow, because even on http://groups.google.com/group/in-portal-dev/browse_thread/thread/a646e79c4c6834f6 link they are all shortened. I've posted 

[Dmitry A.]

Alex, come one be more creative - attach the image here or break the
URL on 2 parts so it's really a URL :)

DA.

On Oct 22, 1:21 am, Alexander Obuhovich <aik.b...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Posting url again won't do any good, since google shortened them somehow,

> because even onhttp://groups.google.com/group/in-portal-dev/browse_thread/thread/a64...

> ...
>
> read more »

[Alexander Obuhovich]

URL1:

http://domain.tld/products/

sub-products-b/sub-products-c/

test-product.html

URL2:

http://domain.tld/products/

sub-products-a/

test-product.html

[Phil -- wbtc.fr --]

you can also use the new google service to shorten URL : www.goo.gl (this is not a joke, try it and adopt it ^^)

2010/10/22 Alexander Obuhovich <aik....@gmail.com>

[Dmitry A.]

Just a quick note that we are finally will be getting a real life project with multiple Site-domains which means we'll be able to closer review the current functionality as well as future improvements.

DA