zencart + multisite
|
intellivision
Joined: 2005-11-28
Posts: 22 |
Posted: Mon, 2005-12-12 21:15
|
|
I'm tickled that they thought of us out there that would want 2+ installs of Gallery 2 but only one db and one codebase to maintain/back up etc. Excellent idea, and thank you. However after installing zen cart in my "Main" Gallery 2 domain, I need it for my other domain, and am stuck, because any checkouts from the second domain go to the Main domain (URL). This technically works but looks odd to the customer. It's MY FAULT, and I'm not blaming Gallery 2 or Zen Cart authors. I just want to point out to future multisite installers that while the core works well, don't expect all modules to necessarily work with it. (Now... to go about splitting the G2 installs.) |
|
Posts: 32509
this shouldn't be the case.
please rename your topic to zencart + multisite or something like that.
embedded G2 + multisite should work. and zencart is just a special kind of embedded g2.
Posts: 22
So install zen cart into the "thin" / non-Main G2 installation?
Posts: 83
intellivision or anyone else, do you have this set-up working?
If so, I have a question. I have a pre-existing multisite setup on a dozen sites, can I add the zen module to all sites? I am a bit confused on what to do here since multisite needs to use one db, or so it seems, and the multisites use seperate db's. Can you run through the setup on this with me? I have a zen setup a single site and it seems to work pretty good. I would really like to add zen to all of my other installations, multi-site and stand alone too. Any insight on this would be much appreciated. Thanks.
I see you say you had return glitch to the proper site? Is this still the case? Even if it is I can work around this if I can figure out how to install zen on a pre-existing multisite.
Thanks for your insight and direction on this.
Posts: 22
It worked for the "thin" G2 install. Just install Zen Cart into a "thin" directory. I did not, and never did want to, get it working for more than one instance of G2.
It was only my goal to get it working with the non-main G2 instance.
If I were to have had a 1:1 ratio of G2:ZC for each of my G2 instances, I would have looked into installing a set of ZC tables into the main G2 database, each with a different table prefix.
I gave up ZC as a solution however. It's purely your call, but to me it would have been an uphill battle to get it looking and configured how I want. Its got way way too many options organized in a far too haphazard manner, IMHO. If ATLAS/AJAX ever had a good candidate to incorporate itself into, it's ZC's admin interface.
Posts: 83
I'm back burnering this for now. I already have a 12 site multisite running with a minimal cart already, and after I ran into some very odd behaviours with the zen db setup, I have decided to scrap that for now fearing stability issues. I got the thing looking the way I wanted ok, but the backend is a bit odd and after the strange things I had going on today in the db, that did it for me. Thanks for the reply.
Posts: 23
Hi minoltamaniac, I'm the author of the Zen Cart integration and just wanted to ask about the db problems you had. If they are related to the integration specifically, I'd appreciate it if you could either post a forum topic describing the symptoms or drop me an e-mail, so I can check it out and fix it for other users. Otherwise, never mind! ;)
I agree that Zen Cart (and osCommerce) is a royal pain to theme and even to use, and personally I wouldn't be inclined to use it myself, heh. The design in all aspects, both backend and frontend, is haphazard as has been said. There's not much choice in e-commerce solutions though, i'm afraid
Posts: 83
Hi mrtorrent, the cart solutions are pretty minimal as you say. I want to recreate the problem later to be absolutely sure, and when I do I will post the troubles in more detail. I just don't have the time to resetup and try again. Basically I installed a db through cpanel, then installed a fresh gallery and zencart in the same database, and on the same server and put them in close directories [/order/cart & /order/photos] At first, everything seemed to work fine. I did need to run the db query long url thing to get the thumbs to show, but after that things seemed to look good. Then once I started try to add photos to second level catagories in zen things went kooky. Photos previous loaded to other catagories would switch into another catagory and then subcats would move to new categories. Then the same thing started to happen to photos in the top level cats... I said whoooa, so then deactivated, reactivated the zencart and no luck. Tried unstalling and reinstalling and zen would not reinstall. I then reinstalled a backup db and that allowed gallery to reinstall zen, but then zen was still broke. Before I had reinstalled the db, the admin in zen showed all products and categories were gone. Even default zen products. Do to time constraints, I pretty much got scared and went back to my two other cart solutions I am using now. I can't afford db issues with 100K photos and 100 domains. Too risky...I handled the theme fine, the backend was very hard to understand, but the weirdness I saw with the db was enough for me to scrap it for now. Once I get caught up again I will try again and get you some more details. I have dozens of sites running both standalone and multisite, all with a cart, and I have never experienced any issues like I had described above. But to be honest, no one else really has a cart that works like zen on gallery anyway. This integration has great potential so I will try to help with some testing at a later date. Thanks for the reply and keep up the good work.