Question

I have been trying to setup multi site multi domain setup in Magento for more than a week now. And no success! I first tried to do it on localhost then I tried to do it on live server (shared hosting).

I followed this tutorial http://www.magentocommerce.com/knowledge-base/entry/tutorial-multi-site-multi-domain-setup but nothing happens.

Can someone answer to my basic question? Do I need two separate Magento installations to perform multi site multi domain setup or only one installation with two domains? I am confused. Please, help!

Regards!

Answer 1

You can run more than one Magento store on a single installation. The clue is in the index.php, specifically:

/* Store or website code */
$mageRunCode = isset($_SERVER['MAGE_RUN_CODE']) ? $_SERVER['MAGE_RUN_CODE'] : 'default';

/* Run store or run website */
$mageRunType = isset($_SERVER['MAGE_RUN_TYPE']) ? $_SERVER['MAGE_RUN_TYPE'] : 'store';

Mage::run($mageRunCode, $mageRunType);

The $mageRunCode defines the code of the store, or website, (as defined in the Manage Store section of the Administration area) that we’re initialising. The $mageRunType defines whether we’re going to be initialising a store, or a website.

As you can see, Magento first checks for appropriate values as environment variables. Using apache as an example, values for these variables will need to be set in the VirtualHost section of your httpd.conf, or similar. We set the environment variables using the SetEnv directive:

SetEnv MAGE_RUN_TYPE website
SetEnv MAGE_RUN_CODE website_code_001

We can use the same DocumentRoot for all of our domains as we’re allowing the VirtualHost to switch the values of $_SERVER['MAGE_RUN_{CODE,TYPE}'] depending on the requested hostname.