Q. Is AspDotNetStorefront multi-store available for sale?
A. Yes! AspDotNetStorefront is thrilled to announce that the Multi-Store production release is complete and ready for purchase!
Q. How is AspDotNetStorefront multi-store licensed?
A. The license for AspDotNetStorefront multi-store consists of two components: a base license and store licenses. The base license allows you to run AspDotNetStorefront multi-store on a single server. Each logical store created requires a separate store license, which can be purchased with the base license or added later.
Q. Can administrators be restricted to access data only from a specific store?
A. Not yet. AspDotNetStorefront multi-store was designed to be administered by a common group of administrators. Each administrator has access to all data within the multi-store deployment. We are planning to add more 'fine-grained' filtering abilities in future releases.
Q. Can AspDotNetStorefront multi-store be used for running stores for separate companies off of a single installation?
A. While this is theoretically possible, AspDotNetStorefront multi-store was not intended for this purpose. All products, customers, and orders are centrally managed and administrators cannot be restricted to a single store’s data. This means that each company would have access to all data regardless of which store that data was for.
Q. Can I change the look and feel of each store individually?
A. Absolutely! Each store can appear as a completely unique, separately branded website to the end customer.
Q. What data can vary by store?
A. AspDotNetStorefront multi-store has been designed to allow great flexibility in terms of how each store operates. All configuration parameters can vary by store, including payment gateways and merchant account details, SEO information, handling of wholesale customers, and shipping configurations. Additionally, the following items can be varied for each store:
- Displayed products
- Displayed categories
- Displayed departments
- Product pricing
- Customers
- Payment terms
- Look and feel
- Branding
- Content pages
- String resources (phrases displayed on the site)
Not sure if your needs are supported? Please contact
sales@aspdotnetstorefront.com for complete details.
Q. Will AspDotNetStorefront multi-store work in a 64-bit environment?
A. Yes. The product was designed to fully support the advantages offered by modern 64-bit computing platforms. Please keep in mind however that some payment gateways require the inclusion of 32-bit assemblies, which prevents use of those gateways in a 64-bit environment. If you are unsure of whether your payment gateway will function, please contact our sales team at sales@aspdotnetstorefront.com.
Q. How many stores can a single implementation support?
A. This is entirely dependent upon the combined size, structure, and traffic for each store. AspDotNetStorefront was designed to support 100,000 products or more (with proper tuning), so keep this in mind during deployment. If the size of each store is relatively small with little traffic, a single implementation can support 250 or more stores, whereas if each store has thousands of products or receives very high traffic, a single multi-store installation may only support 5-10 stores or less.
Q. How does AspDotNetStorefront multi-store know which store to display for a customer?
A. Stores are differentiated by domain name, subdomain, or virtual directory. For example, if you have two stores (retail store and wholesale store), you could differentiate these by assigning one store to www.retailstore.com and the other to www.wholesalestore.com. Likewise, you could use http://retail.store.com and http://wholesale.store.com, or www.store.com/retail and www.store.com/wholesale.
Q. Are server farms supported?
A. Server farms are fully supported, however you must purchase a server license for each server the application will be hosted on. When selecting a load balancing technology we strongly recommend using a quality hardware load balancer that supports “sticky sessions” (class c affinity) to prevent issues with SSL certificates and cookies. Likewise, we do not recommend the use of software load balancing technologies (such as Microsoft network load balancing) at all. These tend to be problematic.
Q. Is AspDotNetStorefront multi-store PA-DSS compliant?
A. While we will be undergoing PA-DSS compliance after the official release of the product, this process can take many months (primarily waiting for the PCI Security Council to list the application). The application has been developed in adherence to PA-DSS specifications, however it will be some time before the application is PA-DSS accepted. The full release version will be capable of passing all PCI compliance scans, therefore meeting security requirements and mandates needed to obtain a merchant account.
Q. How does SSL work in multi-store?
A. The manner in which SSL works depends on how your stores are configured. If each store has a distinct domain name (such as www.store1.com and www.store2.com) then each store will also need to have its own SSL certificate and use a dedicated IP address. This can be accomplished by mapping multiple websites in IIS to the directory where your AspDotNetStorefront files are installed. If you are using subdomains (such as store1.mycompany.com and store2.mycompany.com) then you can purchase a wildcard certificate which will secure all of your stores. If you are using subdirectories for your stores (www.mycompany.com/store1 and www.mycompany.com/store2) then a single SSL certificate for www.mycompany.com can be used.
Q. Does each store require its own server?
A. This depends on the size of the store and how much traffic it receives, but typically no. AspDotNetStorefront multi-store was designed to allow you to host multiple logical websites using a single server and database. Please keep in mind that if you are connecting multiple servers to the same database, each server requires a license.
Q. Will multi-store work in a shared hosting environment?
A. Multi-store is not tested or supported in a shared hosting environment, and requires a dedicated server. While it may be possible to deploy multi-store in shared hosting, AspDotNetStorefront would not be able to assist with any complications resultant from this.
Q. What are the minimum system requirements for AspDotNetStorefront multi-store?
A. System requirements will vary widely dependent upon the number of sites you intend on deploying, the size of those sites, configuration options, the amount of traffic received, and what kind of caching is utilized. When sizing a dedicated server however, we recommend at minimum a modern dual-core processor and 4 GB of memory when running Microsoft SQL Server on the same machine. Microsoft SQL will often use up to 2 GB of memory by itself. In a production environment, windows server 2003 or windows server 2008 is supported. In a development environment, Windows XP Professional or Vista Home Premium or better is supported.
Q. What versions of Microsoft SQL are supported?
A. AspDotNetStorefront multi-store can utilize Microsoft SQL server 2005 or 2008, including Express versions.
Q. Does each logical store require a separate installation?
A. No. Multi-store was designed to allow multiple logical stores to be hosted from a single installation. If you are using separate domains, each logical site will require its own website in IIS; however each of those sites can be mapped to a single installation directory.
Q. Can my stores be on different domains?
A. Sure! Each store can be on a totally separate domain or subdomain, or in a subdirectory on your domain. For example:
- www.store1.com
- www.store2.com
- store1.yoursite.com
- store2.yoursite.com
- www.yoursite.com/store1
- www.yoursite.com/store2
etc...