Can I use multiple catalogs...

[Crasher]

I have small and large corporate customers. The big corporate customers, due to the size of their purchases, receive premiums (gifts) directly from the manufacturer bundled in with their shipments. All we do is take orders and forward them to the manufacturers. I do not want to display the products for the large corporate customers in the same catalog as the products for the small customers for obvious reasons.

 

As customers have to log in to place orders, is it possible to interrogate their logon ID and then display the proper catalog? Is this the proper line of thinking or should I use product categories instead?

 

Many thanks!

[♥Vger]

Could you instead just provide them with different URL's to visit? One oscommerce install in e.g. mydomain.com/corporate, the other in mydomain.com/store? If not then I'm sure that someone can provide you with the sort of codeing you'd need to redirect according to logon details. Unfortunately, although I'm quite experienced with installing and manipulating oscommerce I'm not great at original php coding. Vger

[Crasher]

The problem I foresee is that with the 1100 customers we have, we would need 1100 folders. Even worse, I think we might even have 1100 catalogs to maintain? Yipes.

 

There must be a way.

[user99999999]

You would only have 2 catalogs.

[Crasher]

User9999999, can you explain? Thanks.

[user99999999]

One catalog for corporate customers and one for regular customers thats 2 not 1100.

[Crasher]

OK, so can I select the catalog based on who they are?

[user99999999]

Make TWO seperate catalogs so you just tell the corporate customers which url to go to.

[Crasher]

Dave, whereas I appreciate your clever use of the bold font to dress up your answers, you haven't succeeded in explaining yourself, only repeating what you stated previously. Unfortunately it's also the wrong answer.

 

With some careful searching I located a variety of solutions. In an attempt to assist others, such as myself, who may be new to osCommerce, I will provide some extremely useful information without lunging for caps or even larger fonts. So here goes:

 

There is a link on the ocCommerce main page called "Contributions". When you click on it you are provided with a number of categories. Click on "Features" and type in "multi" or "store" in the search box. There are several solutions that handle multiple stores including one with a central admin so you don't have to administer multiple databases.

 

I downloaded one and after running the SQL script I now have multiple stores (and catalogs) to handle what we need.

 

Thanks to Vger as well.