Value and implementation of sites, stores and views in Adobe Commerce

Through this blog we will learn how to implement and know the importance of a great feature that Magento gives us, which allows us to have different websites, several stores on the same website and different views for each store.

which we can manage from the same administrative panel, without the need to have hosted in different places each store that we occupy with their respective administrative panels.

Therefore, we must understand that this feature can bring us great benefits such as, it allows us to have totally different stores, equal stores in different languages, share catalogs between stores or have completely different catalogs for each of them, share customers or not, to buy in different stores and have a payment process in one. It is a system adaptable to almost any type of eCommerce situation.

>>What is eCommerce?<<

Websites, stores and views have one-to-many relationships, this means that a single installation can have several websites, each website can have several stores and each store can have several views.

These help us to be able to store different attributes and contents for our pages, such as:

1. default languages.
2. Domain names.
3. Categories.
4. Products.
5. Currencies.

Before moving on to implementation, let's consider some important terms to better differentiate these instances.

Website: is the main or parent container for sites, delivery methods, payment methods and more. Therefore, if we want to have completely separate pages that do not share cart, delivery methods or others, separate websites must be created.

Store: it is contained in a website. In turn, a store contains at least one view.

Several stores can share user sessions, shopping carts, payment gateways and more, but we can assign different catalog structures to them. However, the amount of inventory in our catalog cannot be managed at the store level, inventory is managed only at the website level.

View: Initially a store has a single default view, however, additional views can be added to support different languages or for other purposes. Ultimately customers can use the language selector in the header to switch between the different views of the store.

Finally, let's keep in mind certain points when working with some of these instances, which are:

1. Commerce instances have a cascading model: global → website → store → store → store view.
2. Each website has at least one default store and store view.
3. Each store view can have a different base URL.
4. The main function of a website is the configuration of top-level features.
5. The main function of a store is the configuration of some root category.
6. The main function of a store view is translation information and currency symbol configuration.

Implementation. 

If we want our stores to have different catalogs start with step 1, otherwise skip step 1.

Step 1: Creation of the root category

For each item, we start in the left sidebar. Creating a root category is optional, we show how to do it in this tutorial in case you want each website to have a different catalog. You can create several additional categories if you wish.

1. Log in to the administrative panel as an authorized user to create categories.
2. Click on "Catalog > Categories".
3. Click on "Add root category".
4. In the "Category Name" field, enter a unique name to identify this category.
5. Make sure that the "Enable Category" option is set to "Yes", if it is not active the category will not be shown to you when creating the store.
   
   Example:
   
   
6. Click on "Save".
7. Repeat these steps as many times as necessary to create different root categories for your stores.
   
   

Step 2: Create website

1. Log in to the administrative panel as an authorized user to create websites, stores and store views.
2. Click on "Stores > settings > All stores".
3. On the Stores page, click on "Create website".
   • Name: enter a name to identify the web site.
   • Code: enter a unique code. Example, if you have a European store, you can enter "EUW".
   • Sort order: enter an optional numerical sort order.
     
     Example:
     
4. Click on "Save web site".
5. Repeat these steps as many times as necessary to create different websites.

Step 3: Create stores

1. Click on "Stores > Settings > All stores".
2. On the Stores page, click on "Create store".
   • Website: select from the list the name of the website with which you want to associate this store.
   • Name: enter a name to identify the store.
   • Code: enter a unique code to identify the store.
   • Root Category: select from the list the name of the root category of this store.
     
     Example:
     
3. click on "Save store view".
4. Repeat these steps as many times as necessary to create the required store views.
   
   

Step 4: Create store views

1. Click on "Stores > Configuration > All stores".
2. On the Stores page, click on "Create store view".
   • Store: select from the list the name of the store with which you want to associate this store view.
   • Name: enter a name to identify this store view.
   • Code: enter a unique name to identify this store view.
     Status: select enabled.
     
     Example:
     
3. click on "Save store view".
4. Repeat these steps as many times as necessary to create the required store views.

>>What is an e-Commerce B2B and why is it important for your company<<

Step 5: Change the base URL of the website

To access a website using a unique URL such as "http://euw.magento.net", you must change the base URL for each site in the administrator panel.

To change the base URL of the website:

1. From the admin panel, click on "Stores > Settings > Configuration > Settings > General > Web".
2. From the scope (under the heading Settings) click on the name of one of your websites, as shown in the following image:

1. In the right pane, expand the Base URL option.
2. In the Base URL section, uncheck the "Use system value or default" option.
3. Enter the URL in the "Base URL and Link base URL" fields.
4. Repeat the above step in the Base URL (secure) section.
5. Click "Save Settings".
6. Repeat these steps for other websites.

Finally, it would remain to configure your server, in this case it would be best to go to your technology or support apartment so that they can make the latest changes and in this way configure correctly depending on what software on the web server you are using. For these configurations it would be best to review the user guides provided by Adobe on their official site, for example:

• Set up multiple websites with Nginx

• Set up multiple websites with Apache

Other sites of interest to get a better use of these functionalities and you can find out more about how they are structured and more, you can visit Multiple websites or stores and Set up multiple websites or stores.