Should I use Wordpress Multisite? - php

I'm about to start on a new project but I'm doubting if I should use Multisite for the company's structure or not.
The situation is as follows;
Corporation is based in a few EU countries, which each of the country websites have a consumer website and a professional website.
My thought was; Use multisite to make the consumer/professional switch and use WPML for each website. Things went fine so far. Yet; all websites have one shared product database. I'd like to make a custom post type "Products" and have them available in every language on every website (Consumer/Pro). Yet I cant find a way to have it (easily managable) share that product database and its relations.
So there's my doubt on using MultiSite, and as of yet, I dont see any other option to get what I want; Consumer/Professional sites, all with their own content, but with a shared product database.

You can use the switch_to_blog() function within your product archive (http://codex.wordpress.org/WPMU_Functions/switch_to_blog). This would allow you to get the products from another site within the multisite. Then use restore_current_blog() to return back to your individual site.

Related

WordPress Multisite Geolocation Subdomain

There are other questions on this, but none seem to fit my user case.
I have two instances of a website, both are in English but using WordPress Multisite there is European version and an American version of the site.
This was set up by a predecessor, but I am trying to find an alternative to WordPress Multisite because most of the posts (~75%) belong on both Europe and America versions, and I don't want the content creators to have to worry about logging in to two dashboards and posting the same post twice.
This really doesn't have to be a WordPress specific question, I am just wondering how typical networking is done for a job like this where:
1). Theme is to remain the same
2). Posts are mostly the same and it would be nice if there was just one dashboard and plugin/function on a post to say publish for Europe, America, or both.
3). Users would have to opt-in to join the Europe site if they were already on the America site, but they wouldn't have to re-register, kind of like how users can join across the StackOverflow network.
I think I know how to do this if I were to write my own little CMS using another PHP or Node framework, it would just be a property of the various posts as to what geo they were published for and similarly each user would say what geo they were registered for, and then when querying the database from a given subdomain I would query for posts by the geo attached to that subdomain, as a kind of constant in the query.
Given I have WordPress install, what is the easiest way to accomplish such goals in WordPress or do I need my own solution? Also how do sites like StackOverflow manage users across various networks?
Furthermore if I wanted to accomplish this in a more do-it-yourself framework like Laravel, what are some of the general principles in order to accomplish this and not manage two sites but leverage something like Cloudlfare to point to subdomains based on gelocation and serve the same site but with different database queries?
I don't even understand why you would need a multisite setup for this. All you are trying to do is organise content, and within Wordpress you do that with taxonomies.
You can use the built in ones like categories or tags or you can create your own. Customise default settings based on geo ip information, or a user setting, or just lets users pick or whatever you want.
You can set it up so users to have to opt in to read posts tagged from across the pond, or just set their default to show local posts but give them a link to view all, or again just put a setting in their admin section.
Build your own CMS if you want, but seems like a real waste of time when this is pretty much exactly what Wordpress was designed for and they probably have 50,000+ developer hours headstart on you.

Completely custom Magento interface without shop

I have been searching but have not found much information on this. Would it be possible to completely override Magento's frontend interface? What I mean with this is completely remove the shopping cart, menu's, product listings, everything, and replace with a completely customized interface, which will not be used for a eCommerce portal.
I just found out that our customer does not in fact want a eCommerce solution, although we have built a lot of functionality on Magento and it would be a shame to have to re-write EVERYTHING on another platform and still build a ordering framework as well.
So my question is this, can you build a theme on Magento that only shows parts of the system completely unrelated to the actual 'shop' and where would I find information to figure out how to do this? I'd like to keep the custom frontend in Magento to easily re-use the product view blocks, etc. but Magento itself is not a system our client wants.
I have thought of an alternative where the Magento shop is merely placed in a sub-directory and used as a sort of 'engine' to run the eCommerce side of the system and building a completely different system which integrates with Magento, the downside of this of course being that we would have to rewrite completed work as well.
What would be the best route to follow?
Here is one way to go about it:
Edit the homepage via the backend and enter the following code in to it:
{{block type="catalog/product" template="page/homepage.phtml"}} this will allow you to display products on the page.
Make sure that when you enter the code you can see html markup (and not just the output)
Make a completely customized webpage showing whatever you want

creating a site which needs to communicate with magento database

I am currently working on (a part of) a site where people buy an item from a magento based e-commerce website. However, to use that item, they need to go to another website. Basically that "other" website is what I am working on (and doing it via codeigniter)
I dont know much about magento. the only information my website needs from the magento website is some information regarding products (id, name and status). This information will be linked to other tables, i.e the product ID may be a foreign key in a table in my database. I did a little research and was able to figure out how data is stored in the magento database.
Both websites will be on same server.
Now I have two options which I could think of to get products from the magento website into my website,
first is that I create insert,update and delete triggers for the required tables in the magento website so that when a product is added, modified or deleted, it first tries to do the same on my database, and if successful, continues to do it in the magento database.
second option is that I simply merge the two databases of my website and magento website creating a direct relation link between the tables.
Like I previously stated, I dont know much about magento. So i wanted to know which was the safer, better approach or if there was an approach I diddnt think of.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
further clarification of task:
Basically there is a magento website (lets call it "WEBSITE A") which sells "products". When a person buys a "product", they are basically given a "code" for that product. To use this "code", they have to go to another website which I am building using codeigniter (lets call this "WEBSITE B").
Now as you can guess, the code needs to be used in WEBSITE B, and once used it unlocks stuff for the user based upon the product to which the code belonged.
As you can guess, this will create a lot of links between product and other stuff.
product although created in WEBSITE A , is used in WEBSITE B.
Your first option: Never duplicate data unless you can help it. Why couldn't you query the Magento database instead, since it's on the same server?
Your second option: Never merge databases that aren't related.
Both options are basically anti-patterns. What you should do is query the Magento database directly, or if you want to use the Magento helper functions, include Magento and use its API directly:
<?php
require_once 'path/to/Mage.php';
// Use Magento APIs
?>

How can I integrate categorized content from an external web service into Joomla 1.5?

I'm working on a Joomla 1.5 site where products and categories come from a SOAP web service.
The navigation starts by with selecting a category of products. These categories and products come from the web service. After selecting a category the web service returns a list of products. From there the user can select a product and it must open a page with that product's details. These products and categories do not have to be content items within the Joomla admin, they just need to be a part of the frontend site.
An example of the navigation using the same web service is here.
I already have the classes and code needed to get the products from the web service, however I'm quite unsure how to make it fit in Joomla. I'm a beginner when it comes to Joomla component development. Is anyone aware of any bridges or similar components that work in a same way?
You may want to check the JED (Joomla Extensions Directory)
http://extensions.joomla.org/search?q=SOAP
I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for, but there are literally thousands of things that may help! Lots of times if you're after something... someone else has had the same desire - and often there's a component/plugin/module to help!

Wordpress as CMS, Without Using It As Website Platform

What is the best method, if there is one, of using Wordpress as a CMS for users to input data while not actually building the website on the Wordpress platform?
One possible solution I've found is using a PHP class called "WPGet" (http://peter.upfold.org.uk/projects/wpget) which fetches directly from the database.
You could use Wordpress' API calls, but depending where your "custom built application" sits, it might require including numerous files in your code (not very fun/efficient)
I have a site that requires constant updating. It's a golf club site: results, news etc all updated via wordpress by the club, or individuals with interest (juniors, ladies, seniors each have a mini-site) - and not always by me - so i have a front end, the standard site with static .php pages, which i then feed data to, by calling on posts marked in categories from wordpress, relevent to the site's page. The coding is easy and it's a quick and simple way of using wordpress as a cms, but it does strip away most of the Wordprss functionality, eg. comments, But I even use it for galleries with lightbox.
Like i say - it's nothing major, but sounds similar to what you're asking...?

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