I'm considering Abantecart in place of my paid shopping cart. I spoke with the shopping cart vendor only to find out they won't allow me to use it in a subdomain unless I buy a new license. In this case, I would need to buy 10 licenses at a cost close to $4,000. My question is for a DEVELOPER or someone who's VERY FAMILIAR with Abantecart and can give me a straight and reliable answer. My goal is to implement GTranslate on my website (not to be confused with Google Translate). I tested it on my website and found out it won't work when I get to the shopping cart. It gives me a license error code. Considering that Abantecart is open source, can I use it on my subdomains? If so, do I need to install it in each subdomain? Currently, GTranslate works on any of my non-secure subdomains. I understand I would also need a wildcard certificate to secure the subdomains. I don't feel like spending $450 on this certificate unless I know for sure that Abantecart will work for me. Thank you for your time and attention.
I have been using and setting up several versions of Abantecart since Oct 2013. I have several sites that are in subdomains and they work fine.
As to rather you need to install the cart in each subdomain, depends on rather they all have the same products database or different ones. Abantecart has a good multistore function where sub-store is required to be in a subdomain or different domain, but it does not have separate complete installations for each subdomain. All stores have access to the same database, but each store can show their own products and pricing and have their own template setup. This works best as in the case of a retailer with multiple locations.
You can read about it here http://docs.abantecart.com/pages/settings/stores.html
If each of your sites is a different type of store with different inventory, say one is a t-shirt store and another sells electronics then I would suggest you treat each as an independent installation. tvstore.mymaindomain.com and tshirst.mymaindomain.com, etc.
I am providing sites for franchise distributors who all have access to the same inventory, but are all unique independent businesses. Initially I had hoped the multistore would work, but since each of my distributors is a stand alone business I decided it was best to treat each one as a totally unique installation on their own domain name, and use a master inventory store that I use to update each store's product list. If these had all been company stores, with store managers I would have used multistore setup.
I hope this helps you understand better. Since Abantecart is open source, best way is to try a setup and see how it plays out for you in what you want to accomplish.
Just another abantecart user, but a happy one!
Lee
llegrand, thank you for taking the time to give me a thorough answer. Very much appreciated. I'm looking forward to setting up a multi-store. Each day I get more excited about Abantecart and what it can do. :-)