What architecture is ideal for this kind of shop? The home page is a gallery of shops, each shop is a small website. There can be multiple “home pages” for different categories or locations. Is this possible with CP/WP or is there a better platform?
Thank you!
(https://peanex.com/)
This might be a good candidate for the guys at AreaWP. They offer a SaaS or WaaS system solutions (they have CP and WP flavours) that would suit the structure.
I am sorry to say CP does not have a reliable production ready Commerce plugin, so the correct architecture IMHO needs to be WP for that at this time if you go with them.
Another solution is a much simpler WP multivendor marketplace approach with Woo and a dedicated multivendor marketplace plugin.
However building and managing such a solution requires tremendous work and skills - it’s not something you do just throwing two plugins together. You might need to custom code some aspects of it to ensure it works well.
EDITED TO ADD:
The site you mention is really nice, and according to WhatCMS is a custom coded website, it does not use a CMS or the system can’t detect it because it is hidden.
If using ClassicPress, the way I’d do that would be through Multisite. Then each store would have its own subsite, fronted by something on the megasite’s front page.
problem: ClassicPress does not have a reliable plugin for e-commerce (I think PSORCE has one but I have not tested it as of yet and do not really know if it works in that kind of setting)
It’s not necessarily a problem here. As you said, the site that the OP was looking at uses custom code. I’m very doubtful that an off-the-peg plugin (including WooCommerce) could provide the precise features needed to make this work (and, even if it could, the cost of the add-ons necessary would be extremely high anyway). So it’s almost certainly going to need custom code for the e-commerce part. The question then becomes what’s the best base. And that would be multisite.
I still think ClassicCommerce v2 is a solid solution. According to its author it receives all relevant fixes and updates. But we should try to get it on GH and then in the CP Directory.
This is very needed - I think it needs to be the first one you place in the directory if possible!
Although I agree with an (updated) e-commerce plugin, I personally prefer to update our ClassicCommerce v1 to v2. Using Seans version or a fork. But this is discussed before at the forum and seems to be a hot potato..
@Guido07111975 we should not be limited to the idea of having only one plugin for commerce. The *Press ecosystem is great because it allows a lean core to be made flexible by adding different plugins to it. And having “competitors” will help in the long run to make each plugin advance instead of stagnate. But that is my opinion…
About Sean, he does not really want it on GH. He made that clear and already many people (at least, me included) tried to help with no result. From what I understood he does not want to be on there because the data basically feeds AIs and Microsoft. And I can understand that and respect that. It does not help the community however.
I’m happy to see this discussion.
FWIW, I’m seeing small specialized POS and online community markets popping up everywhere.
I’m trying to stay ahead of them with a homemade version. If CO has something that works better off-the-shelf, even better!
Think of Facebook Marketplace without Facebook. If someone went around town and collected basic info - name, address, email, and phone - and a couple of photos - logo and hero, used them everywhere in a sweet little web page on a city gallery, free with small but powerful upgrades. Done from a smartphone.
You have everyone’s email, send them an invite and post specials on the blog. Bingo.