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.
Yes, you were right — PSOURCE does have a solution for this. 
I have a heavily modernized and extended version of MarketPress.
The reason I kept MarketPress alive in the first place was actually its Multisite/network shop functionality. I needed that for my own projects, and I didn’t want to lose a feature that was particularly useful for larger WordPress and ClassicPress Multisite installations.
Over the years I have modernized the codebase extensively and added quite a few features on top of the original MarketPress functionality, including the network shop functionality I needed.
So yes, there is already a PSOURCE commerce solution that could potentially fit this kind of setup.
It’s currently mainly documented and maintained from the German side, though. If there is genuine interest from the ClassicPress community, I’m happy to gradually bring the documentation and the project itself up to an international/English standard.
As with the other PSOURCE projects, I’d rather do that properly than simply throw an old fork into the Directory and call it done.
This is very needed - I think it needs to be the first one you place in the directory if possible!
Then I think we have our first candidate. 
I’ll put the PSOURCE MarketPress project on top of my priority list and start preparing it for the ClassicPress Directory.
I’ll first make sure the current version is in a good state for an international audience, then I’ll work on the English documentation and the remaining things needed for the Directory submission.
And honestly, I’m quite happy that this is the one you picked.
The whole reason I kept working on MarketPress in the first place was its Multisite/network shop architecture. I needed it for real projects, and over the years it evolved into something considerably different from the original codebase.
So if this can now become a useful contribution to the ClassicPress ecosystem, that’s a pretty nice continuation of the story.
You can find the project here:
https://github.com/Power-Source/marketpress
If you could give me a week or two, I’d appreciate it. I want to go through the current version once more, make sure everything is properly prepared for an English-speaking audience, and check that the documentation and functionality are complete.
After that, I’d be very happy to submit it to the ClassicPress Directory.
I’m glad this can be a first concrete contribution from PSOURCE to the ClassicPress ecosystem.
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..
Just a quick update on this:
I’ve had a proper look at the current MarketPress codebase and at what would be needed to make it a good fit for the ClassicPress ecosystem internationally.
My current version is still quite heavily shaped around my own, rather specific requirements, so I’m going to take this opportunity to make a few things more flexible.
In particular, I’m going to revisit the network gateways and the network shop flow to make them more flexible for different Multisite setups.
I’m also going to make the tax calculation system more flexible internationally. The current implementation is naturally quite influenced by the requirements I have here in Germany, and I’d rather make the underlying system adaptable instead of simply adding more country-specific exceptions.
There are also a few remaining jQuery UI dependencies. I wanted to tackle those over the next few weeks anyway, so I’ll bring that work forward and remove them as part of this process.
After that I’ll prepare the first English translation and documentation.
The plan is then to make a first international beta release available for testing.
I think that’s a much better approach than simply submitting the current version to the Directory. It gives me the opportunity to turn what has essentially been a very specialized solution into something that can be useful to a much wider ClassicPress audience.
And of course, once the beta is out, feedback, bug reports and contributions will be very welcome.
@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 think there is an important point here that I don’t want to lose in the discussion about which commerce solution is the “right” one.
I’m actually very happy that ClassicPress has its own standard solutions, and for many users ClassicCommerce may be exactly what they need. That’s great.
But I don’t think the goal of a healthy ecosystem should be to have one solution for every problem.
One of the things that made WordPress so powerful was the sheer number of specialized plugins available. Whatever your particular problem was, there was a good chance that someone had already built something for it.
This is one area where I think ClassicPress is currently falling behind.
Not because the core is missing anything fundamental, but because fewer and fewer of those highly specialized WordPress plugins remain compatible with ClassicPress over time.
And that means we need more than just core developers.
We need plugin developers, theme developers, coders, testers, people reporting bugs, people suggesting improvements, people maintaining old projects, and people building completely new things.
For me, that’s what an ecosystem really means.
Someone likes ClassicCommerce and it does everything they need?
Fantastic. Use it.
Someone is running a highly complex Multisite shop network and needs something completely different?
Maybe PSOURCE MarketPress is the right tool for them.
Someone wants to take ClassicCommerce and build an extension that adds exactly the functionality they need?
Even better.
And maybe someone else comes along and builds an entirely different commerce solution.
That’s not fragmentation in my opinion.
That’s choice. That’s an ecosystem.
I don’t want PSOURCE to replace existing ClassicPress projects. I want it to add another option to the toolbox.
And if someone takes something I’ve built, improves it, extends it or builds something completely different from it — that’s Open Source working exactly as it should.
ClassicPress doesn’t need one perfect solution.
It needs enough developers and users building things that people can choose the right tool for the job.
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.