In-depth explanation of Magento's Store / Store View / Website layers?

Question

Could anybody point me towards a good technical explanation of Magento's Store Views/Websites system on a programming level?

I am considering a customization of the system, but am not yet sure which one of these levels to use.

Answer 1

First thing to read is the Magento Designer's guide : http://www.magentocommerce.com/design_guide

Yep, "Designer" rather than "Developper" :) But this is a great background to undestand how things do articulate. And, let's be honest... in Magento, "Designer" is really the same as "Developper" and sometime as "System engineer". One can't be a good Magento Designer if not a Developper (imo).

Now, the SO community of Magento is still shy because there are not loads of Magento experts yet I guess. Being not humble enough, I may think that, as a brand new SOer, I found I could help in a few areas. So feel free to ask and I'm sure when someone knows, someone answers. At last, please keep in mind that Magento is so powerful and featured that one can be expert in design integration but not in sales workflow management nor in back-office use for instance. Expertise may be very segmented.

Have fun !

Answer 2

I struggled with these concepts as well, and information on the differences is scarce even on Magento's own site. After a decent bit of searching, I found this webinar which does a great job of explaining the concepts behind sites, stores, and store views. I suggest you watch the video, but here are my takeaways:

• global (installation), website, and store view are scopes, store is not a scope
• stores allow unified shopping cart and session (check out gap.com oldnavy.com for example)
• websites do not share cart or session by default
• create different websites in the case that you want to offer different shipping methods, pricing, payment gateways, promos, or base currency
• stores are collection of store views, store points at a root category, all views within store point at same root category, though individual products may be hidden within views
• store views change way pages are presented, not the structure of catalog
• websites, stores, and storeviews can ALL be configured on the same domain or different domains