So, you’ve just installed Magento for the first time and you’re now thinking “great I have an online shop”. Then you begin to browse the admin area, the configuration and the products, and you realise that things may not be as simple as you first though. You see words such as ‘Default Store View’, ‘Global’, ‘Main Website’ and more. Before your head explodes in confusion, let me just straighten this whole thing out…

Ok, the good news is that this multiple store system is great because it means you can have different items, sold at different prices with different configuration… even with different designs if you wish – all using just one installation of the software! Think of it as a family tree:

1. GLOBAL – First you have the global view, the top of the family tree, the Magento installation. Any changes made to this in the product attributes or configuration will effect everything.

2. WEBSITES – You may have multiple websites under the initial installation. A website can be hosted on different domains and can parent many different stores.

3. STORES – These are the children of the different websites and contain the catalog structures of the categories and products contained within them.

4. STORE VIEW – This is just how the store is perceived on the frontend. A store view is often used when you want to use the same store, but use different languages or currencies.

Store Management Example

I’m going to go through a quick example of a Sports equipment and clothing store. You’ve installed Magento, that’s part 1 done! Hooray… Now, there’s going to be two websites: sportsequipment.com and sportequipment-golf.com (just for the golf products). This means that customer data between the general sports store and the golf store won’t be shared.

Under the sports equipment store , there’ll be three stores – one for clothing, one for equipment and one for shoes. The Golf equipment store will have two stores underneath it; golf clothing and golf equipment.

Finally, you want to sell your products in English and French, so you create store views for each of these in both languages. This then can be configured for each product in the backend.

The stores setup in Magento is actually a very powerful and intricate way of organising products and should not be overlooked in any circumstances, particularly for sites that have large volumes of stock.