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MIVA Merchant 5 Online Help
The concept of domain-level and store-level affects many aspects of MIVA Merchant administration. It is a simple idea, and understanding it completely will help you manage your MIVA Merchant system effectively.
Your domain name on the Web is your unique location or address. For instance, smallbusiness.miva.com is the domain name for MIVA Corporation.
Your primary MIVA Merchant license gives you the ability to have one store, at one domain. It is common for online merchants to have just one store.
You can, however, have several stores at the same domain — like several brick–and–mortar stores sharing a single building. To have additional stores you need Additional Store licenses. These cost less than the primary license since they add stores to your existing domain.
In the brick–and–mortar example some things would affect the shared building (like exterior color, signage, and the building owner), while others would affect only each store (such as interior decor, products, customer lists, marketing, and store managers).
In MIVA Merchant, you might use stores to separate two product lines you sell, like cat toys and dog toys. Or you could have a retail store and a wholesale store, with the same types of products but different pricing, customers, and shipping options.
The domain is the space in which all your stores exist:
Even if you have just a single store, the structure is the same:
In either case, you have domain-level settings, and store-level settings.
Domain Level Settings include your MIVA Merchant registration information, adding and managing third-party modules, and directory structures and file locations on your server.
All users are added at the domain level. Later, you can assign them access to the appropriate store. For instance, a user could be a manager of one store, and not be allowed any access to your other stores.
If you have more than one store, you will also set up a Store Selection screen, where shoppers can choose which of your stores to visit. This screen can have formatted text, images, colors, etc.. It is a domain-level feature.
Most of the settings in MIVA Merchant work at the store level. In the Administration Interface, in the left navigation menu, expand the menu below a store's name. Everything listed there is a Store Level Setting. Products, orders, and customers are unique to each store. Marketing tools, including affiliate programs, are handled separately. Payment options and shipping methods are also controlled at the store level.
As with brick–and–mortar stores, each store can have an entirely different appearance, too.