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Expand your global or local reach with Multi-Domain. Sell across multiple websites with unique branding and product offerings, all powered by your central Miva store. This eliminates the complexity of running separate stores, allowing you to cater to regional audiences or launch targeted campaigns quickly. Moreover, Multi-Domain works seamlessly with Collections, enabling you to create targeted product groupings that can be displayed on specific websites.
There are two ways to approach Multi-Domain:
In this configuration, Multi-Domain sells a subset of a primary store's catalog through a secondary domain. It can be assigned a different Template Branch to allow a completely different look and feel to your primary store, while leveraging the same marketing and checkout configurations and funneling orders into your existing order processing flows.
Additional Primary Stores can be managed through the same admin, by your current administrators. In this configuration, an entirely different store can be built and configured and run on a different domain.
If you are opting to set up multi-domain this way, there are additional steps you must take to make sure shoppers see the store they are looking, for without having to select it from a list of stores. See Avoiding the Store Selection Page below.
1. Create a support ticket for domain configuration.
There are a handful of nuances to the setup process that Miva support will likely need to assist you with. Support will, among other things, make sure the new domain is not used on any other Miva server, and enable Cloudflare if it is not already in use.
Additionally, if you are using Multi-Domain to manage an entirely separate store (Option 2), you will need to request that an additional store license is added to your admin. For more information on adding an additional storefront license, visit, https://www.miva.com/additional-stores.
2. Enable Multi-Domain Functionality in the Miva Admin.
The Runtime, Link Source Legacy SEO settings in URI Management were replaced by the URI Management Link Source, which is the foundation for Multi-Domain URI Management. If your store is still using Legacy SEO, you should update to URI Management before trying to set up Multi-Domain URI Management. For help updating from Legacy SEO to URI Management, visit the How to Migrate an Existing Store to Use the New URI Management Features document.
Engage Multi-Domain by going to Settings>URI Management and change the drop down setting in the Runtime section to Module: Multi-Domain. Upon updating this change, a new Multi-Domain tab is exposed on the URI Management page.
3. Configure Your New Domain in the Miva Admin
Clicking into the new tab in URI Management>Multi-Domain you can now add the configuration for your new domain. The most important settings are:
Name and Code: Assign a simple Name and Code to this store. These are used as visual references throughout the admin. The *code* follows normal Miva code rules and may only contain letters, numbers, underscores and dashes.
HTTP Host: Enter your new domain here. For example, "www.newstoresite.com".
Enter the new domain exactly the way you want it to appear in a browser. If you change this setting, you will also have to change the auto-generated fields in Advanced Settings below.
4. Select Which Store This Domain Should Link To
If you are configuring Multi-Domain in Option 1, _Catalog Subset_, choose the appropriate store from which products will be used. If configuring a domain for Option 2, an additional store select the destination.
5. Using Branches
As the Miva admin has evolved, recent updates have extended the power and functionality of Version Branching, which is managed through the User Interface section of the admin.
Template Branches allow you to copy all the templates associated with your store to a different "branch" and make changes to them without impacting what shoppers see. Up until now, these branches have been available to you to build, test, and maintain different versions of your entire look and feel, including email templates.
The Template Branches feature is what allows a Multi-Domain Catalog Subset site to look completely different to your primary site.
You can change the branch at any time, and it can be the same as your main website. You can create your domain now, and come back and assign it to a new branch later.
6. Your Store's Catalog
Most applicable to Catalog Subset Multi-Domain configuration, this setting indicates that you want to manage a subset of the primary stores products and categories for the new domain. When selected, an additional tab, Catalog>Multi-Domain is exposed in the Catalog management section of the admin allowing Categories, Products and Collections to be associated with your new domain.
Miscellaneous URLs: Miva allows advanced control of URLs for your front-end store and admin, but usually the proposed default URLs are appropriate.
Note that if you change the domain in the HTTP Host setting of a Multi-Domain, these URLs will not be regenerated and will require manual adjustment.
Invalid URI Destination Screen: This is the Miva equivalent of the a "Page Not Found." You can configure which Miva page is displayed in the event that someone hits a URL that doesn't map to anything. By default this loads the NTFD page.
HREF Language: This is an advanced setting that allows support for Localization if you have built Localization into your store. Managing localized versions is not a native feature of Miva, and this would only be appropriate if you have built custom localization functionality. See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLLinkElement/hreflang for more information.
If you have configured a Multi-Domain instance to limit Categories or Products, a new Multi-Domain tab is exposed in the Catalog section of the admin. In this new section, you decide what your Multi-Domain store should contain.
When using the multiple store setup, Option 2 above, there are added steps you must take in order to avoid the store selection page on the primary domain and make the experience as seamless as possible for your shoppers.
To avoid the store selection page, follow these steps:
1. In the Miva admin, go to Settings>URI Management>URIs.
2. Search for SFNT in the URI batch list.
3. Select the record that has the / as the URI and SFNT as the Screen.
4. Update that record to use Page as the destination.
5. Click Save.
In the single store set ups, the products and categories visible in the Multi Domain may be limited to a subset of the original store, but there is no mechanism that allows a product to be visible on the Multi Domain but not in the primary domain. In this configuration, all other elements are shared between the primary domain and the Multi Domain, including Customers, Customer Order History, Pricing and Discounting and Shipping and Payment Configuration.
If the multiple store set up is used, it allows the items noted in the previous paragraph, to be separated on a per domain basis, but will not allow for any sort of catalog sharing between stores. Due to that, a multiple store configuration is ideal for things like stores using different currencies or in different languages.
With the launch of Multi-Domain functionality, in order to use reCAPTCHA v3 on multiple domains, you MUST add any subdomains you have created to the Domains section of the Google reCAPTCHA admin panel. This is required for either approach, as explained in the section above, that you choose to use.
The previous version of Multi Domain required a special Scheduled Task to update ReadyTheme Navigation Set Item URLs, but that task is NOT used in the version released with 10.09. If that task exists, it will prevent the upgrade with the following error message.
“All scheduled tasks referencing the Multi Domain module must either be manually removed or updated to reference the “ReadyTheme: Update Navigation Set Item URLs” prior to upgrade.”
Users receiving this error should delete any Multi Domain Scheduled Tasks and then re-enable the original “ReadyTheme: Update Navigation Set Item URLs” task.
This 10.09 release updates the Apple Pay module to support registration across multiple domains. As Multi Domains are configured, they will appear on the Apple Pay tab of the Payment Settings screen, where registration and configuration may be performed.
If this was not done, Apple Pay buttons and the Apple Pay functionality would not work.
Orders placed on a Multi Domain site are noted in a custom field called “Origin Multi Domain” which denotes which domain the order originated from. This may be used from the UI, API or Order Workflows to separate orders on a Multi Domain basis.
If Multi Domain is used in the different branch configuration, you can have order confirmation emails that are tailored to the Multi Domain where the order was placed. However, it only applies to emails sent when an order is placed. Emails sent through a scheduled tasks, for Abandoned Baskets for example, are always sent using the configuration from the primary branch.
Note that wherever a URIs tab exist in the admin, you will now find a corresponding Multi Domain URIs tab offering the same functionality to give full access to URI management of Multi Domains.