[ic] dist/mvmall?

[Mike Heins]

Quoting Stefan Hornburg (racke@linuxia.de):
> Michael Hall <mhall@riverside.org> writes:
> 
> > On Tue, Sep 19, 2000 at 09:37:48AM +0200, Stefan Hornburg wrote:
> > 
> > > "Rob Zimmerman" <rob@readysite.net> writes:
> > > 
> > > > I noticed in my CVS update this afternoon what looks like another demostore 
> > > > in developement, mvmall. It did not update in my tree but I saw it go by and 
> > > > checked CVS/Entries. Is this something in our future? 
> > > 
> > > More from the history, AFAIK. Unfortunately, there is no sane way to
> > > remove directories from CVS.
> > 
> > Are there any future plans for a 'mall' demo, if not I think it'd be a 
> > great idea.
> 
> Yeah, that would be a great idea. With the current code you can
> build malls with a very low memory footprint, quite independent
> from the number of stores, if they share the same products.

mvmall was a start on a template multi-store mall with each store owner
having a different product set and order route (i.e. shipping,
taxing, email fulfillment, etc.).  We have built a few of these,
and this was to be the sum of the experience.

It never really got off of the ground -- I had too many other things
to do. 8-\ 

What I have learned in building a few of these is that the mall concept
is as much defined by the payment process as anything. Getting products
into a basket is not difficult; displaying pages is not difficult; designing
a payment and fulfillment scheme that works for everyone *is* difficult.

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