Ok, here is my question/problem. We have one main web store that we have had for over 4 years. This store has multiple categories that are growing. Currently we are looking for a new host and a new shopping cart, so we can move forward and have more control. We would like to keep the main store active, but split off into multiple niche stores. We would have MainSite.com - NicheSiteA.com - NicheSiteB.com - NicheSiteC.com... etc. This will allow us to organize the stores more and be a better shopping experience for the user. If we take a shopping cart and give each store it's own look and feel can each sub-site pull it's product info, data and all that from 1 central database that each site would have access to?
In most cases databases do not have to exist on the same server. It will slow the sites down waiting for the response. Sever load could become an issue. Multiple hits may exceed what the db host can handle. Not sure I helped you here.
We do exactly that. What specifically are you concerned about? Beware duplicate data, shared IPs and cross-linking because the SE might consider the sites duplicate.
karated, so can you advise a solution to have multiple webstores tied to one database? thanks in advance!