RESOLVED: Planning my eCommerce Shop

Hi Everyone

I am new to eCommerce and HikaShop and have a couple Big Picture planning questions I would like to answer before constructing my shop. My thinking might be way off due to my lack of understanding of HS and ecomm and for this my apologies...

1) TWO VERSIONS OF HIKASHOP ON ONE SITE?
I was thinking about using HikaShop for an eShop where products could be purchased AND also using it to show products we sell in our physical shop [like one of a kind art] that we would not sell online. This second use would be more like a catalog of sorts. Can I have two Hikashops on site? e.g. one for eStore and a second for B&M [brick & mortar] Catalog? If possible, On System/Configuration tab if I set store to "offline" could I do this for one of the two or would they both go offline? If this is possible it would effect how I am thinking I should set up product categories: [estore products and Physical Shop Products as master categories, etc]. Am I way off on this thinking?

If this is not possible or an advised way of setting up shop(s), would I be able to at least select estore products to have shopping cart, while B&M products have a message stating that product is only available for purchase at our physical location.?

2) CATEGORIES & PRODUCTS:
Do you recommend to create all categories at start - planning for future added products, or is it better to only create categories used at onset and then add categories later as shop grows. I am concerned that I might create problems if I later need to make major changes. Put another way, do I have to get it right the first time, or is there little risk to just going for it? I am not specifically worried about products here, more the categories. For example, if I create a category Shoes and under that categories Ballerinas, and Sandals, would I be creating a problem if then next year I add mens shoes, so then I need new categories Mens Shoes and Womens Shoes and need to move Ballerinas and Sandals categories under Womens Shoes.... Is there a problem in doing this [category creation] later or do I need this to be done now? another example is If I have the two master categories from #1 above eStore products and B&M products... and next year we decide to sell Product A online, will it be simple for me to move this product from B&M products to eStore products?

I have already created a number of products under the ROOT category and now find that I can not move them under a master category called eProducts. I was following a tutorial that said if you have a few products you can add them directly under the ROOT without a product category. Now i understand that I can no longer assign them to a master category and have to delete them and start over.... so this is the basis for this question.

Thanks for any help with this.

Scott

Ciao!

1. OK one HikaShop. Can i select different text messages for the eStore products that are sold out [Message = "no stock"] and the catalog products ["available for purchase in our Italy store"]?? If I can have these two different messages, my problem is solved.

2. Ok so I can have an 'eStore Products' and 'Italy Store Products' category. Are you recommending to create these two categories under 'Product Category'? Or would it be ok or each of these to be under ROOT? I may be wrong in thinking that the more nested categories created will result in more complicated urls and maybe more difficult SEO? With new Joomla unlimited nesting... am I wrong here?... If so, I would not be creating excessive complexity to have these two categories under 'Product Category'. Please let me know.

3. Ok I see how to change a product's category. I also found how to move [nest] a subcategory under a different category via the categories page by editing the 'associated category' field. This name 'associated category' is confusing here.... to me it would make more sense to call it 'parent category'. Can you help me with definitions here: is subcategory = child category? And subcategories or child categories are nested under parent categories, right? I guess both the parent and the child could be considered 'associated' [goes both ways]. Am I correct here?

Thanks again for great support. I chose HikaShop for the great options but moreso for the awesome support.

Scott