I have a feeling that all of this can be done with Magento, but I don't know which edition I'll need, or which additional components will be required... So here's the plan:
1. MultiSite/MultiStore
2. The core/main/first/original store is home to multiple catalogs or collections of products, and all are available for users to order online (like any other store with product groupings).
3. Additional sites/stores must be added to the MultiSite/MultiStore by the main/network admin at will (he's the only one who can do that, though, presumably, he may want to add admins with the same capabilities at some point).
4. Each new site/store must have a separate domain name (unrelated to the main store name). Of course, if the underlying architecture is simply mapping subdomain sites/stores to independent/different domain names, that's no problem at all. The point is, that visitors to the sub-site/store should only see that site/store's domain name and have no part of the main/core site/store to deal with.
5. Each new site/store will get "mandatory content", which is one or more of the catalogs on the main site, as assigned by the core/main admin. Sub-site/store owners CANNOT change the description or price of these inherited catalog items, but every time a change is made at the main site/store, the new data is seen in all sub-sites/stores.
6. Each new site/store can choose it's own theme from a preset library that can only be managed by the core/main admin.
7. Each new site/store can add new products of it's own (to it's own catalog or collection), even though they cannot change anything about the products in the inherited ("mandatory") product groupings.
8. All orders placed (and PAID) on any and all sub-sites/stores, are actually submitted to the core/main site.
9. Product data for the main/shared ("mandatory") content sites comes from CSV dumps and includes about 7,000 rows (products). All products have associated images (at least one image, but as many as 6).
Can all of this be done with the Community Edition "out of the box"? I understand that we'll have to write some code, but I'm trying to determine how extensive a job it will be by also considering plugins that can cover for any functionality that's missing from the Community Edition...
Of course, if anyone here also happens to have experience with something similar, or knows of articles/tutorials that are germane to the above, links would be highly appreciated.
TIA!
