http://townx.org/blog/elliot/new-ecommerce-module-drupal Comments for "New ecommerce module for Drupal" en http://townx.org/blog/elliot/new-ecommerce-module-drupal <p>Yesterday a new ecommerce module for Drupal, <a href="http://www.ubercart.org/">Ubercart</a>, was <a href="http://drupal.org/node/129303">announced</a>. This is pretty exciting. I'd looked at the <a href="http://drupal.org/project/ecommerce">existing Drupal ecommerce module</a> before, but it's a bit of a mess, cobbled together from what seemed to be endless disparate modules that half work together. (Not to belittle the achievements of the team which produced the ecommerce module: it has masses of functionality, and integration with all sorts of stuff; but it's too complex for normal people who just want to sell books or something.)</p> <p>What marks out Ubercart?</p> <ul> <li>Nice documentation. It looks like the development company behind it has actually written a professional, clear, comprehensive <a href="http://www.ubercart.org/book">set of manuals</a> for it. This makes the world of difference to how easy a product is to use.</li> <li>Support for anonymous checkout. Users new to the site can be gently guided through checkout without having to create an account before they can do anything. The <a href="http://www.ubercart.org/ubercart_users_guide/anonymous_checkout">explanation</a> of scenarios this encompasses is thorough and well thought through.</li> <li>The system looks modular and well designed. You can just load up the parts of the framework you need, and the dependencies and features of each are <a href="http://www.ubercart.org/ubercart_users_guide/installing_ubercart_modules">properly explained</a>.</li> <li>The <a href="http://www.ubercart.org/ubercart_developers_guide">developer's guide</a> is clear, concise and gives you a decent number of examples of the <span class="caps">API </span>(hooks), variables available to templates, etc.. They've even gone to the trouble of providing a <a href="http://www.ubercart.org/ubercart_developers_guide/documentation_syntax">coding standards guide</a>, and a <a href="http://www.ubercart.org/ubercart_developers_guide/development_tools">list of useful open source applications</a> you can employ to start doing your own development.</li> <li>Because it's based on Drupal, and Drupal has a whole slew of modules (including <a href="http://civicrm.org/"><span class="caps">CRM</span></a>), Ubercart increases the potential of Drupal as a simple, extensible, general-purpose business framework. Imagine if your online shop and your <span class="caps">CRM </span>could easily share customer data...</li> </ul> <p>The only issue I'm not clear on (probably somewhere in the documentation) is whether you could use it to build a electronic downloads site (e.g. to sell images or <span class="caps">PDF</span>s). I'm sure other stuff will crop up too (like currency handling).</p> <p>This is a really exciting project, and is the kind of thing that could give Drupal a big boost as a general purpose web framework. It definitely looks like it could give osCommerce a kick up the arse. It's actually a joy to read the well-written, clear documentation (there are a few areas where it's incomplete, but generally it's pretty comprehensive). I've added it to my todo list of products to have a look at within the next month, and hopefully I'll end up using it myself (eventually).</p> <p>Congratulations to the team, and I wish them the best of luck in getting it off the ground.</p> http://townx.org/blog/elliot/new-ecommerce-module-drupal#comments tech Wed, 21 Mar 2007 04:47:09 -0500 elliot 622 at http://townx.org