BelowTheWind.com

Its been some time since I’ve posted to this site. I’ve been somewhat consumed for these past week or so. Having a daytime job that demands nothing less than your full commitment to complete numerous tasks and adhere fully to project timelines can really suck the life out of you! Especially when it renders you unable to have any spare time to spend on things you are passionate about, like updating your blog.

Fortunately, quiet a number of those tasks I worked on are things I can really relate to passionately. When I say passionately, it simply means that I really like the work that I had to do, and it didn’t feel as though I was actually working. This is always true when the work allows me (whether forcefully or voluntarely) to try out some really useful web development tools or platforms which I didn’t have the time, courage or simply the excuse to try them out before.

As I swam on the surface of possibilities in developing an ecommerce store using open-source content management systems, I stumbled upon an easy to use Drupal module called Ubercart.

My Introduction to Drupal

First of all, I’ll have to admit that I am rather late in embracing the goodness of Drupal. My first experience dates back to my college days, when I had to pick out a CMS for me to work on for a research project. If I remember clearly, I had the privelage of choosing between DotNetNuke, Joomla and Drupal. As I was something of a .NET junkie in those years, I didn’t think twice before settling for DotNetNuke. I actually did give Drupal a go, although it didn’t looked too convincing, which I blame on my lack of understanding on PHP at that time.

Fast forward a few years later, here I am finally realizing how powerful PHP is, and more importantly, how superior Drupal is compared to DotNetNuke in terms of usability. Since then, I have been using Drupal almost effortlessly, albeit my knowledge is somewhat limited to a so-called configurator, not an actual developer that actually develops modules. Hopefully, I can get there soon.

In case you are unfamiliar with Drupal, it is one the most powerful open source Content Management System (CMS) offered out there. And in case you think that I am just saying this because you think I am trying to make up for my delusional guilt for underappreciating Drupal in the past, let me just say that it is a proven fact that Drupal is indeed one of the best out there. Its actually good enough to win the Webware 100 Award 2008 for the Publishing category.

A Drupal Online Store. What are the Choices?

First of all, you may ask - Why don’t you just use OScommerce to create an online store? While I consider OScommerce (and even Zen Cart) to be really adequate choices for a CMS powered online store, I think that it is rather rigid in design and is a poor choice when you want something which is more than just an online store. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but in my humble opinion, it will take a lot of work to get customizations done with OScommerce. Not that its not expandable, its just that I think it was not built for expandability. Drupal on the other hand has a very big reputation in terms of expandability. When you couple it with an ecommerce module, you get an online store PLUS the other powerful modules that Drupal has to offer. This makes it a very exciting option.

Well, another route you can take is to build from scratch, but I’ll just leave that for another post.

So when we talk about enabling eCommerce on Drupal, two modules comes to mind - Ubercart and e-Commerce. For this post, I’ll be explaining my first thoughts on Ubercart. While e-Commerce is another interesting module to consider, I’ve chosen to write about Ubercart because I think it has a broader appeal because of its simplicity.

Ubercart. A First Look

Note: The below writings refers to Ubercart 5.x-1.0-rc2 and Drupal 5.7. At the time of writing, Ubercart is not yet usable with Drupal 6.x versions.

If you want an easy to deploy shopping module for Drupal that works out of the box, then Ubercart is for you. Simply put, when you pair a Drupal site with a Ubercart module, you get to leverage the power of an easy to manage store, and more importantly, an easy to manage community for the store - all in one package.

It has been designed with the end user in mind, focusing on usability in three key areas: store configuration, product and catalog creation, and order administration. On the front end, all major systems are configurable and integrate with the standard Drupal systems (node, taxonomy, user, etc.). On the back end, the settings pages and order administration pages have been designed with ease of use in mind, and we are constantly working to lower the barrier to entry for new Ubercart users.

- Excerpts from the Ubercart project page in Drupal.org

Ubercart in its native form, is very able to support operations of a functional online store. The installation sits on four core modules - the Cart, Order, Product and Store modules, which are the conventional functions needed to get the store going.

A dozen of other core modules are configurable and optional, which can be added to your Ubercart store by enabling them in your Drupal administrator panel. The said optional core modules includes an attribute module to enable product attributes such as sizes for t-shirts, a module to enable product file downloads, a payment tracking module so that users can track payment from the site, and a report module to view the store’s sales, customers and products reports. For further functionality, some shipping modules and a tax module are also optionally available, which allows more ways for you to handle shipping and tax charges for the items in your store.

Besides that, a bunch of ‘extra’ modules can also be optionally enabled. The notable ones include the Google Analytics module and the stock module to handle stock levels of your products.

Among the other interesting features available is the single page checkout which simplifies the whole buying process. For users who have not registered, the checkout process automatically generates an account for the user in the site. You can also integrate Ubercart with UPS, FedEx and USPS (More info on shipping methods here) and additionally, you can assign calculations so that shipping rates automatically adjusts to the products weight.

As for payment gateways, a lot of well known payment gateways are already supported including Paypal, 2Checkout, Authorize.net and CyberSource (Check out the full list here). There is also a Payment Method Pack, which helps to automatically process checks and money orders purchases.

It is also worth mentioning that Ubercart has a powerful product and catalogue management design in place, and you will be able to easily add product classes, product features, downloads and role promotions to make your online store more informative.

Another thing that should be noted is that Ubercart has a lot of jQuery built in, and this just shows how effecient Ubercart is, by utilizing fully the resources available in Drupal.

Some good examples of stores that uses Ubercart are Books for the Future, Transformetrics, and Banglz.com.

My Thoughts On Ubercart

Ubercart is certainly for most people. An out of the box, feature rich and easy to use ecommerce solution for those looking for ways to do this through Drupal.

Comparing Ubercart with the other online store solution for Drupal, namely e-Commerce, it is fair to say that Ubercart is still in its infancy in terms of development (for an enlightening comparison, check out Brenda’s post that outlines the features, pros and cons of both Ubercart and e-Commerce).

Well, that is not to say that Ubercart is an inferior eCommerce solution. I think that the community that develops Ubercart is a solid one, judging from the way they organize their project’s site. A lot of the right stuff has been put together in a very organized way. To think that at the time of writing, Ubercart is still just a Beta product - with the latest release being Ubercart 1.0 RC4 (release candidate 4) - it is surely a convincing thought that we can expect more major improvements to come from Ubercart, before the final released product takes shape.