When I first noticed that Drupal was a part of the Database Development LAP, I was excited to say the least. I have a client that needs an e-commerce site created and I had heard that Drupal was the best CMS option out there. So I was anxious to dive in and get started.
However, as the training progressed, I got the impression that Drupal wasn’t intended for these types of applications. From what I saw in the Lynda.com Drupal Essentials course, Drupal is designed more for blogging type sites and sites that change content fairly often. So how the heck does that work with an e-commerce site? It didn’t appear to be the solution I had originally thought it would be.
Unwilling to just let it be, I decided to do a little searching on my own. Drupal is a CMS that uses modules and themes to structure the website’s content. Modules give added functionality to Drupal sites while themes are responsible for display. A search of the Drupal modules led me to two different shopping cart modules; Ubercart and e-commerce.
UBERCART:
From the Ubercart webpage (http://drupal.org/project/ubercart):
Project Information
- Maintenance status: Actively maintained
- Development status: Under active development
- Module categories: e-commerce
- Reported installs: 28903 sites currently report using this module. View usage statistics.
- Last modified: October 31, 2010
“Ubercart is an e-commerce suite developed for Drupal. 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.”
“Current Features:
View the What is Ubercart? page for more info.
- Configurable product catalog includes catalog pages and a block to display product categories.
- Flexible product creation system with product classes.
- Multiple product image support out of the box.
- Flexible product attributes system.
- Basic product stock level tracking and notification.
- Product features to add file downloads, role promotions, and more to products.
- Single page checkout.
- Automatic account generation (anonymous checkout).
- Customer and administrator checkout notifications.
- Simple order processing (with workflow-ng integration for automated order processing).
- Simple order creation and editing.
- Integrated payment system that acts as a bridge between acceptable payment methods (check, credit card, purchase order, etc.) and payment gateways (Cyber Source, Authorize.net, PayPal, etc.).
- Shipping quotes and fulfillment, including integration with UPS, FedEx, USPS.
- Sales, product, and customer reports.
- Activity logging.
- Much more… and more to come.
Ubercart is PayPal certified and listed in PayPal’s solutions directory as an e-commerce solution that integrates PayPal Website Payments Standard, Website Payments Pro, and Express Checkout. For more information, you can read the Ubercart PayPal information page.”
My impression of Ubercart:
The Ubercart page has a “Live Sites” section and I had the opportunity to see Ubercart in action. (Side note: One of the live sites is http://www.altoncaskets.com/ and I noticed they have a category listed on their homepage called “Rental”. This one left me with lots of questions regarding casket rental…like WTH? Another interesting note…. I was surprised to find on all the “Live Sites” I visited that dead links were very common. On the Alton Caskets site they’re featuring their Borden PC casket on the home page with a broken link… Hmmm…. Doesn’t instill much confidence in a company when a site “feels” abandoned by having so many broken links. Additionally they do not have a cart function on this site… But moving on…)
On most of the sites I visited I noticed the shopping cart checkout was all contained on one page. You entered your shipping info, payment info and any discount coupons all on the same page. Most of the sites also included a shipping calculation function on that same page. The shopping carts on all the sites were intuitive and easy to use when adding or removing merchandise. Most checkout pages were very similar but there were some obvious customizations although they appeared very limited. After visiting several sites it became easy to spot the Ubercart shopping cart.
e-Commerce:
From the e-Commerce webpage (http://drupal.org/project/ecommerce):
Project Information
- Maintenance status: Actively maintained
- Development status: Under active development
- Module categories: e-commerce, Rules
- Reported installs: 979 sites currently report using this module. View usage statistics.
- Automated tests: Enabled
- Last modified: December 12, 2010
“Create your own online store!
The most complete e-Commerce solution for Drupal.” (Side note: not very informative compared to the Ubercart site!)
“Features
Currently, the e-Commerce includes core modules and several
- Shopping cart and product ‘look and feel’ are themeable
- Create taxes, charges and discounts
- Subscriptions and recurring payments
- Receive donations
- Sell file downloads, shippable items, bundles or even on-the-fly customizable products
- Inventory management
- Payment and shipping plugins: The system can use PayPal, Authorize.net, eWAY, C.O.D. or you can roll your own.
- Invoice generation and email notifications
- Transaction and payment workflows
- Reports and sales summaries
- Customers can review their order history
- Run an auction site”
My impression of e-Commerce:
Unfortunately there weren’t any “Live Sites” listed on the e-Commerce site. Further searching led me to this page: http://groups.drupal.org/ecommerce on which the following comment was posted by George@dynapres.nl on November 1, 2010:
“With Drupal 7 around the corner, there is still no final release of Ecommerce for Drupal 6 available. I see we’ve arrived at Release Candidate 22 (seriously, RC22?!) after some 2 years of development.
Is it time to realize that Ecommerce for Drupal 6 will never appear due to the lack of developers?
Wouldn’t it be wise to discontinue the Ecommerce project all together and shift focus to Ubercart or Drupal Commerce?”
Further review of this page led me to the conclusion that e-Commerce is quite possibly a dying entity as evidenced by the lack of postings to this site. Postings for the entire year are November 11, Nov. 1, Sept. 24, Sept. 23, Aug. 17, Aug. 5, July 20, July 19, June 15, Mar. 31, Mar. 25, Mar. 23, Mar. 18, Mar. 11, Feb. 2, Jan. 20, and Jan. 6 for a total of only 17 new submissions for the whole of 2010; a dismal lack of activity coupled with an obvious lack of support as evidenced by the comment posted on November 1st.
Further evidence that the e-Commerce module is not being maintained can be found in the comments section on the first episode of D’ eC Report: http://www.drupalecommerce.org/content/episode-1. It’s seems fairly obvious nobody’s home.
Conclusion:
e-Commerce is showing only 979 sites currently report using their module while Ubercart shows 28903 sites currently report using their module. In the contest between Ubercart and e-Commerce, it’s pretty obvious there is no contest.
[...] reading here: Drupal Ubercart vs e-Commerce « Becky Pearce's Blog Esta entrada foi publicada em E-Commerce e marcada com a tag suite-developed, three-key. Adicione [...]
You have an incomplete picture, and because of this you risk giving your client bad advice. Ubercart is the most popular e-commerce solution for Drupal 6. However, for Drupal 7 it is being replaced by Drupal Commerce. You need to get up to speed on that.
Regards.
I appreciate your mentioning this. As I stated in the beginning, my original thought was that Drupal wasn’t for e-commerce at all. During some additional research I ran across those two modules. I have seen Drupal Commerce, but since it’s still in alpha status, I didn’t include any information on it, however a mention wouldn’t have been inappropriate. Thanks for providing that mention!
There is a Drupal E-Commerce 6.x-4.0 stable release from December 13. Just couple of weeks before Drupal 7 will become stable. They made it
I think wordpress is the best …
It should rise well above because Drupal is most powerful CMS ever.
Straight towards the level and well written, thanks substantially for that information
I’ve meant to publish about some thing like th is on a person of my blogs and th is gave me an thought. TY.
I have bookmarked your site, keep up the good work.
Internet Marketing Strategy FAQ: What r some good books to start learning about e-commerce and online marketing?…
Hello, I was doing some research for my blog at http://freeinternetmarketingstrategy.com and I came across your blog. I found your blog entry interesting so I’ve added a Trackback link to it on my blog. Keep up the good work!!
…
The good blog very much was pleasant I will watch your news
Hi,
From my point of view Ubercart module is best suitable for Drupal rather than E commerce module.There are lot of plug-ins available for ubercart module like payment,shipping and other.so Ubercart module is the best.
I think you should look at Magento, Prestashop or even Joomla+Virtuemart if you want something specialized for ecommercing
Awesome web site yo have here btw
The ideas you contributed here are incredibly useful. It was such an exciting surprise to get that looking forward to me as i woke up this very day. They are continually to the point and simple to understand. Thank you for the useful ideas you have shared above.
In this great scheme of things you get a B- for hard work. Where you actually lost everybody was first on the specifics. You know, it is said, details make or break the argument.. And that couldn’t be more true here. Having said that, allow me say to you what exactly did deliver the results. Your article (parts of it) is definitely really convincing which is most likely why I am taking the effort in order to opine. I do not make it a regular habit of doing that. Secondly, although I can certainly notice a leaps in reasoning you come up with, I am not really convinced of how you seem to connect your details that help to make your final result. For the moment I shall subscribe to your position however trust in the near future you actually connect the dots much better.