Hi, nice to meet you all ...
I have to build a digital library with ecommerce functionalities for an important publishing company in Italy ...
After assessing other carts (Magento, Cs-Cart, ecc.) trying to find something standardized and pre-done, I realized that DRUPAL is the only tool that will meet the specific properties of the library (mainly pubblications - articles - authors 1-n & n-n relationships).
This will mean more customization work, but I'm happy anyway because I'm loving the features and capabilities of Drupal.
I would like to have some advice about which way to go from the beginning, regarding Drupal 6 or Drupal 7.
Correct me if I am wrong, but with Drupal 6 I guess I will take advantage of Ubercart for ecommerce functionalities: a quite mature solution, but without further innovation for the future.
With Drupal 7 I will enjoy its new functionalities, but would bet on the foreseen effectiveness and stability (and completeness) of drupalcommerce (http://www.drupalcommerce.org/) for the ecommerce.
In my project the main priority is the library catalogue structure definition and usability, in front and back end.
But in 2 or 3 months I would need to implement solid ecommerce functionalities to its items ...
So, please, what would you suggest to go for, now?
Drupal 6 + Ubercart or Drupal 7 + drupalcommerce (alfa/beta ... )?
Would be easy (or how much hard?), to migrate from the former (more solid and stable) to the latter (new and with more future) solution in a second time?
Thanks a lot (and cheers from Italy ...)
Comments
For the sake of long-term
For the sake of long-term benefit, I would stick with Drupal 7.
Regarding the ecommerce question, the Drupal commerce project boasts some former talent from the long-standing ubercart project, so it remains to be seen which will offer the best solution to your needs.
I know the way now ...
Thank you!
Will follow your "brave" advice !
That's the way I would prefer ..
Digital Communication, Web 2.0 & Web Gis 2.0 Opensource
www.italomairo.com
email: itamair@me.com
Your Library project
Hello,
I am asking about your Library project, did you complete it?
I reason I am asking is that I have a project looks like that and I might get some help from your experience.
Thanks
Randa
Drupal6 + Ubercart
If you need something stable, go with Drupal6 and Ubercart. It will give you at least one year of usage of your website before you will need to think of the upgrade to Drupal7.
ServanTek
Serving with technology
http://servantek.org.ua
Well, Thanks, Another
Well, Thanks,
Another thing,
What modules did you use for saving the books and viewing them,
in what format was the book saved and which modules did u use?
Thanks
Randa
drupal commerce is awesome...
drupal commerce is awesome... not that ubercart is awful... it's just not well integrated into drupal in the way that commerce is... otherwise i'm a fan of d6... greatly prefer it in fact... except when commerce is concerned... then it's d7
I perfectly did it with Drupal 7 and Drupal Commerce ...
Thanks to all of you, and your nice advices.
After a long feasibility phase (4 - 5 months) and the following development one (more than 1 year for all) I can say I brilliantly accomplished it with Drupal 7 and Drupal Commerce (which won the match vs Ubercart, for many reasons ...).
The project produced this Drupal 7 application (still in development, but perfectly 80% working ... with its Drupal Commerce functionalities still under the surface): www.inuedizioni.com
Drupal 7 perfectly succeeded in making me able to both build a publishing catalogue (with sophisticate hierarchy in storing contents of magazines, sections, articles, authors, ecc.) and Drupal Commerce to upper laying commerce functionalities on it (without mixing them, that would have been the case with Ubercart).
Here is a related comment of mine in a discussion focusing about Drupal Commerce vs Ubercart:
http://drupal.org/node/1199602#comment-5365636
If you know Italian, you can go even deeper through my project presentation I held for the Rome Drupal Day 2011: http://roma2011.drupalday.it/sessions/il-nuovo-catalogo-informatizzato-e...
So, so far, long long life to Drupal 7 & Drupal Commerce !!!!
Digital Communication, Web 2.0 & Web Gis 2.0 Opensource
www.italomairo.com
email: itamair@me.com
...
if you want more details about my projects experience you can contact me directly ...
I will be glad to share
Digital Communication, Web 2.0 & Web Gis 2.0 Opensource
www.italomairo.com
email: itamair@me.com
A year later
I'm doing a similar evaluation. I agree itamair's abstract argument. Commerce has some nice abstractions. However, in practice, I find it difficult to get it to fulfill its promise. Seemingly little things are huge stumbling blocks in practice, like getting different prices for different product variations, or getting each variation to show up on the main product page with an "add to cart" button and the various fields. The documentation doesn't correspond to the software, which makes figuring it out problematic. Not that UC is any better, but I'm already familiar with UC.
How have others found Commerce in the last year?
I've built multiple web sites
I've built multiple web sites to sell content/videos and physical goods and even to pay library fines using Drupal Commerce. I also have a lot of experience with Ubercart, and there's just no comparison. Commerce is so much better.
I'm not sure why you have had such huge stumbling blocks with Commerce. Have you checked out the latest version of Commerce Kickstarter? I believe it provides good examples on solving the problems you seem to describe.
Thanks for the quick reply
Glad to hear that. I'm going to keep hacking at Commerce for a little while to see if I can make it work.
Where I'm running into issues is in the display of a product, where what I want to do seems to conflict with Commerce's ideal. I just want to show all the product variations and their various attributes all on one page, each with an add-to-cart button. Commerce seems to want to use a selector and javascript loading of variations if it's going to show the add-to-cart button. I just want a static display of all the options.
There are lots of options for the Product Variation display, but they don't usually produce the expected results, and it's not clear how to get add-to-cart buttons for each variation all at once.