“I need a simple shopping cart” is a simple yet complicated demand that hear often from many of my clients. “Simple, just need to be able to sell a couple of products on my website.” If only they knew how difficult such a “simple” thing can be. What to do? Setup Zencart? OS Commerce? Just build my own from scratch? Having just a simple shopping cart can be quite the task for a developer when a business has such a demand, yet such a small budget. I have been battling this dilemma for over 2 years now.
A good place to start is with a content management system, then find a way for a small shopping cart plugin to integrate into it. That way it’s not a big cart system like Zencart, and it’s still content manageable unlike the custom one you might be considering building. But two of the most popular CMS systems don’t have great shopping cart plugins that fully integrate with the CMS system itself. Joomla and Wordpress! Sure there are many plugins available, but not any that truly integrate with the CMS itslef.
That’s where Drupal CMS has the advantage. With the Ubercart plugin for Drupal, you get a simple shopping cart setup that integrates perfectly with your drupal CMS system. I have found this to work perfectly for me. Using the drupal “node” system, you can create a specefic node for each individual product. This allows you to setup a smaller number of products, and get the huge SEO benefits that come from the Drupal system. Things like URL Aliases and so forth. Now, because of Drupal you can have a CMS, blog, newsletter, shopping cart, and much much more all integrated seamlessly into the same site. I can tell you from personal experience that Joomla and Wordpress do not come close to providing this integrated combination as well as Drupal.
And for you developers out there, the drupal template system is way better than Zen Cart and OS Commerce combined. The admin interface is easier to learn. And you can create individual product pages, create a product catalog, or do both. You are not tied to one, unlike Zen Cart and the other major e-commerce systems. So the next time you are in need of a simple shopping cart solution, try giving Drupal a try along with the drupal Ubercart plugin. It won’t let you down.
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December 12th, 2007 at 6:27 am
Thanks a lot for the praise! We’ve got plenty of work to do yet but are glad that folks have been able to use Ubercart with good success for some time now. Hoping our projects help you improve your e-commerce business… : )
December 17th, 2007 at 4:17 am
[...] seen a couple of interesting posts on this topic lately – this one for Drupal and this one for WordPress. addthis_url = [...]
December 18th, 2007 at 8:03 am
Great Article! Dows anyone knows how stabile übercart runs? i need to install a shopsystem with near 2.000 articles and just want to know if übercart is the right choice.
December 18th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
I’ve always been more inclined to use a cart system like Zen Cart when there are thousands of products. I’ve used Ubercart with Drupal when I need a more “simple” shopping cart with a lower number of products. Just my preference though. In this situation Ubercart has worked great for me.
December 19th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Regarding sites with large product catalogs, there are folks who have done this (books, clothing), but we’re still fleshing out the bulk product administration tools. Lyle should be committing a bulk product edit form soon, but you’ll simply have to use Drupal’s standard page administration capabilities in the meantime. These aren’t optimal for managing large amounts of pages at a glance if you’re going to need to do that any time soon. On the contrary, the product and catalog import tools are quite well developed and have allowed others in the past to import similarly sized product catalogs.
December 22nd, 2007 at 11:55 pm
[...] – I just recently wrote about this shopping cart plugin for Drupal. Hands down the best shopping cart you will find for any content management system [...]
December 23rd, 2007 at 8:10 am
for a very inexpensive, reliable, no install or update solution for 2,000 products or more or less, see Blue Oryx Internet Solutions. Paypal, Authorizenet ready w/ blog/news module and more. The Simple Shopping Cart. you will not be disappointed. blueoryx.com
March 13th, 2008 at 10:37 am
Hi,
I am ready to give it a try!!
Would be great if working ok!
Bas
Webmaster Motortassen
March 15th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
thank you for your info.
April 12th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Excellent article! Does anyone knows how stable übercart runs? i need to install a shop system with near 2.000 articles and just want to know if übercart is the right choice.
April 17th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
I have been looking at drupal lately for some clients and it’s nice to know there is what appears to be a very popular cart system. Thanks for the post!
June 4th, 2008 at 4:36 am
hi ,its not define how to install pay pal with drupal please give me solotion ………
June 4th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Ubercart is your solution. http://ubercart.org
July 20th, 2008 at 11:41 am
That is cool. Thanks, Kellie shoptheemall.com Ft Wayne, IN
October 20th, 2008 at 6:01 am
We have been considering a move to Drupal recently and Ubercart looks very promising to us.
Webmaster hardy diesel generator
January 19th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
The latest trend for shopping online is to use a portal, which would serve as an entrance to minor and major stores online.
March 10th, 2009 at 12:13 am
I think this has just swung the votes for Drupal. I was looking at different frameworks and CMSes which I can customize for building a community site, as well raising some funds. And it looks like Drupal (which I can extend easily) and Ubercart are definitely the best way to launch everything in double quick time!
Let’s get this going then. First to download ubercart and plug it into the Drupal that I downloaded via Bitnami’s Drupal stack, then confirm that it works before I plug it into my own server which is currently still using Dynamic DNS, since it is sitting behind a dial in broadband network, without the luxury of a fixed IP yet.
Well, raise some funds first, then that will pay for a proper data centre few Us of space. And maybe then be able to afford the sexy XServe? Haha, I’ll probably settle for Ubuntu Server sitting on Dell, for the sake of keeping costs low. Just need constant monitoring and many fail safes, maybe via Heartbeat and DRBD. We shall see. Let’s rock and roll!