“I need a simple shopping cart” is a simple yet complicated demand that I 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? Magento? 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 5 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 itself.
That’s where the Drupal CMS has the advantage. With the Ubercart module 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 specific 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 does.
And for you developers out there, the Drupal template system is way better than Zen Cart, Magento 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. And if you wanted to make things even easier, you could find a Premium Drupal Theme that best fits your project and have a sleek design up in minutes.
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. Also as an additional resource to help you get started with Drupal, here is a step-by-step guide for installing Drupal on Dreamhost.
Ryan
December 12, 2007
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… : )
Dirk Hermanns
December 18, 2007
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.
admin
December 18, 2007
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.
Ryan
December 19, 2007
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.
vincenzo
December 23, 2007
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
bas
March 13, 2008
Hi,
I am ready to give it a try!!
Would be great if working ok!
Bas
Webmaster Motortassen
shopping
March 15, 2008
thank you for your info.
Agel
April 12, 2008
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.
AspDotNet
April 17, 2008
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!
Alok
June 4, 2008
hi ,its not define how to install pay pal with drupal please give me solotion ………
admin
June 4, 2008
Ubercart is your solution. http://ubercart.org
Kellie Syn
July 20, 2008
That is cool. Thanks, Kellie shoptheemall.com Ft Wayne, IN
Hardy
October 20, 2008
We have been considering a move to Drupal recently and Ubercart looks very promising to us.
Webmaster hardy diesel generator
Malls Shopping
January 19, 2009
The latest trend for shopping online is to use a portal, which would serve as an entrance to minor and major stores online.
KANG Ghee Keong
March 10, 2009
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!
Jimmy
August 29, 2009
I have a shopping site and want to try your method. Thanks for sharing.
sandrar
September 10, 2009
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog.
Cheers! Sandra. R.
admin
September 15, 2009
has anybody here had success recently with Ubercart?
Beachwear Place
October 25, 2009
Thanks for your information. I will give it a try.
Sitefixers
November 24, 2009
Maybe it’s better now, but around a year ago, I was considering developing a CMS using Drupal, and one of the customer’s requirements was to be able to have a product database with a shopping cart. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any plugins that were compatible with the lastest version of Drupal, and the code in Drupal is so bulky, it quickly became a pain to add my own cart to it. I ended up using the much slimmer Website Baker CMS and a free PHP script shopping cart, manually integrating it.
The next time I need to add a cart to a CMS, I’m going to use OpenCart, though. That seems like one of the best new carts out there.
Shopping Cart
June 24, 2010
agreed mostly people like to have simple shopping cart, on what basis we said that this one is simple or not
Ultrasonic Algae Control
July 30, 2010
It’s interesting because I’ve built several sites with wordpress and one with drupal and at least in my particular case, the drupal site has done very well with seo rankings. Based on it’s age and number of pages or how often it’s updated it probably shouldn’t be but I’ll take it.
I’ll definately be building more sites with drupal and ubercart to see how things go.
ron whister
June 2, 2011
We try ubercart and it is very slow compare to OpenCart. Try opencart before you make comment to ubercart.
OpenCart has feature to backup/restore products, nice statistics orders, built-in image manager, reviews, etc.
don’t waste your time with ubercart!