H.JLYNN Collection -- An Ubercart Jewelry Store

After three months development we're excited to finally see our first ubercart site be pushed out the door at http://www.hjlynn.com/

It's a small site in terms of products (only about 40, some of which still need images), but it has lots of great features thanks to the ubercart & drupal teams and all the contributors.

When I was researching what shopping cart to use for this project I had three criteria: cost (free!), stability, and ease of use for both developer and store admin. I looked at the Drupal eCommerce project and Magento and Ubercart. eCommerce is good and I've used it in the past, but it doesn't seem to have the polish, AJAX features, or user community behind it (this website is a huge plus, IMO, for ubercart). Magento was (and still is) in beta and was not recommended for live use and it's a non-Drupal app which poses challenges. Ubercart, I decided, was the best tool for the job and having finished the site I am very glad we chose it.

Because I've found this sort of list useful when I was developing the site here is a rundown of the major modules we used for building the site:

• uc_discount: for providing role-based discounts to wholesale buyers.
• uc_aac: for updating the price dynamically based on what color they select.
• uc_gift_certificate: for the gift certificates.
• uc_wishlist: for providing the wishlist feature.
• views: for creating all the "catalog" type pages. I basically replicated the stock taxonomy/term view for the Catalog vocabulary and then custom themed it to get the look we wanted.
• views slideshow: for creating the rotating set of images on the front page.
• thickbox & imagecache: these combination of modules made it so easy to show off larger images of the various colors and alternate images for a product. One snafoo I hit was creating a "View Larger" link which launched thickbox. I posted the solution here.
• zen theme: can't say enough about how easy this theme makes my life on the design end. It provides a nice, empty, wireframe theme with all the major CSS classes defined for me which makes it super easy to build out a custom design
• similar by terms: Provides the "Complete the Look" feature that you see here. Basically, the store admin tags related items with a unique term. To get it to look the way I wanted I just overrode the theme_similarterms() function.
• taxonomy: specifically for putting items on Sale. I created a new term called Sale in the Catalog vocabulary. By tagging products with that term they show up in the Sale section. With a little custom theming I was able to make the original price (which we store in the List Price field) show up with the typical strikethrough look.
• forward: for the "tell a friend" feature.
• securepages: for SSL on the checkout pages.
• simplenews: for the newsletter.
• SimpleMenu, TinyMCE, Pathauto, LoginToboggan, Webform, and Taxonomy Super Select: all modules that make it easier for me and the store admin to use the site.

That's the bulk of it, feel free to offer suggestions or questions.