Why would you use this module and go through all the processes, when you can just install the magento and link to it from Drupal?

I'm serious, it is not a smartA$$ question. I really would like to know, because I need a shopping cart now.

I have reviewed the magento, it looks like an excellent cart.

I've used other applications standalone with links to them and basically never felt any pain from it. In fact, having separated MySql Databases was a plus for maintenance and backups.

The site I am working on is for a small retailer. All regular features are open to anonymous users, except administration.

When users activate and go through shopping cart process, then they give information for billing and shipping.

Comments

domineaux’s picture

domineaux commented

I forgot to mention, that having a uniform theme across Drupal and the shopping cart isn't that big a deal for my situation.

Most people realize they are into a different part of your site when they access a shopping cart, classifieds,downloads,etc.

Maxime Topolov’s picture

Maxime Topolov commented
Assigned: Unassigned » Maxime Topolov
Priority: Normal » Minor
Status: Active » Closed (fixed)

Hi domineaux...

Many reasons in fact :

- SSO issue : when a user is logged in Drupal, he will need to login again in Magento
- Promotion / Blocks and content interaction : How to cross sell that "blue jean" from your Magento stor to any person looking on that forum thread on your Drupal Site
- Integration of products inside home page, Drupal search results, node reference products from other content types and so on...
- Theming, while you have no limits on Drupal side with themes, it would be more complex to make work some tricky theme on Magento
- Performance : since Magento 1.3 is much more faster, it remains slower than Drupal...

On the other side for really small business I would suggest :

- Using Übercart (with limitations on features, backoffice, multilanguage, multistore...)
- Using Magento without Drupal (with limitations on frontoffice, CMS and performance).

domineaux’s picture

domineaux commented

The dual login is not a problem, because I would have no registration on the site.

Any registration would only be through the checkout as far as I can tell.

The use of taxonomy is very important on large number of product items, which I can understand.

Theming the cart differently from Drupal is fine. The shopping cart is a separate part of the site.

I read a review that mentioned the Magento was very slow on virtual servers, would you know anything about that?

I have store up on Ubercart now, and it works pretty well. There are some customizing issues with it I am not anxious to make.

Custom coding always seems to haunt me, when updates or security updates are released.

Sometimes they are not a problem, sometimes they are... but they do have to be fixed.

I talked with a user at length yesterday about issues with Ubercart integration into Drupal site I have up now.

There are definitely issues that should have been solved by now in UC, that aren't.

Next week I start a new site and like everyone else experimenting with new things is not a best course of action, especially when you have deadline to finish.

I appreciate your response

thank you.

onejam’s picture

onejam commented

I see your point but i also think there can be an advantage in running it separately and to share data between the two.

For example, let's say you want to start a marketplace to allow users to sell their custom design t-shirts and you take a commission of the sales. You would built an ecommerce site (using Magento). So far it's just a store to buy and sell. Further down the line, you begin to feel allowing customers to only browse, buy and sell is not enough so you want to add more value to your business and make it a fun place where customers can communicate and interact with each others (basically a social network). So you build a social network site (using Drupal).

Now you have a t-shirt store and a social network site but you want a way to tie in the products from the store to your social network. This is where this module will probably fit that link between the two. Products from the store can be shown directly on your social network site that belongs to the seller and be purchased as well. Customers now have access your social network site, in the same time if customers don't want to participate in your social network site, they can still freely buy from the store.

You still run them as separate sites but this module allows you to better connect the two as one overall site. In this case, i see some advantages here, if you decide the social network site isn't adding any real value to your store business and the store is doing fine as it is, you could just drop the social network completely and still have your store running.

Anyway, that was something just off the top of my head as i've only began testing this module so don't know how far they'll go with the integration or what can be possible.

I believe you can do this with Ubercart too but Magento backoffice seems to be more fully featured, IMO.

domineaux’s picture

domineaux commented

I think I found the reason for the comments on Magento being slower on virtual hosting accounts.

The Innodb is enabled for Mysql with Magento. The reads and writes are slower, but more reliable

The Mysql Isam is faster for reads, not much difference on writes.

So the tradeoff is speed over accuracy. Accuracy on Ecommerce would be more important to my way of thinking.

Maxime Topolov’s picture

Maxime Topolov commented

Well I do not totally agree with you :)
Magento speed problems are mainly due to 2 reasons :

1. EAV data design -> using this meta-db technique is well known for performance problems : EAV wiki

2. Whole OOP / Zend based design. Zend is a very nice framework, very clean design and so on, but suffer of some performance problems.

domineaux’s picture

domineaux commented

Thats good information I didn't think the slow issues went that far.

Thanks for your response