Online store + community - Drupal e-commerce, ZenCart, or other?
I'm going to be setting up a site for a local retail store, where obviously an online store will be a major aspect. They also want an online community of sorts, with forums, an events calendar, etc. So obviously I need to be using a CMS of some sort, and am partial to Drupal, but I'm not sure the best way to do this.
I've been reading about the Drupal E-commerce component, but from the comments I've seen it looks like it's more geared toward sites where e-commerce is only a minor factor, and only a handful of products are being sold. There doesn't seem to be any way of importing a large number of products at once, it apparently can only list one product per page, can't handle multiple currencies (which is a big problem for a Canadian store), and it sounds like setting up product options (colours, sizes, scents, etc.) is complicated and un-intuitive. (If I have any of this wrong, please let me know.)
However, it also looks like it's pretty much the only game in town when it comes to being able to add an online store to a Drupal site. I didn't see any sort of module for integrating ZenCart or any other online store into Drupal listed, and we can't have customers having to juggle two separate logins for the site -- that would make no sense at all, and would seriously impact usability. They need to have one login for the entire site.
So is there any kind of solution to this? Is the E-commerce module actually able to handle a large store with a wide variety of products? Or is there some way of integrating ZenCart -- bearing in mind that while I do have some PHP skills, I am not a programming god(dess)?
Also, another important point -- as mentioned above, we're in Canada, so it would also need to be able to handle Canadian sales tax, which is a two-tiered system with both federal and provincial taxes. Some products take both taxes, and some, like books, only one. Can the E-commerce module handle that? I couldn't tell from the documentation.
Thanks,
Lynna
Zen Cart baby!!!
I have been meaning to get around to trying out Drupal ecom module.. but from what i have read and from talking with someone who set it up and designed an attempt at a Canada Post shipping module... it really isn't there yet (lol.. kind of like the Drupal forum module!! - sorry my latest drupal rant!!).
Anyway, i have used Zen Cart for a Canadian site.. but not integrated into Drupal and i have a couple comments (don't i always)
Zen Cart Rocks
here begginith the rant...
I love Drupal - i think it is a very good CMS especially for extensibility reasons.. BUT.. i really don't get why they insist on trying to do things they don't do.. like ecom, forums, etc
thank god for people doing integration modules - tiny, gallery2, and i see a new phpBB integration module
YES - i agree if it is a real drupal module then things that hook into it from other drupal modules can be used.. but.. the idea of coming up with something like ZenCart or phpBB is kind of ridiculous (ZenCart is likely as complex as the entire Drupal framework)
I read something about the new Joomala having a very strong API to 3rd party app which sounds like they have the right idea as far as NOT re-inventing all the wheels that are out there... DRUPAL needs to learn from this - more time on a generic integration module and less time on silly themes like in Drupal 5.0.
here endeth the rant...
closing comments:
- pretty sure many many things will be missing from Drupal ecom (especially if you are used to ZenCart or live in Canada)
- i think there may be a CPost shipping module - but it doesn't integrate to Canada Post's server (like the zencart one does)
- if you cant find this "psuedo" CP module; let me know and i can likely track it down for you; supposedly it was offered back to the community; but not sure
- i will (eventually) likely end up doing a drupal to zencart integration module - but could be quite a ways off
- in the meantime, if you are interested in hiring me to do such a module - this is what i do.
Peter Lindstrom
www.LiquidCMS.ca
do you just do custom drupal
do you just do custom drupal or do you also do zencart extensions? sometimes I wish all the open source people would just get together and see what is the best about each one.
Well i have contributed code
Well i have contributed code to numerous OS PHP projects - not just Drupal. I haven't modified any of the ZenCart code (just set it up).. and of course modified the theme to fit with my Tikiwiki site.
But pretty sure i could do any extension for any PHP package. :)
if you want to discuss further - you can contact me at peter@liquidcms.ca
Peter Lindstrom
www.LiquidCMS.ca
Joomla Virtuemart / Joomla OsCommerce is your answer
I am just beginning to work with Drupal. The only experience I had with Drupal was little more than a year ago but shortly dropped the thought of moving forward with Drupal for a variety of reasons, including criteria based upon creating a community, e-commerce, photo galleries and overall available features.
As for e-commerce, I have varied experience with OsCommerce, Zen Cart, Cube Cart, Joomla Virtuemart, Joomla OsCommerce and other Joomla e-commerce solutions. OsCommerce and Zen Cart were virtually the same thing. Although they both have many capabilities and a good communities behind them, administration can be quite cumbersome and even downright difficult. I discovered this only after loading several thousand products into these systems and then experimenting with the Joomla CMS and its Virtuemart component.
Virtuemart is very easy to use and in the past year has improved so much that it is now my only option when developing websites. The way I setup my business model allows me to setup a fully functional e-commerce Joomla Virtuemart website within an hour, using existing products from my growing database and not having to heavily modify one of my templates. Within this time frame, I can also deploy hundreds to thousands of content articles and a fully-functional event calendar with extensive event listins geared toward my chosen market, which dramatically increases search engine performance. From there, I can begin adding hundreds of other features to the site that are highly sought after for communities and businesses, including a multitude of message boards, photo galleries, newsletters and such.
My vote is for Joomla Virtuemart. Include in that such options as Community Builder, Joomlaboard or SMF forum (BBS), Jos Comment (article commenting), Gallery 2 (photo gallery), UHP2 (Myspace style user home pages) and many others. Let me know if you need additional suggestions as per your specific needs. I rather see you save time with trial and error than to spend the amount of time I've spent determining which packages are best and which simply do not work well.
Overall, you really want to maintain one login for all operations, and you can do that with Joomla.
If you should go with OsCommerce, though, consider using the Joomla OsCommerce package. This way you can maintain a fluid one-login experience for your website visitors.
Fidel
osC v ZC
doood if you think osC and ZC are close then you've 1) never developed both 2) don't understand why ZC is now a separate code set.
sick of all the 'pundits' here without any answers
psi-borg [no green eggs and spam [at]] psi-b dot org
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psi-borg and drupal to elope in las vegas on server69
Drupal + Zen Cart is powerful and acheivable
We've worked with a number of CMS and e-commerce tools and have evaluated Joomla + Virtuemart. We opted, based at least partially on our abilities (strong application development and programming skills) and our experience (significant Drupal and Zen Cart knowledge) to combine Drupal and Zen Cart. It's very achievable and can give you a great level of functionality - excellent store management combined with great content presentation and control. The client didn't require total integration of the two systems - unified search and templating are complete but customers don't login to Drupal so we haven't tackled that (yet). Once the two are completely integrated this is definitely a possible candidate for contribution back to the community, but needs work before that point.
In the meantime, however, I would strongly suggest that you check out Drupal's very own e-commerce module -- it has evolved very rapidly and we're going to look at it carefully as we get started on our next store.
Incidentally, if you want to see the results of our integration efforts, www.gertens.com is our combined Drupal / Zen Cart site. We've got a brief writeup of the project in our portfolio right now, but I expect to expand on that description in the not-far-future as it may have some technical interest to others.
Drew
Gorton Studios
Some of our Drupal Sites
Brief description of Drupal / Zen Cart Integration project
Drupal & Zen Cart
Drew,
your hybrid site makes the Drupal + Zen Cart combination appear seamless. Well done!
Would you be willing to write an in-depth article describing the challenges and solutions you discovered while putting the Drupal+ZenCart site together. Please.
TIA, David
yes...
I've been wanting to do this for some time. Instead of putting it off for something larger, though, here's the bare bones.
Also, please note that this is still a work in progress. We got to our designated launch target and launched. The next phase will complete the unification. Because the decision was made that site visitors would only be logging into Zen Cart initially, our phase one deliverable was to share themes and search. More specifically, we wrote Zen hooks into both Drupal's theme and search. Theming was pretty straightforward, but to accomplish the search we had to create what we call the 'shadow catalog' -- all of our ZenCart products are cataloged by Drupal and are, in fact, nodes themselves. This is kept in sync via a cron hook.
Via this mechanism, we are also able to link one-way between Drupal content (e.g. how-to articles) and 'related' Zen Cart products. Our next phase of completely tying the systems together will involve being able to reverse that -- so that Zen Cart products can display relevant articles next to the products.
That's a brief overview, but at least it's a start.
Drew Gorton
Gorton Studios
Some of our Drupal Sites
thank God...i've been
thank God...i've been planning a site that's Drupal and Zen Cart, though i won't be tying the two together really. not nearly as much as your site does! so i don't imagine i should run into any real problems...would you think? the Drupal site will basically just link off to the store, sort of like a whole second store site.
No tie-ins = no worries
As long as you've got no real interactions between the two, there's nothing at all complicated about it -- you can have separate databases, code, themes, etc. -- It will mean redoing some of your gruntwork -- but that's easier (at least over the short run) than doing lots of fancy work to unify things.
Drew Gorton
Gorton Studios
Some of our Drupal Sites
hey einstein, you forgot to mention that your site doesn't
integrate logins and really is just having 2 separate applications at the same site... you've got two templates that look the same, but no reason for login/membership for drupal - and WOW a search that searches through your whole db... stop the press.
another emperor without clothes or just another free ad at drupal.org.... pretty green site tho. *sangria burp*
psi-borg [no green eggs and spam [at]] psi-b dot org
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psi-borg and drupal to elope in las vegas on server69
really?
I'm curious. Which part of:
indicates anything other than shared search and templating?
Regardless of your missing that bit, the project did, in fact, involve more than:
SELECT * FROM zen_products_table WHERE description LIKE % $_GET['query']
But, perhaps most importantly, you have the right to disagree and choose/develop/refine your own tools for your own needs. All my initial post was about is that it's doable and that we liked the technical results and the client has liked the sales results. It works for them, it worked for us. It's a big world -- it may not be the right solution for what you want to do.
and, i'm taking this bait, too [sigh]
Thoughtful of you to note this. I've got to assume you're referring to my signature. It's explicitly intended to give everyone the chance to evaluate my free advice based on the quality of work we produce. Free advice is cheap and easy to give -- and giving it out doesn't mean it's worth anything. I realize the quality of work as judged from the outside of a website can be both subjective and difficult to assess, but it can be helpful when trying to wade through lots of opinions in response to a question. I add it to my posts because I, as a human being, like knowing who I'm listening to and factor that into my judgment on the advice received.
So, in a way, you have noted the precise issue -- we may be terrible hacks, naked emperors, shameless snake-oil merchants or worse. How would you really know unless you had something to evaluate us on? Some examples of our work are probably a reasonable starting point.
And, as far as the 'free ad' goes -- the forums tack a great little 'no follow' onto all links. There's no gaming of this system to spam the search engines.
I add my info to my signature because I'm willing to let others scrutinize our work before accepting any advice at face value. Honestly, I wish more people would do the same; I don't see what's gained by not stating clearly and concisely who you are.
i suppose it's not all bad...
Thanks - we love these sorts of adoring reviews of our work.
:-)
Drew Gorton
Gorton Studios
Some of our Drupal Sites
Drew- I was wondering if you
Drew-
I was wondering if you could share your code on how you integrated the search of both drupal and Zen Cart. I think that would be very beneficial to lots of drupal developers and especially me :P
-Aaron
yes...
But, again, we really want to clean it up before then. Right now it very much feels like a job half-done (psi-borg wasn't so far off on that). Right now Drupal knows about Zen Cart's products and Zen Cart knows about Drupal's theme... but there's a lot more we'd like to do here.
Our real problem is that we've got so many other projects that we must do (as-in: contractually obligated to complete).
We're actually hoping to snag a good programming intern this summer, though... and if so, we're going to do our own mini summer-of-code and this will be one of the projects.
Drew Gorton
Gorton Studios
Some of our Drupal Sites
A Very Simple Solution
I have been through a similar scenario. I used E-Commerce, but it took too many hacks and workarounds to make it do what we needed. I themed up a ZenCart install to match the main site. We also do not have any Drupal content requiring log in, so the lack of user integration is OK (for now at least).
We still weren't pleased with some of the ZenCart layouts. Zen is quite complex in it's templating, and I didn't have time to spend to go too crazy, so I went back to my Drupal roots and did the following poor mans integration.
I made a custom product content type and template file, and then made a View to pull in all of the product nodes. The nodes all have a link to the product id in ZenCart (found simply by navigating to it and copying the URL). There is also a Drupal menu block that navigates through the categories of products and has links to the shopping cart and checkout, also found by navigating and copying URL's.
ZenCart is essentially only being used as a shopping cart/checkout tool. The customer never actually navigates through ZenCart. I decided to strip the ZenCart theme and templates of the headers and footers that matched my site, so the cart just opens in a new window with only the cart contents and a matching background color. I came to the conclusion that making ZenCart look exactly like the Drupal site was not good. It gives shoppers the impression they haven't left your site, when in fact they have, and that might lead to confusion.
All in all, it's sort of a retarded, half-assed, hack of a phony integration, but it's performing like a charm and our sales have tripled since the redesign. Coincidence?
Finally, I think ZenCart is really great. For all of it's cumbersome admin and hundreds of tpl files to tweak, it's powerful and reliable. I'd like to see a Drupal version of the Developers Tool Kit search that ZenCart has.
Drew- if you get that integration to a releasable state, you will have many, many new friends.
Nice.
You've come to a lot of similar conclusions - nice to see some affirmation there. We've finally got this one on our schedule again. We're expecting to launch a site with a releasable Drupal-Zen module integration late in 2007 and our sketched-out plans right now (and possibly subject to change) involve a more automated version of what you've just described.
We don't necessarily need unified user management yet, but we hope to tackle that as well. And, as previously mentioned in this thread, we will be contributing this module back.
Drew Gorton
Gorton Studios
Some of our Drupal Sites
Progress Update
I know this thread has gotten some notice so I thought I'd give an update. We're working along and our major milestone thus far has been unified logins (drupal sees zen, zen sees drupal, login/logout/account creation works both ways) and we feel like we're moving along nicely.
Happiness!
Drew Gorton
Gorton Studios
Some of our Drupal Sites
Music to my ears...
Great news! The pressure is mounting for us to start making our community site actually reach out to the community with log-in only content. That would sure be an easier pill to swallow with this integration. Please keep posting your progress. I'll be checking in every once in a while.
Out of curiosity, is there a Zen module component that 'handshakes' with the drupal module, or does the drupal module insert new user info into the zen database during account creation? Or perhaps, you've got an entirely different approach?
Just wondering.
Drupal-centric
The last week has been focused on other projects and we're going to have more of the same for a bit - progress so has been an early jump-start type of bonus as we didn't think we were going to get to this one a bit later. So - that's a long way of saying that we won't have a lot of progress reports for a while. (I should get Ronan posting on this thread - he's the lead developer).
Anyway, though, to answer your question, we're trying to do as much development as possible in Drupal -- we've done Zen modules before, but we really want to keep the development and install on Drupal's side exclusively if possible. So far, so good, but we'll see....
So - on that principal - Drupal is inserting into Zen. The place we think we may get into trouble and have to write a Zen module is the fact that Drupal let's you create an account without a billing/shipping address, etc (which is good - you shouldn't have to force that info in order to make a comment somewhere). Zen let's you checkout without an address, it turns out -- so we're going to need to write a little something that performs that check before assuming all the info is there.
Another issue - a good behavior / user experience issue - is that Zen user accounts are email addresses. They work justs fine in Drupal - but they're also publicly exposed (when someone comments, for example). You can always change them, but that isn't the greatest thing to do with someone's email address. We've got our thinking caps on, though.
So - that's the scoop. We'll keep up the reports as we've got 'em!
Drew Gorton
Gorton Studios
Some of our Drupal Sites
Music to my ears...
Great news! The pressure is mounting for us to start making our community site actually reach out to the community with log-in only content. That would sure be an easier pill to swallow with this integration. Please keep posting your progress. I'll be checking in every once in a while.
Out of curiosity, is there a Zen module component that 'handshakes' with the drupal module, or does the drupal module insert new user info into the zen database during account creation? Or perhaps, you've got an entirely different approach?
Just wondering.
Any new news?
I've been tasked to do an integration with drupal and zen-cart. if the module is ready, or even near ready, I'd be willing to beta it for some feedback. I am a programmer too so I can also go in and fix/provide info on what to fix to reduced the turn around time on patches.
Drew, it's been a while since we heard from you. Have you got any good news for us?
Granville
Kirkham Systems
Update
Yes - thanks for pointing this out - I'm overdue for an update.
The short version is that we've been totally focused on another project for the last 6 - 8 weeks. It's also cool and challenging and interesting, but it's taken more of our focus than we were planning. In any case, we're hoping to launch that within the next two-to-three weeks and are expecting to finish our last major task on that this week (giving us some time for final QA and tweaks).
Once that's complete, we're onto our Drupal/Zen project at full speed. If our QA testing shows no real problems we'll be on to this sooner.
So - sorry for the long delay between posts! Having some extra testers around as we get closer is quite welcome! grapher (and others) - at the point at which we've got something to look at, we'll contact you directly or perhaps post a link to the code in this thread...
Drew Gorton
Gorton Studios
Another Update
I think some folks may still be watching this thread - so here's an update. The site that was sucking all of our brain power has now launched - it's a totally different sort of thing but may still be of interest to this crowd. The site is the Rake Magazine and is written up here: http://drupal.org/node/191608
In any case, that means we're on to this full steam. We're behind where we wanted to be, but progress is happening and it's great to be working on this again (finally).
Drew Gorton
Gorton Studios
Excellent work! same dilemma
Hi Drew,
were you able make ZenCart to check for shipping address before checkout and register without using email address?
I started ZenCart with plan to integrate WordPress for blogging and PHPbb for forum but afraid to be too much for mantaining the wholesite. I posted at
http://drupal.org/node/199279 and have 3 choices:
A. Keep ZenCart + WordPress +PHPbb
B. Keep ZenCart and add Drupal
C. Start from scatch with Drupal + e-Commerce/UberCart
Do you think option B a good choice?
Thank you,
TeaXpress.com
for a healthy lifestyle...
Yikes!
That's a short set of choices that hide worlds of complexities and competing needs, abilities, etc.
I'd actually not recommend B, until you see it for yourself - all you've got to go on for B is a bunch of people talking. C exists and can be evaluated. Same with A. Depending on your timeline, B might be an option, but the whole thing depends on a lot of factors.
So - my opinion? (You're a startup, right?) If so, I would go with the fastest/cheapest thing plausible. Try your idea out before you invest lots more time/money/effort into it. Throw something together, refine the business and use those experiences to guide your next website - when you know what things cause you pain and inhibit your growth. At this point, then, if you've got a working ZenCart, I'd stick with it. Likewise, if the rest of it is almost done, stick with that, even if it isn't perfect. Once it's up and running, you'll know a lot more about what you need in a website and can use that to guide your judgments.
Drew Gorton
Gorton Studios
Zen Cart Bridge
Thank you for your expert opinion.
Is there a Zen Cart Bridge for Drupal or other CMS to share 1 login?
Thanks...
for a healthy lifestyle...
Any word on the project?
Hey Drew,
I was wondering how the project is coming along. it's been a few months and My team and I would love to see if anything progress has been made in this endeavor
Granville
Kirkham Systems
subscribing to this thread
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I can speak to the update on
I can speak to the update on this. We launched the site we were working on, and I now have a working Zen Cart integration module.
I will release this module if there is interest from the community for such a module.
Working with Zen Cart again (after a long absence mostly filled by Drupal work) reminded me that, while it is a powerful and useful tool, it is no Drupal. It is awkward to work with, annoying to theme and hellish to write 'contributions' for. Also, no integration module can possibly replace a well written Drupal solution.
What this means, is that while I'm happy to share my hard work with the community if there's interest, we will be looking very carefully at ubercart (being the best looking drupal solution out there) for our next ecommerce site. If it turns out to be ready for our needs, I will not use my Zen integration module. I'll try not to completely abandon it, I won't have the resources to update and expand the module. I'd rather put my energy into helping to improve a true drupal solution than maintaining a bridge module.
As such, if you do not have experience with Zen Cart, I would not necessarily recommend it or my module, but if you have already decided that it is the best way to go, my module will give you the power to create products and categories as nodes and there is also experimental user integration (with single signon)
In case your interested, or want to check out the solution, the site we launched with the Zen Cart module is http://www.simulution.com (be warned, the site sells medical training devices, some of which are quite anatomically graphical)
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Ronan - Gorton Studios - http://www.gortonstudios.com/
I have lots of experience
I have lots of experience with Zencart but not so much with drupal and I would love to use your integration module. Where can I get it?
thanks for the update.
Thanks Ronan for the update. While I've mentioned that the ubercart module exists my boss is a bit hesitant in using it while it is in the beta stage, not to mention he would like to see it age some before using it.
In the meantime, I'd love to look and use what you have, if you're willing to release it. I do believe that there is some community desire to see this since it will allow existing sites combine the power of zen and drupal, where currently, the only other CMS that zen has a module for is Wordpress. I Imagine that there is a Joomla integration, but we use Drupal for just everything unless someone says they want just a simple blog, then we provide them with WP. Drupal is just so easily configurable, has so many modules that do what we want, that it fits almost every need except the extreme custom.
I hope you'd be willing to share your work with us.
Granville
Kirkham Systems
I have released all my code
I have released all my code as a contributed module at http://drupal.org/project/zencart
I will repeat my caveat, that this is not ready for an end user, and a good working knowledge of Zen Cart and Drupal may be required. The catalog integration is in pretty good shape, but the user integration is a little buggy and untested (since the project the module was developed for did not end up using that functionality)
Testing, patches and feedback will be appreciated.
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Ronan - Gorton Studios - http://www.gortonstudios.com/
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