Hi,

I heard that Ubercart is a marvelous module.
So I gave it a try after reading its documentation at the official website.

It's very frustrated trying to figure out how to customize this module.
Its documentation just contains the basic setup, so it's almost useless for me.

For example:
I read this module can be used to sell service which is expired within some periods (days, weeks, or months).
And I also read that I must installed "roles" module for this purpose.
But that's all. There is no example how to set it up.
I have activated that module, set its setting in the "product setting" page and still wondering how to make it works!

So where can I get some helpful information about this module?

Thanks.

Comments

bwv’s picture

Go to

http://ubercart.org

There is lots of information there. (I run a demo on my site if you want to see how it works.)

----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.bwv810.com/

I am a writer and researcher. In my spare time I build websites with Drupal.
Je peux communiquer en français. / Я могу общаться на русском языке.

winarcht’s picture

Thanks. As I said, that website only contains technical info.
I still do not find what I am looking for.

Could you please let me know how to customize ubercart so I can sell several services?
For example:
- Guest - only valid for a week.
- Contributor - valid for two months.

I know this could be done by "roles" module. But how?

bwv’s picture

Have you created guest and contributor roles on your site?

----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.bwv810.com/

I am a writer and researcher. In my spare time I build websites with Drupal.
Je peux communiquer en français. / Я могу общаться на русском языке.

gate44’s picture

Hi bmv,

can you tell me how you done your search options on the left hand side. I need a similar sort of search but for trade companies instead.

robert

rszrama’s picture

enzoch and others, you may find the update user documentation to be helpful. It's always been there, but as we near the 1.0 release we've been cleaning it up. For your reference:

http://www.ubercart.org/docs/user

It seems like the kinds of things you're asking for are discussed in detail in the Creating Products section of the guide.

----------------------
Drupal by Wombats | Current Drupal project: http://www.ubercart.org

AndriaD’s picture

I'm having the same problem; I just setup Drupal this week, which wasn't too difficult, since I have used other php CMS things in the past (phpNuke, postNuke), but I think I really don't understand a lot about Drupal -- like 'nodes' for instance.

I have ubercart installed, at least it all seems to be here, but I just don't get how to do anything with it, like step-by-step instructions for telling it what the products are and how to describe them -- the fields, etc. All this "taxonomy" "vocabulary" "terms" stuff just totally defeats me. And enzoch is 100% correct, ubercart.org just tells you how to install it, but as for setting it up, it assumes a MUCH greater familiarity with how Drupal works than I apparently have; it's really no help at all, for telling you how to build a catalog of things you want to sell.

Is there some e-commerce solution that isn't so complicated to setup? I saw one called "quickfiles" or something like that, and "quick" would certainly be an improvement over this mess.

Can someone please offer some help, advice, pointers, etc? I'm really lost!

Andria

bwv’s picture

UC is not/not difficult to set up. Do you have Tapir, UBrowser, Token, CCK, Views, imagecache, imagefield, Workflow and any other necessary modules installed and activated? Have you created categories yet for your site? Have you gone to store admin and run through the configuration screens? UC virtually installs and configures itself.

Please let me know and I will help you with instructions.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.bwv810.com/

I am a writer and researcher. In my spare time I build websites with Drupal.
Je peux communiquer en français. / Я могу общаться на русском языке.

AndriaD’s picture

I did setup all those additional modules; the installation was easy, if a little involved, what with all those extra modules. As for categories.... I just don't really understand that whole issue. I see "Taxonomy" and my eyes glaze over; I keep thinking about "Taxidermy", stuffed moose heads and the like.

I never could seem to figure out how to define a product, or even enter a product, let alone a whole catalog. I've used other CMS before, but this is a whole new ballgame for me. I've read the "more help..." stuff for Taxonomy, I even read the stuff about it in the Drupal Cookbook at http://drupal.org/node/120624, and I even read the suggested articles, but I still just don't really get it. And no, I'm not dumb, but this issue sure makes me feel like an idiot.

I did go over the various menus for Ubercart, and it seemed fairly straightforward... except I just couldn't figure out how to define/enter a product, or catalog. Without that, it seemed kinda useless.

*sigh*
Andria

bwv’s picture

Actually, the whole concept of taxonomy it is critical to the structure and operation of any drupal site. You can certainly operate without it, but if you do you will not be able to take advantage of the scripts' dynamic dimension that makes drupal so fantastic.

Go to content management, categories, and look for product.

Under the Product vocabulary, create a term called books. Create another term called cameras.

Go to create content, product. Choose what category you want to add to (books or cameras).

Fill in all mandatory fields. If you have a field to upload an image, add an image. (If no field is visible, please advise.)

Set the SKU and price. Click submit.

Go to site building, modules, and activate catalog.

Go to site building, blocks, and activate the catalog block.

Please let us know if you see anything in the block.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.bwv810.com/

I am a writer and researcher. In my spare time I build websites with Drupal.
Je peux communiquer en français. / Я могу общаться на русском языке.

AndriaD’s picture

Well, I did all the stuff you said, and I actually think I may begin to understand a good bit more about Drupal, and about creating a catalog with products in it; however there is a weird thing happening I don't really understand. And I apologize in advance, I realize this is not Ubercart support, but for some reason I can't get to ubercart.org today; the site won't load, and when I did a tracert it's showing timeouts from about the 12th hop on down, where it gets to 'iglou'.

Anyway, here's the weird thing:

I have files set to private; in the path I have defined

/home23b/sub002/scXXXXX-HROA/drupal-files

which is a directory I have defined in my root dir at my host, below all the domains (my root dir being /home23b/sub002/scXXXXX-HROA).

When I hit submit for the product I created, it then told me it had *created*
/home23b/sub002/scXXXXX-HROA/drupal-files, so now I have
/home23b/sub002/scXXXXX-HROA/drupal-files//home23b/sub002/scXXXXX-HROA/drupal-files.

So when I try to add a file download as a feature, and it wants a path, I don't have any idea what to enter, since it says it wants a path "relative to the directory" -- the one it created, I suppose. The file I want to make the download file is actually in /home23b/sub002/scXXXXX-HROA/drupal-files ! So I have no clue what to tell it.

*argh*

Thx much, and again, excuse me, but I can't get to ubercart.org, or I would certainly ask this there!

Andria

bwv’s picture

This is not a UC issue, from what I can tell. Is there some particular reason you want to set the file system to private? I would strongly recommend that for now you set it to public. In fact, try to avoid customization of the files folder path and just let the system accept the default setting (yoursite.com/files). Once you get UC running, then you can experiment with altering the file path. I have never set the file system to private and have always accepted the default system file setting, and my UC sites have, without exception, worked flawlessly the first time, every time. Please keep us posted.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.bwv810.com/

I am a writer and researcher. In my spare time I build websites with Drupal.
Je peux communiquer en français. / Я могу общаться на русском языке.

AndriaD’s picture

The main reason I set Files to private is because I don't want non-customers to be able to download files that should first be purchased -- but maybe that's a non-issue? And there will be some files that I will make freely available. This is a matter, again, of not understanding Drupal too well; with other CMS things I've used, there weren't many options for separating files-to-buy from freely available files.

Thx tons!
Andria

bwv’s picture

I'd suggest you investigate what are called content access modules. There is one that I use a lot called tac_lite. It restricts access to nodes (in this case, products) based on taxonomy.

For example:

You have two roles: authenticated and anonymous user.

You have two products: paid Video and free Audio downloads.

You have a taxonomy for each of these products (i.e., video and audio).

You want authenticated to see both products, but anonymous to access only free Audio downloads.

With tac_lite, you set the authenticated role (which, upon purchasing a download, automatically becomes authenticated) to have access to both product types; anonymous role, to just the free Audio.

There is another module called node_privacy_byrole, which allows you to set on an individual basis access permissions according to role. So Video 1 could be available to all roles, while Video 2 might be available only to a registered user.

You can also set up UC to accept payment in advance for access to the site or to a section of the site. For example, for $5, a person can get a password to access the site. Pay another $5, and ascend to a new role (using the userpoints module), and by virtue of this ascension, get access to still more material.

There are many ways to do this. I confess I may not be describing the simplest. (Incidentally, the /files directory typically is not available for browsing (it usually returns a 403 error), and if you give your downloads funky names that are hard to guess, you should not have a problem.)

----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.bwv810.com/

I am a writer and researcher. In my spare time I build websites with Drupal.
Je peux communiquer en français. / Я могу общаться на русском языке.

AndriaD’s picture

Ok, this is really irritating now. I set Files back to public, and in the path box for it, I just entered the word 'files' as it was before.

So now when I created the product, it gave me this message:

The directory files//home23b/sub002/scXXXXX-HROA/files has been created.

What in the world is up with that??

Freaking out,
Andria

bwv’s picture

Can you start over with a fresh installation?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.bwv810.com/

I am a writer and researcher. In my spare time I build websites with Drupal.
Je peux communiquer en français. / Я могу общаться на русском языке.

AndriaD’s picture

Of what? Drupal? or just ubercart?

I'd really really hate to start over with Drupal, as I've customized the look of it *immensely*...

bwv’s picture

You can keep the look -- did you alter the css of a theme? If so, just keep the folder with all the page templates and css; do a complete reinstallation, and then move your customized theme back to the theme folder. How many CSS files did you adjust? Any in any of the module folders (system.css, for example)?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.bwv810.com/

I am a writer and researcher. In my spare time I build websites with Drupal.
Je peux communiquer en français. / Я могу общаться на русском языке.

AndriaD’s picture

Yeah, system.css and default.css, installed the FAQ module and altered faq.css, and several mods of the page template for box_grey, plus massive mods to the css for box_grey.

*sigh*

I might consider it, just using ubercart's install thing that installs both Drupal and ubercart at the same time... but I still can't get to ubercart.org, it's still timing out at the 12th hop.

again
*sigh*

bwv’s picture

Just keep the css that you altered separate, then put the files back in the folders from where they originally came. I am on Ubercart.org now; its been up all day from what I can tell.

If you can avoid it don't use an installer. Are you able to install manually? Based on my own experience, installers can lead to strange problems, like the path issue you had several messages up. A manual install is easy and usually works flawlessly.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.bwv810.com/

I am a writer and researcher. In my spare time I build websites with Drupal.
Je peux communiquer en français. / Я могу общаться на русском языке.

AndriaD’s picture

Ubercart.org is probably fine, it's just the pathway between here and there that's probably SNAFU'd. Something in "ALTERNET", "iglou" or whatever.

My original installation of Drupal was from an autoinstaller at my host, so you might be right, that might be the source of the problem. However I *can* do the install myself via FTP, creating the MySQL db, etc. The one my host installed for me was Drupal 5.7, which appears to be the last full release. Is there any reason I should consider Drupal 6? The latest one I see still says "rc" after it, which I'm not sure, but I think means "release candidate," i.e., they might still not be too sure about it. In 1990 I was a youthful 29 and thought being a beta tester was "cool," (or was that "kewl"?) but I have since changed my mind, having been an "unofficial beta tester" for Windows all these years. ;)

Are there instructions in the download file, for creating the db? The autoinstaller did all that bit for me.

Thx much
Andria

bwv’s picture

If your webhost has an "unarchive" function in the control panel (file manager) I would use that to uncompress the tar file. Don't use 6.0, as UC is a 5.x release. If you have to you can use ftp to upload all the modules... better to untar them once they are on your server if possible. DB setup is easy, create a database, add a user witih full admin functions, then plug in the data once your install.php screen comes up.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.bwv810.com/

I am a writer and researcher. In my spare time I build websites with Drupal.
Je peux communiquer en français. / Я могу общаться на русском языке.

AndriaD’s picture

I don't think my host has that, or at least, I've never needed/looked for it; I just unarchive with winAce and then FTP everything, which has worked fine for every other script I've ever installed. I mainly used the autoinstaller to make it easy to "check out" Drupal and see if it would do what I wanted -- my last site for my web designs was pieced together from this and that php scripts, and all the comment functions got spammed like mad, so I wanted a way to control that a lot better, plus have some "built in" way of doing the e-commerce, with paypal; today I think I finally figured out somewhat about this taxonomy stuff, so I do think this will be the best way to handle it.

So, I'm off to salvage my modified stuff and reinstall it all.

Thx tons,
Andria

NickWebman’s picture

I would learn Drupal's basics before diving into UberCart.

wwwoliondorcom’s picture

Useful post for Ubecart !

Thank you, your post helped me to set up Ubercart, and it's incredible that this is not written anywhere else as clearly on Ubercart documentation.

Now trying to find the Checkout settings, of course it is not written there:
http://www.ubercart.org/docs/user/8396/checkout_settings

Bye.

markconroy’s picture

This is the most informed comment I have read on Uber Cart so far, a great introduction. I only started using it today and couldn't work out where to start, but this gave a great grounding.

Thanks a lot,
Mark C.

============

Drupal Core Maintainer for "Out of the Box" Initiative
Annertech - Web Agency of the Year.

dbeall’s picture

Why are you posting links like this.. Makes no sense. I looked at the page and it is not a tutorial.
The next post is more of the same nothing
If you want to post a tutorial, make it a link to drupal.org or ubercart

artatac’s picture

spudette77’s picture

I am also tearing my hair out with Ubercart. I am not having probs with products/categories/taxonomy... I have sussed that. I can't seem to get conditional actions working. I have 5 different postage types that I need to configure for certain products, but so far no luck! Is there a tutorial or something out there that explains this? I have searched EVERYWHERE and have found nothing!

bwv’s picture

spudette77’s picture

Yes, but it didn't help. It gave me a general understanding and I understand the concept ... but didn't help at all for my situation.
The Conditional actions simply don't appear to work!
I have set up three new flat rates, under Conditions I have selected 'check shipping state/province' and 'check products' to make sure the shipping applies to the right products. In Actions I have tried to select 'get shipping quote' but that doesn't seem to hold. When I go to check out it is all over the place. It lists all my shipping options with $0.00 next to them and lumps all the shipping into one of the categories. This means customers can choose $0.00 shipping instead of actual shipping costs. Also, I can't figure out how to make a flat rate of $15.00. It adds $15.00 to each item, where-as it should be 15.00 regardless of the number of items ordered for a particular product range. I am desperate and am about to abandon Ubercart. Do you know what I can do, where I can look for guidance on this?

bwv’s picture

I have found that the support in the Ubercart forums at ubercart.org is quite good. (The site is down at the moment.) Have you tried explaining your situation there?

spudette77’s picture

I have posted to Forum Topics on the same issue to no avail. I have had no answers. I must admit I have been feeling very discouraged. I even attempting posting this issue on Drupal, but also to no avail. I am a very new user and must admit, it all seems very daunting at the moment!

bsenftner’s picture

jamesdixon’s picture

I know this was posted a while ago, but I noticed a lot of people were having a hard time configuring an Ubercart store from scratch. I've started a 3 part Ubercart video tutorial series which shows how to set up Ubercart, configure your store with image support, set up payment, and add shipping quotes.

So far I've got part 1 finished and am working part two, which will show how to hook Paypal up to your store. I hope this series will help, setting up Ubercart for the first time can be a daunting task. Here it is:

http://www.freelancedrupaldeveloper.ca/ubercart-tutorial-part-1

MakeOnlineShop’s picture

What about part 2 ?

jamesdixon’s picture

bsenftner’s picture

This book is a pretty good introduction: http://www.drupalubercartbook.com/

After that, for those that are new to Drupal, I strongly recommend: http://frontenddrupal.com/

Between those two books, one should not need much else other than Drupal.org and the Drupal+Ubercart software to get a decent eCommerce site going.

For those of you interested in selling 'services' rather than physical products, check out the "node checkout" module and read this: http://drupaleasy.com/blogs/ultimike/2009/03/event-registration-ubercart; It's a tutorial about selling event tickets, but if you generalize that a bit, it's a tutorial about how to setup a survey that gets triggered when a product is sold - pretty much what one would want when selling services: customer buys the service and gets presenting with a form that collects information for who/what/where/how the service is to be applied.

For those wanting to sell pre-existing digital products: after reading the above two books (strongly recommended) and after you are comfortable with working in Drupal, do some google searches for 'ubercart download feature'. It's one of the least used aspects of Ubercart, but it works and it works well.

For those wanting to sell digital products that are created on the fly from information the customer provides at purchase, that is not built into Ubercart. But I've developed a system that will handle that. It's not a formal module, in the sense that you can find it at Drupal.org. I'm still in the process of working all the kinks out for an online store of my own. However, if you are serious, and not a developer, I am a consultant that does this for hire. If you are a developer, I gave a talk on this at the last Drupal Camp LA, which you can view here: http://www.missingubercartmanual.com/Creating-Custom-Ubercart-Import-Exp.... (In that talk, I mostly discuss creating a custom Ubercart bulk import/export system - also a critical area if you have an online store with more than a few dozen products.)