Hey Drupal community,
I have embarked on a bit of a scary journey in the past couple of weeks. I'm in the process of starting my first business, and I decided that eCommerce fit what I had planned. My main purpose for this post is to try to understand what sort of work I am really in for. Could someone please offer their suggestion for a list of applicable modules, and a brief explanation of the things I'll have to learn to complete my sites. For the moment I'll start by explaining the 1st site, because I haven't really done anything for the other 2 yet.
First up: World Art Box
A site that has art contributors from around the world. The artists (of which I have none at the moment), will use the site to upload their art work for their own promotion, while also producing "The World Art Box". This is a box of different art media, produced for a small amount of money and sold through the website. The artists will need some sort of homepage where they can contribute art work, I'm thinking I might set up blogs for the contributing artists. And they will submit images of their World Art Box Series as a Product to sell through UberCart. I have already installed uberDrupal install profile, everything is up to date, and I have been busy installing all sorts of modules. At the moment I am having trouble figuring out how to make personal pages for the artists. I have made an "art" content type, and started playing with views.
And, just briefly, the second site is a free music download site, where certain users are contributors (recognised artists). The artists can upload as much music as they like to their library, which would be included in the whole site wide library. I would also have podcasts, videocasts, communities and other things, but I'm mostly interested in how I would set up this potentially large music library. Important, I need to have the option of putting a link to the artists online music seller, and I need to track the clicks so I can get a price-per-click, only when the online music selling client has signed a contract with me.
Sorry about the length. I know I should perhaps break this up. But, I thought it would be a good idea to just get a lot out first, and you more knowledgeable developers can tell me what I should focus on first.
Thanks in advance.
ps I'm writing the site live at the moment but not directly under my domain, you can check out what I have started at www.worldartbox.com/worldartbox
Ben.
Comments
Think about hiring in some drupal skills
Hey Ben,
Not trying to be negative or anything, I'm not that experienced and on a recent project I wrote up as detailed a brief as I could of what I wanted to be able to do and paid an experienced dev to basically specify how to build it, what modules to use for each of the tasks etc which I could then configure.
I think that it worked fairly well and saved a lot of time compared to me just looking around for all the possible modules, installing them all and then trying to choose which are the best for the project. Plus I learned some stuff compared to learning nothing if you just got someone to do it all for you.
Get to your local meetups and talk to the community, find out who has the skills in the areas you need. The level of knowledge and willingness to share it is amazing but 'tell me how to build my site so that I can take over the world' might be stretching things just a tad.
You are taking on a big task, I don't know your skill set, none of this is impossible. On your own it will take you some time to learn all you need to know. You need to make a call on how much time you have to get it over the line.
Then once you get it built and get some stuff happening you need to get a real designer to do some brand work with you. If you are entering into an arts space you need it to look like you are serious. Sounds like you are entering into the world of deviant art and etsy so that's going to be your yardstick.
Good Luck with it all.
Cheers
Bernie
understood
Hi Bernie,
Thanks for your response. I know what you mean. There is a huge skill barrier I have to overcome in the next coming months. My plan is to start small with what I can learn, then take on a business partner (I have one in mind already), who knows a lot about web development. :P I still plan at least trying to take over a part of the world, but for the moment I will simply try to get what I can going. I have virtually no capital, but I do have a stable income from the NEIS program. That being said I guess they will expect me to start making some sort of real revenue in the next month or so.
As for competing with Deviant or Etsy, not so much. I speak Thai and plan on using that skill to give poor Thais the opportunity of making a small income without any investment of their own. Also, I plan on expanding to other parts of the world when I can. Generally, I'm not a big fan of the free market approach of etsy, ebay, deviant, and the rest. I would rather focus on quality than quantity.
Ultimately, I have very little capital to work with, and this means I have to at least try what I have planned. I look forward to the local meetup in a months time. My guess is I will at least have made a couple of leaps and bounds between now and then.
Cheers again, most appreciated.
Ben
Look at ubercart marketplace
That module might do some of the things you are after http://drupal.org/project/ubercart_marketplace
Well done on having the courage to take on such a huge task. It taks time but with dedication you will get there
Raul
Raul Caceres
www.simsolutions.net.au
Good luck
In addition to many other useful resources, I recommend you check this out http://drupalize.me/videos/fantasy-site-etsy-diwd-09
--Ryan
Ryan Cross
Drupal Development Services
ProjectPier project management and collaboration software
Ubercart Marketplace
I would agree that Ubercart Marketplace is the right module for you, I am currently building a site with similar functionality.
For your second project I am guessing that all the files uploaded would be unique and you could end up needing a large storage server. If the files were going to be the same then you could look at doing something similar to dropbox where all the files uploaded are checked against every other file on the server and if a match is found it is not uploaded and instead just referenced to the user uploading the file to save space.
Thanks
All the files are different, coming from unique artists. Actually, I was thinking about the bandwidth problem and came up with the idea that I might try something with the bittorrent module, because I could seed from my server through general hosting, and once the files became well distributed I wouldn't need to seed. :P But that is definately a little while off.
Oh and UberCart is already installed as part of uberDrupal install profile. Very nice looking package with a lot of included modules designed for an eCommerce site.
Cheers guys.
Ben