Hi-
I installed the ecommerce module last week, and spent several hours familiarizing myself with the settings and general structure of this module.
I've come to the conclusion (pre-mature - maybe), that this module was intended for a product-oriented business; yes, provisions have been made for "non-shippable products" (notice that it doesn't say "services"), but not a very elegant solution for companies/ventures who sell primarily services (IMHO).
Please don't misunderstand - this module looks great. I'm just thinking there may be a better solution - a more intuitive solution - for service-oriented ventures.
Maybe there are additional "sub-modules" that make the ecommerse module a more elegant solution for service-oriented businesses?
I could use some advise/recommendations from those of you who sell primarily services, ebooks, subscriptions, articles, etcetera.
Thanks in advance.
All the best,
-Doug
Comments
Since 'non-shippable
Since 'non-shippable products' include 'services' I think this term was used to point to any kind of service or product that may be served or bought without being a shippable product ('goods' in a broader meaning). Try to think of micro-payments just for reading one article on a website - would we speak of a 'service'?
Although international trademark registers always refer to goods and services, too, I can understand the technical motivation to call it 'non-shippable product'. If you create a request to rename it to 'services' I'd give +1 for that...
Anyhow, what's your point? What do you miss in E-Commerce by saying that there are better solutions available?
Daniel F. Kudwien
unleashed mind
Daniel F. Kudwien
netzstrategen
I see your point, but...
Hi, Daniel-
Your point about an article not being a service made sense.
I noticed in the README.txt that there was a module extension in CVS. Why wasn't it included in the standard install? Do you know what functionality it adds?
I look forward to your reply.
-Doug
Doug, it would be easier if
Doug, it would be easier if you would write what you want to achieve. IMHO there's not much that cannot be done with the current E-Commerce module. So please don't ask for the in's and out's here, rather ask for hints how to achieve X or Y.
Daniel F. Kudwien
unleashed mind
Daniel F. Kudwien
netzstrategen
As the author of service module
I wrote the service module for my own use, to enable clients to pay me on my web site. It basically allows a variable amount to be paid, not a pre-determined value in the product node.
That was under 4.6.
When 4.7 came out, I ported the module to that version and it worked fine on my site. I tried to get in touch with the ecommerce folk to get it tagged for 4.7, but that did not happen.
Since that time, I deprecated ecommerce for my own use in favor of a simpler Paypal button, since I was using paypal as the payment method. For clients this is less clicking, and for me it is less pieces of software on the site to maintain.
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kbahey has identified a good
kbahey has identified a good example where an ecommerce module is not tagged but could have been tagged at various times. Sometimes I come across old issues where someone has provided a very useful patch, but no-one ever used - either they didn't see the ticket, or they didn't know if it would be supported, or whatever. Also, there are many issues like this in the queue, so it's daunting to say the least.
Also, if a module is already compatible with a certain version (I can name a few) it still won't be tagged. It might all seem strange, but if you tagged 10 such modules, suddenly they are in the 4.7 tarball, and chances are 2 or 4 of them will come back and bite us!
PS, if you look through the older versions of service.module you'll see that we still try to maintain them, and one of those versions is probably quite compatible with 4.7. And if you do use it (at your risk), there is no harm in telling us that it works and you are using it.
Hi Doug E-Commerce is the
Hi Doug
E-Commerce is the most complete ecommerce solution using Drupal, but IMO it's still catching up in features to other cart solutios. So you would use it if you wanted to access the power of Drupal in an integrated solution.
As sun says, non-shippable will serve many people's needs for a service based solution. Many of the submodules suffer for lack of support by the people that use them. You can imagine that the ecommerce maintainers don't actually use many of the modules and so they languish without a dedicated sponsor/coder. As an example, I don't know what the "service" module did/does, but the fact that it is not tagged in the 4.7 release means that no-one maintains it.
As for your specific questions.
-- ebooks is possible with file.module.
-- subscriptions: there is code in sammys sandbox which is 4.7 compatible. We are looking for testers.
-- articles would probably derive from the subscription functionality (sell a role gives access to online articles).
HTH
Simon