Posted by Anonymous on November 22, 2011 at 5:30am
Does anyone recommend a good Direct payment module to use with Drupal 7? I'm already trying to add the paypal module, but I'm not sure if that's all I'll need to process credit cards with Drupal. Thank you!
Comments
Depends
We talked a bit about this before, too, but eCommerce is, in my opinion, one of the most complicated things to tackle as far as web projects are concerned. Your question is difficult to answer unless I know exactly what your goals are.
If you are trying to sell a variety of products from your site (traditional eCommerce) like you were with your aquarium project when we last spoke, then a full-fledged eCommerce platform on top of Drupal is what will probably work best. With Drupal 7, you basically have two options:
Drupal Commerce is brand new for Drupal 7 and, in my opinion, trades in usability for flexibility. It was designed to be an extremely flexible eCommerce platform on which almost any online commerce paradigm could function. This flexibility makes for a heck of learning curve for those picking up Commerce for the first time. Also, because of its newness, many important contributed modules designed to work with Commerce aren't quite ready for prime time.
Ubercart, on the other hand, is less flexible, but it's far easier to get a satisfactory online store up and running out of the box. Ubercart doesn't yet have a stable release for Drupal 7, but I can say from experience that the current second release candidate is stable enough for a production site.
Ubercart and Drupal Commerce work on two very different paradigms in regards to the way they handle products and the display of those products.
Right now, I'd have to recommend Ubercart for most use cases, though I do have a Commerce site in production phase right now.
If, instead of dozens of products, you are just selling one or two items or just taking payment or donations for a single project, a full-fledged eCommerce platform is overkill. In that case, you'd just want to add a standard PayPal button or buttons to nodes or blocks as needed. No module needed for that. Just head on over to PayPal and get the code for a button.
Let me know if you have specific questions.
Scott Rouse
http://about.me/scott.rouse
It's hard
Just as Scott says, and speaking from experience, successfully setting up a functional and secure eCommerce site with Drupal is possible, but challenging. Getting the store functioning correctly can be difficult enough, but when you add in the task of accepting credit cards, payment methods, merchant accounts vs. PayPal or Google Checkout, transaction fees, email receipts, chargebacks, invoicing, inventory, etc. it can get really hairy quickly. That said, if you have the stomach for the learning curve, many have used Ubercart successfully, including me.
If you want someone else to handle all the backend details of making the store work and handling payments and security, and you just design control over the store, and you don't need the store tightly integrated with other Drupal-y content management functions, you may want to look at a hosted solution like Shopify: http://www.shopify.com
Credit cards
I guess my main issue is that I don't understand how the whole credit card processing actually works. I'm currently using Drupal Commerce and I want to be able to use PayPal and to process regular credit card transactions. So far I think my store is mostly setup and only have to keep working on payments and profiles, hopefully after that I can have it go live for a test run.
Commerce Paypal
If your Drupal Commerce store is all up and running, you'd need to add in a module to support the payment method(s) you'd like to use. Since you're interested in accepting PayPal, then the Commerce Paypal module is what you're looking for. Unfortunately, that module is still under development, so I'd be very hesitant to use dev code for something as important as a financial transaction. That being said, I've tested it under real world conditions and it works...to a point. I can't vouch for its security, though, as modules with a dev status aren't necessarily reviewed by the security team.
Scott Rouse
http://about.me/scott.rouse
Paypal
I think I'm going to give Commerce Paypal a try, and hopefully a stable module will be available soon.
Website
I just checked out http://www.realmilkcheese.com/ they're using Paypal and deft. love their simple to use and friendly layout. Is there a way to find out if this is a Drupal website?
Drupal 7 + Commerce
That site is a Drupal 7 site using Drupal Commerce. There are a few things one can look at to see if a site is running Drupal or not. The Is that site running Drupal? article from Lullabot has some tips.
In this case, the line
<meta content="Drupal 7 (http://drupal.org)" name="Generator">in the<head>of the document leaves little doubt. Also the tabs at http://www.realmilkcheese.com/user have Drupal written all over them.I can tell from the shopping cart and checkout functionality that it is Drupal Commerce rather than Ubercart.
Scott Rouse
http://about.me/scott.rouse