Posted by DarrinRich on June 6, 2007 at 4:29am
Anyone have any experience with either Ecommerce module or Ubercart module for their church site? We would like to add shopping cart system to our site. Is one of these the way to go?
Ecommerce or Ubercart on your church site?
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Conflicts with ecommerce module
The first one we tried was the Ecommerce module. Had some conflicts somewhere there because I wasnt able to edit any of our sermons (Audio Module) at all. Just had a blank screen. Disabled that until we figure out why that was.
If you're trying to sell
If you're trying to sell file downloads, we aren't there with Ubercart yet. (Of course, what it's really going to take to "get there" is someone who actually has a need contributing to or sponsoring that sort of development... we just don't need it for the stores we operate.)
I do believe in terms of usability and active development that Ubercart is coming out on top. Granted, I'm a little biased, but there's a Drupal shop in Norway that's come on board and had these reasons for switching over:
http://www.ubercart.org/comment/5327/Re-Awesome-I-wish-I-could
So... I guess it really just depends on what you need an e-commerce package to do for your site. I'm happy to advise if you wanna post a little more info.
Thanks for the reply. At
Thanks for the reply. At this time were not trying to sell any file downloads. We currently have a very basic cart system for our site which you can view here.
http://www.bteministries.org/
Sample Store Items
As you can see I dont think we have anything complicated to sell, so were just looking for something simple to use that will integrate with drupal well.
Appreciate any feedback on this matter.
Thanks
I think Ubercart would
I think Ubercart would definitely work well for you. It is indeed still in development, but it is already being used to host several live sites (good range of sizes from small to large sites). The only hang up may be finding a good payment gateway to use. So far we've only got a working (but untested in production) Authorize.net module with a PayPal module in the works. The credit card payment module is great if you just want to collect CC info and run the cards manually, too.
Authorize.net
We do have an account with Authorize.net. Ubercart may be a workable option then for us. I'll get the word out to the others who will be working together on this and learn more about ubercart. I'm assuming the ubercart forums are the place to go to learn.
Ubercart needs a production release
I know that an "alpha" in the name doesn't necessarily imply unreliable, but the term does tend to mean "barely tested." It certainly means "untouchable" in many business environments (such as mine). As such, I might be interested in trying it out, but I am sure that my employer is not going to allow me to deploy the software in a production environment until it has a release that the author is willing to remove alpha and beta from the name.
Anyway, that's not to say I have anything against Ubercart, just that I would have a difficult time deploying it without my employer taking it out on me for using "alpha" software at the first failure.
What I can say is that the E-Commerce module is not for the feint of heart. It has a lot of pieces and will take some time to understand before it's ready to use in any particular environment. I have not implement either system at this point, but I have started the research and installed and done some testing with E-Commerce. It's large and comes in many pieces. This is both good and bad. Good because you only have to turn on what you want. Bad because there's a lot to learn about.
However, I'm no use to review how well it works in production and I haven't touched Ubercart at all at this point.
Aye, we're sitting in alpha
Aye, we're sitting in alpha as we continue to build out core features. For example, if you were to install it right now and go to the reports page, you wouldn't find anything. And initial e-mail notification support was poor but has been recently beefed up. Many little things like that. Hopefully we'll abandon the Alpha tag soon, but rest assured that alpha here doesn't translate to barely tested. Ubercart is actually running live in several stores already which may be tracked in the Live Sites Forum or from a list on the project page. It only gets better with use, as this does (alpha indeed) turn up bugs that we normally squash right away and generate good feedback/patches to commit to core. The guys at Ny Media have been particularly helpful. : )
Would be interested to hear your thoughts when you get a chance to check it out. (You can also PM me through Ubercart.org to get store admin access on the Livetest.)
Recommend losing the alpha status
Im considering Ubermart for a couple of my clients project and I have to second Andrew's opinion that you remove the alpha tag. It just gives me this nervous feeling deep down in my stomach.
I think the term Alpha is inappropriate for what you are saying. 'Alpha' usually means 'Buggy' 'Unstable' or 'Insecure'
I was really confused to see all the production sites using your software while in alpha.
My recommendation would be to just ditch the 'alpha' status and instead to do a < 1.0 version number.. That would be more indicative of whats actually happening
Thanks for all your hard work, looks like a great product!!
Exactly.
healersource++
You've stated what I was trying to say exactly.
I see what you're talking
I see what you're talking about... I'll toss it up before the team. We're hoping to switch over to what we'd consider the beta version of 1.0 in the next month or so, but there are at least one or two more feature adding releases to happen before then.
In the meantime, you can check out this cool new live site: http://www.artezn.com
Actually, alpha technically
Actually, alpha technically means "feature incomplete." That sounds like where Ubercart is. As they continue to add features it will remain in alpha. Once features are done being added on this version (ie the recent Drupal 6 codefreeze) and thorough testing of all features running alongside each other is commencing that is when the software reaches beta. Once that thorough testing of all features is complete it is ready to leave the Greek alphabet and go production.
Ubercart guys, I would strongly suggest you create a list of features that will be in 1.0, get those features done, and get 1.0 to production level so you can start working on 2.0. Once you've had your feature freeze you can immediately begin writing down ideas for 2.0 and maintaining a list, but work to get 1.0 complete and ready for beta. Once it reaches a solid beta (or even a release candidate) I think a lot more business-drupalers will be willing to accept it.
I suppose that depends...
Well, the typical Open Source model of "release early, release often" tends to change the notion of "feature complete." For example, if I decide that I have 100 features that I want to release for 1.0 of a package and I release my software as 1.0-alpha1, 1.0-alpha2, etc. This isn't incorrect usage, but alpha usually also indicates that the existing features haven't been fully tested. Yet, the "alpha" moniker still implies something about it's fitness for prodution use (as in, not fit). It sounds like the Ubercart guys consider it ready for production.
Whereas, the more typical mechanism for this sort of thing is to have a plan for 100 features for 1.0 and then segment those out into sub-releases so that the community can get their hands on it while it is still being worked upon. Release 0.1 might have the vital first 14 features and be fully tested while 0.1-alpha1 might have only 4 of the initial features fully tested and another 8 implemented, but still untested or buggy. Once 0.1 is finished, you build on toward 0.2 and eventually 1.0 with all your features fully tested.
You can think of "alpha" as being a universal brand implying "unstable" in this context, whether that's the textbook definition on wikipedia or not. Though, I do note that the definition on wikipedia does note that something named "alpha" is usually considered to have important issues (though, the definition there is much more specific than how the term is normally tossed around).
However, this is still a philosophical issue that's beside the important point. My point still stands, management is going to be reluctant to grant permission to deploy any software marked with the "alpha" moniker regardless of stability. Period.
alpha means "buggy" -- numbers refer to feature-completeness
I agree, alpha, beta, etc in our organization always refers to the level of testing of a feature-complete version number. It would be better to use a 0.6, 0.7, etc numbering system, with and a, b, etc extension indicting how production-ready that version is.
I'm just not sure that this
I'm just not sure that this can apply to rapid application development... some features have been around for months and aren't buggy at all. Some have been around for months and still aren't working quite right. Some have been around a week and are solid. Some just got added in a day or two before the last release and are fine. But I wouldn't feel comfortable saying a piece of software was beta, implying a feature and API set ready for final testing prior to release, and then changing it up between minor beta releases so folks' beta contributions are worthless by the time a 1.0 comes out.
It's almost a moot point, though, since I'll be putting out a final alpha release soon and moving into beta. Then I'll adopt a more sensical numbering scheme based on your recommendation... the current system is wonkers.
Just wanted to update this
Just wanted to update this thread for anyone who finds it in the future... as of 1-7-08, Ubercart entered the beta phase and is now rushing toward a 1.0 release with lots of good bugfixes and final feature additions.
Ubercart... to beta and beyond! : P