Some common Drupal E-commerce questions

After our Oxagile e-commerce department started to provide its services using Drupal and Ubercart we have received more than a hundred of different questions that were not about our services but about using Drupal for e-commerce in general. Here are some of the most common:
Q: My site is using the Drupal CMS, should I use only Drupal for e-commerce.
A: No, you are not limited to Drupal or Ubercart. But as you use Drupal for you site it can be easier to set up the additional module of the same CMS than to install additional system. Also it’s easier to manage the site and e-commerce shop using one admin panel.

Q: What is better to choose - Drupal or eCommerce modules for a Drupal-based website?
A: Both variants have advantages and disadvantages. Here are only some of them.

• Ubercart advantages: easier scalable, more convenient user interface
• eCommerce advantages: more open-ended, more additional options for contributed modules
• Ubercart disadvantages: some areas are difficult to customize, less modules available
• eCommerce disadvantages: user interface is not user-friendly and even confusing in some areas

It’s also based on the type of your site and your business goals, terms and budget. So, you can communicate with one of the Oxagile project managers to get the appropriate advice.

Q: When we have moved company’s Drupal site to a new hosting Ubercart started to work improperly. How to solve this problem? Should we set up the other eCommerce solution?
A: Unfortunately, this situation is rather common but it’s almost impossible to give standard advice that will work for every site and every type of hosting. One of the developers from our e-commerce team can investigate the problem and suggest you some variants of the solution.

Drupal Ubercart setting up

For many years Drupal was one of the main open source CMS systems on PHP for the sites of almost all types. Small and medium business companies loved it for cheap hosting for their site developed on PHP. Large companies for their project have chosen Drupal because the Drupal community have united many talented developers and have been growing and growing. This guaranteed that it was rather easy to find the appropriate qualified software development team for the project.

The other good features of Drupal CMS helped companies and entrepreneurs to make decision in its favor. Among them are SEO-friendly concept, good level of security and access to the huge list of free Drupal themes.
Ubercart is a module (or maybe better to say it’s a system) what was created specially as a eCommerce solution that would be integrated with all the other Drupal’s core systems and modules. This allowed to inherit all the best features of Drupal system and to integrate it easily.
Today Drupal accompanied by Ubercart can be easily used as an independent e-commerce solution and as a part of a web site. The second variant is widely used when e-commerce is not the company’s main business. For example, spot teams site are dedicated to the team achievements but also can sell some tee with logos using Drupal for both purposes.

But unfortunately Drupal is not really very developer-friendly software. As it was created many years ago the code doesn’t meet all the contemporary software development principles. In some modules the code isn’t well structured and sometimes it can take hours to find a part of a code to make necessary changes if developer is not familiar with Drupal very well.

If you’ve faced these or other Drupal challenges and looking for a team to set up Drupal or Ubercart for your e-commerce purposes Oxagile e-commerce department is at your service. We have more than 3 years of successful experience with Drupal and guarantee that your project will be done in time and within the approved budget.

Contact the manager today to start the project before the weekend.