- The Beginning
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One of interesting things in this book is the final store is shown in the first chapter. This is a good way to start this book because the readers will have a "picture" in their mind about how the store will look like and what will they do to achieve it.
- Installation And Basic Configuration
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The installation and basic configuration of Drupal and Ubercart are written in two chapters (2 and 3). The explanation in this part includes installing the required and optional Drupal modules. Something need a special attention in here is the installation should be done in sequence, Drupal and the required modules first and then the Ubercart. If not there will be a problem like the undisplayed image field when creating product. Also there is no example in the later chapters about how to use Content Creation Kit (CCK) and ImageCache module to add image field for product manually.
- Store Management
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The store management part is writen in four chapters (4, 5, 6, and 7). The fundamental jobs like managing products, shipping, payment, customers, and orders are discussed here. These chapters are the most important part of this book and should be read thoroughly to gain a strong knowledge about managing the online store.
Some interesting topics which can be found in these chapters are:
- Creating product kit to bind two or more products as one package.
- Importing products from textfile or CSV file to save your time when inserting a large number of products.
- Adding product attributes like color or memory size to let customers choose their preferred product variant.
- Using product classes for a more efficient product attributes management.
- Managing the shipping quote using flat rate and also connecting your store with the transport companies like UPS and USPS.
- Integrating payment method using different payment gateways like Paypal and Google Checkout.
- There is also a brief explanation about installing CiviCRM, Drupal module for CRM system.
Something did not appear in this part is the explanation about testing the payment system using the Paypal Sandbox which is very important when the site is still under development. There is also no explanation about using Paypal Website Payment Standard for the payment method. The discussed method is just the Paypal Website Payment Pro that only usefull for people who live in United States.
- Enhancing Store Functionality
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This part consists of three chapters (8, 9, and 10) and it will explain how to enhance the look and feel and functionality of our store. In these chapters, we will learn how to make our store more attractive and user friendly so the visitor will keep coming to our store. Not only the human visitor, but also search engine.
The interesting topics which can be found in these chapters are:
- A very good theme design tutorial. We will learn how to use and customize the available Drupal theme, building theme based on Zen, creating theme from a pure HTML theme, and also creating theme from Photoshop template.
- Using product cross-selling to give suggestion or recommendation to customers about certain products.
- Improving the shopping cart by using the pictured shopping cart and AJAX shopping cart.
- Adding the discount to the products.
- Giving the different price the products according to country or user role.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips. We will learn how to make our store more search engine friendly by using Drupal modules like Pathauto, Global Redirect, Meta Tags, XML Sitemap, etc..
There is also something you have to read in the appendix chapter. It is an example about using Hotel Booking System for Ubercart. This is also a great thing we can do with Ubercart.
- Conclusion
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Overall, this book is really great and has the detailed explanations and examples. This book is very recommended for the people who want to build an e-commerce website using Drupal and Ubercart. The complete explanation inside it can guide the readers to build an e-commerce website that not only has a strong foundation but also expandable.
Anyway, some cases like Drupal installation, configuration, installing modules are very large topics and they are enough to be writen in separated book. The explanations on those topics are very compact. Therefore user's experience and basic skill in using Drupal is required.
The detail information about this book can be seen here.
