Discussions

A few thoughts from an Australian novice

- I installed Commerce today on a Dreamhost account using the commerce install profile, no errors, very quick install.

- The VAT tax system works very well for the Australian GST tax system. It would be good if when creating a product, the price field defaulted to including tax (would save me 1 keystroke :P).

- I got multiple products to show in one node by changing field_product to "Autocomplete text field" and allowing unlimited entries (I'm guessing this is the correct way to do it?) This was really simple and the dynamically changing prices & images are really cool & seamless.

- The checkout page looks great but I think I'd need to change some of the field labels for Australian users, couldn't find any way to do this.

- I installed the Paypal module and it worked great with my Paypal sandbox account.

Nice work guys!

thepauly
Posted: Feb 25, 2011

Comments

thepauly on February 28, 2011

Some more thoughts:

- Creating a grid view of products was easy: www.demo.stanleygeorge.com.au/shop (that url will not last long), creating a grid view of taxonomy terms with images wouldn't work. As I understand it, you can't create a view using fields from an entity which is a little painful if you want to create a catalog page like Ubercart.

- Changing the currency to Australian Dollars makes the prices display in the format 99.99 AUD. I can't see anyway to change this to something like $99.99 or $AU99.99.

- The two step process of creating a product (entity then display node) isn't real intuitive. Me trying to explain this to my boss has been met with blank looks.

Ryan Ryan Szrama on February 28, 2011

Thanks for the feedback (both times : ). It's really appreciated.

I'm glad to hear it hasn't proven too much of a challenge to get it all working for you. I should probably put up a page somewhere addressing country specific address and currency formats. For currencies we don't know, they've all defaulted to ### [currency-code]. However, I'd be happy to change it to a typical currency format for AUS. Just open an issue with a suggested format and we can change it no problem.

In the meantime you can use hook_commerce_currency_info_alter() until the patch lands to address it specifically for AUS. I also have an issue open to see if someone will turn out a contrib that lets you set currency formatting.

Regarding product creation, I think that's going to be a major recurring theme. I'm wondering if you have any ideas on a good way to simplify that process. We knew it would be the most challenging aspect for casual users / store administrators, and we definitely intend to simplify it from a UX standpoint. There are several issues floating around the queue for addressing this through some use of Rules, but I'm interested in other things... perhaps something like a widget for the product reference field that works like the line item manager widget, allowing you to add / edit products through the node form. Any other thoughts?

Also, fwiw, there's a user in IRC named aidanlas who also is setting up Australian shops if you need any support with GST.

NS_Nige on March 1, 2011

Hi Ryan... after watching your vimeo presentation and reading your posts, I agree, your enthusiasm, humour and openness is adding to making Drupal 7 + Drupal Commerce an exciting force! Good to chat with you.

I am also in Australia (NSW South Coast) developing a site for the first time in Drupal after years of osCommerce & SugarCRM integration & hacking... there is only one way to go for a serious community/commercial commerce web site!.

Drupal 7 Commerce Profile installed and working on a 5.3 PHP LAMP server. All going well.

Selling both physical (hardware) and downloadable (audio) content. Catalog and product creation is going to be a massive undertaking. Any feedback I can offer I will post here or in the forum.

Ryan, I do find the product creation unusual but trust in the logic of getting it so close to core that virtually anything can be done... We are working through... waiting for the Alchemy moments and insights!

Will one way work for all???

Perhaps as you mention with the different Drupal commerce profiles that will emerge... there will need to evolve different widgets for entering/creating different product/store types. i.e. a Music store will use a widget that works closely with the Media module.

I believe we will require Media module to allow Customers to preview/sample audio before purchase.

We will know more in the coming days/weeks/late nights!

Two things we also need as per previous function of osC are;

  1. show different prices to authenticated users of different Customer types. This is stumping me as to whether we will need to write a module or use Rules???
  2. Coupon module, however I am thinking this could be a achieved somehow using a Line Item logic + code.

Checkout page titles etc we will be addressing once we have achieved the store logic. I will be happy to help if we uncover worthwhile snippets/work around.

thepauly on March 1, 2011

Thanks Ryan,

A price formatting contrib would be ideal, as price formatting would differ depending on whether a shop is selling only to Australia ($19.99 would suffice) or if selling to different countries ($AU19.99). I think $AU19.99 is probably a better catch-all than the current 19.99 AUD, I'll open an issue to see if others agree.

As for inserting products, I think being able to add/edit products through a node would be ideal. I currently help run a site using Volusion which works roughly the same way, i.e. when creating a parent product (node) you add an attribute to that product and the system creates separate children products (entities) for each attribute option. When editing a parent product there are a few editing options for each of the children (price, stock level & sku). The owner of the site is only mildly computer-literate and he's able to successfully run a 500+ product store with no problems.

NS_Nige on March 2, 2011

Hello to both Ryan (again) & 'thepauly'... we have not yet got a way to do the downloadable products. Would either of you be able to shed some light?

Thanks.