You are hereDrupalCon - Monday

DrupalCon - Monday

  • strict warning: Non-static method view::load() should not be called statically in /home/yd51llube7rk/public_html/sites/all/modules/views/views.module on line 879.
  • strict warning: Declaration of views_handler_filter::options_validate() should be compatible with views_handler::options_validate($form, &$form_state) in /home/yd51llube7rk/public_html/sites/all/modules/views/handlers/views_handler_filter.inc on line 0.
  • strict warning: Declaration of views_handler_filter::options_submit() should be compatible with views_handler::options_submit($form, &$form_state) in /home/yd51llube7rk/public_html/sites/all/modules/views/handlers/views_handler_filter.inc on line 0.
  • strict warning: Declaration of views_plugin_row::options_validate() should be compatible with views_plugin::options_validate(&$form, &$form_state) in /home/yd51llube7rk/public_html/sites/all/modules/views/plugins/views_plugin_row.inc on line 0.
  • strict warning: Declaration of views_plugin_row::options_submit() should be compatible with views_plugin::options_submit(&$form, &$form_state) in /home/yd51llube7rk/public_html/sites/all/modules/views/plugins/views_plugin_row.inc on line 0.
  • strict warning: Non-static method view::load() should not be called statically in /home/yd51llube7rk/public_html/sites/all/modules/views/views.module on line 879.

By Brian - Posted on 24 August 2010

While the conference proper didn't start until Tuesday, there was some stuff going on Monday, including a bar-camp style "Unconference", and a number of full-day training sessions, of which I attended the "Drupal Powered E-commerce" one, which was put on by Commerce Guys, a shop that specializes exclusively in building e-commerce sites using Drupal.

The session was presented by Ryan Szrama, original developer of Ubercart.  The day was a rapid-fire sequence of quick (15-30 min) lessons, followed by equal length practice sessions where the attendees replicated what they were just shown.  In addition to Ryan, there was 4-5 other people from Commerce Guys there to answer questions.  This was really great and allowed anyone to be able to get personal assistance at any time.

The lessons covered all aspects of Ubercart, including installation and basic config, setting up products and catalogs, creating product classes and attributes, cart and checkout, "Conditional Actions" (a sort've homegrown trigger system), shipping and tax rates, payment systems, multilingual sites, and product "features" such as associated files (ie digital downloads) and purchasable user roles.

All in all, it was extremely comprehensive, and I really feel like I learned a lot (although my brain started turning to mush around 2pm due to jet lag, felt like I was pulling an all-nighter).

I was particularly impressed with Ryan's candidness about Ubercart's shortcomings.  He is very open about the fact that when he started Ubercart, he was brand new at not just Drupal, but also PHP and MySQL.  Given that, I think Ubercart is a tremendous accomplishment.

However, for various reasons, Commerce Guys intend to gradually move away from Ubercart.  They are hard at work building a brand new e-commece system for the soon-to-be-released Drupal 7, using everything they learned from Ubercart and utilizing all the great new stuff in D7.

After the training was over, some people were heading to the official DrupalCon bar, "FooBar", but I was near catatonic from my fucked up sleep schedule, so went back to the hotel and crashed.  Then I woke up sometime after midnight, wide awake, raided my room's mini bar, wrote my epic "Journey to Copenhagen" post, then tried to get a few more hours sleep before the next day's sessions started.

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly. If you have a Gravatar account, used to display your avatar.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

Tweets

  • @poploser that's completely explicable. Cheers rocks
    12 years 6 weeks ago
  • @mcrittenden I honestly find the opposite; Drupal alleviates boring "reinvent the wheel" problems so we can focus on the interesting stuff
    12 years 6 weeks ago
  • @zyphen well.. people do unusual things when they're in shock. And they've established she has messed up & conflicted feelings about Dexter
    12 years 6 weeks ago
  • @SoCoAddict you should try the Machete Order: http://t.co/00Xdvd5V
    12 years 6 weeks ago
  • @zyphen what's wrong with Dexter? Freshest new angle they've had since the show started
    12 years 6 weeks ago
  • @stadevene so back up your vehicle and run them down again
    12 years 6 weeks ago
  • @j3r3myjf you're dreaming too small. Be the first man to circumnavigate the globe in a hot tub. Might need to tow a sauna too
    12 years 6 weeks ago
  • The Liberal party wants to know my thoughts on Harper's budget. I'd prefer to share my opinion on unsolicited political surveys in the mail
    12 years 6 weeks ago
  • Ah, that magical time of the week when Office makes me quit everything so it can barf its update onto my machine
    12 years 6 weeks ago
  • The others being Richard "Dr Franklin" Biggs (44), Tim "Zathras" Choate (49), Andreas "G'Kar" Katsulas (59), Jeff "Zack" Conway (60). So sad
    12 years 6 weeks ago