Introduction: A Stable Ecommerce Platform for Drupal 8.
The major choices for publishing a fully functional ecommerce store on Drupal 8 using open source software is between Ubercart & Drupal Commerce. This Tutorial shows how to install & get started building ecommerce stores with Ubercart.
Website publishers seek to combine Drupal 8’s CMS functionality with Ubercart for ecommerce to build a full solution suitable for online businesses and high-traffic web portals.
Let’s get started.
Step One: Install the Ubercart Modules.
Installation: Ubercart has several tiers of modules that need to be installed individually.
These are the core Ubercart modules that are required:
- Cart: Controls the shopping cart and checkout for an Ubercart e-commerce site.
- Country: Handles country settings and management for your Ubercart site.
- Order: Receives and manages orders through your website.
- Product: Provides content types to represent items in an online store.
- Store: Handles store settings and management of your Ubercart site.
Installation: Enable & save the settings in the Module section of Drupal 8.
Note: These are the Core – Optional modules that can be installed for Ubercart.
- Catalog: Displays a hierarchical product catalog page and block.
- File Downloads: Allows products to be associated with downloadable files.
- Fulfillment: Handles order fulfillment.
- Payment: Enables payments to be taken at checkout.
- Product Attributes: Extends product content types to support product variations that customers may select before purchase.
- Report: Provides reports about your store’s sales, customers, and products.
- Role Assignments: Assigns permanent or expirable roles based on product purchases.
- Shipping Quotes: Enables shipping quotes to be calculated and displayed at checkout.
- Tax: Defines tax rates for customers’ geographic locations and products sold.
- Tax Report: Provides a report of sales tax your customers paid.
Next: Enable the ones that you need for your website & save the settings.
Note: Ubercart Extra Modules include a Product kit, Stock Features, & Ajax Administration. The Google Analytics port is not complete yet.
Note:Ubercart has a variety of Payment Gateways available by default, namely 2Checkout, AuthorizeNet, & PayPal. Choose the PayPal gateway to get started quickly.
Note: the U.S. Postal Service & UPS Shipping auto-calculation modules which work with zip code locations are not available for Drupal 8 & Ubercart in version 8.x-4.0-alpha5.
Tip: We uninstalled the Project Attributes module in this Ubercart version because of frequent PHP errors. Add Taxonomy categories directly to Ubercart Products in the steps below.
Step Two: Configure Your UberCart Store.
Begin: Navigate to /admin/store and get familiar with all of the configuration options in Ubercart.
Hint: To start off, set a custom site name, email address, street address, contact person, etc. in the provided fields & save the settings.
Hint: View the Catalog settings to see how the Catalog Taxonomy terms will determine the display of the /catalog Views pages with Ubercart.
Hint: Add PayPal or another Payment Gateway for credit card processing and set the configuration either to testing or live for your Ubercart store.
Hint: Review the Order Statuses settings in Ubercart administration to set up a workflow for online order processing, payment, shipping, tracking numbers, etc.
Step Three: Set Up Custom Categories & Fields.
Next: Review the Catalog Taxonomy terms and build a menu interface for the display.
Note: Take advantage of the default /catalog View provided by Ubercart and change the Catalog Taxonomy terms according to the needs of your product inventory.
Hint: Add the terms for your Catalog in Taxonomy settings, then create new Products using Ubercart. Views will automatically sort the posts into the Taxonomy sections.
Hint: Go to the Content Type management section for Products and navigate to the Manage Fields tab. Then add a new Field to your Products for more View options.
Step Four: Manage Products in Catalog Lists with Views.
Next: Navigate to /catalog and view your default display. Make any adjustments required with the Theme. Drupal 8 allows users to build Catalogs for Products with Ubercart.
Hint: Review the Catalog View and make any changes required to the display to add or remove new Fields in the administration settings panel. Clone for new page construction.
Summary: By managing the Catalog View display and filtering Ubercart Products via Taxonomy terms, Drupal 8 administrators can build powerful solutions for inventory.
Step Five: Monitors, Check-Out Processing, & Gateways.
Before going live, we need to check the payment gateway settings in Ubercart admin and make sure the processing of credit cards or PayPal is working. Encryption is installed on the server through SSL/TLS Certificates like Let’s Encrypt on a shared Linux hosting account.
Hint: Review the Checkout Settings with Delivery Information, Billing Information, Payment Method, & Completion Messages available to be customized according to requirements.
Advanced: Power users may need to search for a FedEx, DHL, or other shipping service integration in the third-party module ecosystem, which continues to evolve for Ubercart.
Conclusion: Fully-Functional & Reliable in Production.
Summary: Following these steps will get anyone started with running an ecommerce store on Drupal 8 using Ubercart & PayPal. This solution can be used for any variety of merchandise, goods, or services, including digital downloads & B2B applications.
Recommendation:Ubercart is the best choice for Ecommerce Solutions on Drupal 8.
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