Thread

Hi all,

I work as a web designer and developer, I currently specialise in developing sites for WordPress and Drupal. I’m using Drupal more and more these days, especially when e-commerce is required. Someone recently told me to check out ExpressionEngine and I must say it does look interesting. I would love to know if there is presently a stable, reliable and mature way of handling e-commerce on EE? Is there anything that is at all comparable with Ubercart and/or ‘e-commerce’ (the module) for Drupal?

Answers from someone with direct Drupal experience would be gladly received. The key things for me are reliability and stability. I’ve been stung in the past using e-commerce plugins for WordPress which just don’t cut the mustard - I spent half my time fixing other peoples bugs.

You can see some of the work I’ve been doing here www.rootsy.co.uk

Thanks
Huw

Hi wuh!

I’m no Drupal person but EE has a few Ecommerce addons, the two I use most frequently:

https://exp-resso.com/store
- probably the easiest/quickest to implement

http://cartthrob.com/
- Cartthrob is more of an API than a plug n play module, in that you “roll your own” shopping cart from it’s components. That gives it a lot of flexibility.

Both developers are very active in the EE community, and actively develop their modules. I’ve found both modules reliable, and importantly have good support.

Hope that helps.

Hi wuh,

Thank you for your interest in ExpressionEngine and welcome to the Forums!

Rob mentioned 2 great e-commerce options for ExpressionEngine, and there is a third as well, BrilliantRetail.

Like Rob, I don’t have experience with Drupal, but I will tell you - ExpressionEngine and all 3 major e-commerce add-ons are commercial products with professional support. We (EllisLab) and those 3rd party developers make our livings making and supporting these products, plus the Community is quick to offer advice and help!

Let me know if you have any other questions!

Cheers,

Thanks for the replies. I’ve been reading through the developer documentation today, EE is looking like it could be a good choice for projects where rapid templating is needed. I’m wondering if the ‘template tags’ approach gives speed and flexibility at the cost of customisability? For example, what if I wanted to process a tag using PHP in some way prior to rendering it?

Apologies if this is in the documentation (I’m sure it is), but sometimes it’s nice to bounce thoughts around in a more human way 😉

Huw

I’m wondering if the ‘template tags’ approach gives speed and flexibility at the cost of customisability?

Honestly? We hear and believe the exact opposite :-D ExpressionEngine is incredibly flexible precisely because of it’s template system!

If you need to process PHP, you can, at 2 stages in the process. “PHP on input” allows you to use PHP before the template is fully processed. That way, PHP can pass work into the template. The other option, PHP on output, allows you to change parts of the template right before it is rendered to the browser.

To get the big picture of templates, have a read over ExpressionEngine’s Parse Order.

But? If you are thinking “I need PHP to do x”, there is likely already a plug-in that does that very thing. Browse over at Devot://ee to see what I mean. And if you can’t find it? You can build it! Plug-ins are faster and safer to use than PHP in templates and are super easy to write. Rather than just PHP, you have access to the full potential of the CodeIgniter Framework.

I think the best thing to do here is get you an Evaluation License. I wanted to invite you directly, but your registered email address leads me to believe you might miss it, so it you could please email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), we can get you a 30 Day Evaluation of ExpressionEngine to tinker with!

Cheers,

Hi Dan, thanks very much for your response.

I’d love to have a little play around with it actually - I guess that’s the only way to really get your head around something. Thanks very much for the offer, I will e-mail you now.

Cheers!
Huw