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Getting Ubercart on Fantastico One Step Install

Submitted by honewatson on Sun, 04/13/2008 - 00:31
honewatson

Posts: 10
 Joined: 03/25/2008

A huge competitive advantage for Ubercart would be to get on the Fantastico one step install.

This should be actively pursued I believe once version 1 is released.

It would get more exposure and thus more developers and themers. At the moment I see Ubercart's main competition being Magento. I've looked at Magento but I like Ubercart better. Overall I think Ubercart has a lot more potential because it seems simpler to use from both a user, themer, and developer perspective.

Ubercart also has the Drupal developer base which is still largely untapped.

Magento has been released but has three main disadvantages.

1. Magento has a strange way of theming and not many themes - Ubercart already has lots of themes from Drupal and is easy to create a new theme (although Drupal's documentation of this is relatively poor).
2. Magento's difficult to install - Ubercart is quite easy to install but imagine if it was fantastico one step
3. Magento is slow - Ubercart/Drupal a lot faster

Magento advantages are:

1. A much bigger community - Ubercart has potentially a huge community pool from Drupal but at the moment its not as big as Magento.
2. An awesome theme out of the box - Ubercarts theme out of the box is ordinary. After a lot of testing on Ebay stores I've found grid layout sells more than list layout. But thats besides the point overall the Ubercart out of the box theme just looks ordinary. The Magento theme out of the box rocks and it wouldn't be that difficult to have a theme out of the box for Ubercart which is the equal of Magento's.

I think if you got an awesome out of the box theme for Ubercart plus got the fantastico one step install the community would quickly surpass Magento's in size due to Ubercart being a lot simpler and faster overall.

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Ubercart Tag
permalink #1 Mon, 04/14/2008 - 09:58
Ryan

Posts: 3744
 Joined: 08/07/2007
AdministratorHead Code Monkey - I eat bugs.

Thanks for the comparison pointers here... haven't had a chance to test drive Magento myself. I agree on the default theme. Regarding Fantastico, I'm not sure what that would take or how feasible it is, since we're really a component of Drupal which already has a one click install (I believe). Perhaps that's where a good core installation profile would do well?

permalink #2 Mon, 04/14/2008 - 11:15
TR
Posts: 659
 Joined: 11/05/2007
Bug FinderFAQ ModeratorGetting busy with the Ubercode.

The larger Drupal community has things to say about Fantastico, e.g. http://drupal.org/forum/fantastico-de-luxe

These issues apply Ubercart as well, and are something to consider before putting effort into a Fantastico installer for Ubercart.

I do really like the idea of installation profiles, but it's not something I've had time to work on.

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<tr>.

permalink #3 Tue, 04/15/2008 - 00:34
kimiwon
Posts: 5
 Joined: 10/08/2007

TR, interesting points here. True, fantastico is terrible when it comes to updates, but it has had a significant influence on drupal, wordpress etc becoming popular.

The first Drupal installation I did was through fantastico so I could try Drupal out.

Ryan, I mentioned Ubercart in a forums, a person came and looked at the base install, said they didn't like the look and said they preferred the look of something like magento.

I think the default theme is the main thing holding Ubercart back from faster uptake and community increase.

permalink #4 Tue, 04/15/2008 - 00:54
doomed@drupal.org
Posts: 71
 Joined: 04/05/2008
Bug Finder

May i ask... whats the rush?

Whats the hurry to get loads and loads of users?

I think code and user/dev documentation should be ready for prime time and then worry about themes.
I believe someone is already working on it (i saw some shots the other day).

permalink #5 Tue, 04/15/2008 - 04:22
kimiwon
Posts: 5
 Joined: 10/08/2007

May i ask... whats the rush?

That's the kind of talk they use over at oscommerce. Eye-wink

permalink #6 Tue, 04/15/2008 - 09:10
Ryan

Posts: 3744
 Joined: 08/07/2007
AdministratorHead Code Monkey - I eat bugs.

heh I fall on both sides... I don't feel there's a big rush for the theme, because our code is our core. I'm not a themer/designer, and neither is Lyle. A default store theme will have to be contributed before I can review/include it. In the meantime, we'll continue to focus on the code which is ultimately what matters. There are other options for folks needing themes.

More accurately, folks should say they don't like the default look of Drupal, not of Ubercart. There just isn't a default look of Ubercart. Sticking out tongue It's a component of a Drupal site, so any Drupal theming resources or contributed themes can be used.

I'll continue to encourage anyone with a theming bone in their body to collaborate and contribute a store theme, but I can't force someone to volunteer. Eye-wink

permalink #7 Tue, 04/15/2008 - 09:50
TR
Posts: 659
 Joined: 11/05/2007
Bug FinderFAQ ModeratorGetting busy with the Ubercode.

To clarify, I think the goals of a promoting Ubercart and making it easy to install are good things. (Although I have to say, I think the current Drupal/Ubercart install is pretty simple, especially with the Uberinstaller.) I've never dealt with Fantastico so I really can't say if that's the way to go, but after reading the Drupal thread I cited I have to ask whether it's good or bad for Ubercart if these forums have to start dealing with a flood of people trying to run an old version of Ubercart on an old version of Drupal.

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<tr>.

permalink #8 Tue, 04/15/2008 - 14:50
Lyle

Posts: 1850
 Joined: 08/07/2007
AdministratoreLiTe!

As long as the "old" version that Fantastico provides is 1.0 on Drupal 5.7+, I think we can handle that. Once we get to 1.0, we'll be busy converting to Drupal 6, which will allow us to slow down and actually write a changelog and remember what our code really did 3 or 6 months ago. It'd be really nice not to need a 1.1 release for some time after the initial 1.0. I think we'll find plenty to backport during the D6 conversion, but it's a goal at least.