Ladybug Markets

15 replies [Last post]

Submitted on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 20:58

Joined: 01/12/2009

Juice: 24

Using Ubercart 1.x with the Market Place module we've created a free marketplace for Australian crafters to buy and sell their wares.

The site is functional and live, however there are a lot of changes still on the drawing board so check back often as we've only just started.

Ladybug Markets - The market place to buy and sell Australian handmade art and craft online

#1 Submitted on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 21:20 Top View page

Ryan

Joined: 08/07/2007

Juice: 15046

Your site looks wonderful! Awesome job really making Drupal and Ubercart shine. I hope it does well for you.

#2 Submitted on Sat, 07/11/2009 - 23:44 Top View page

harryhobbes

Joined: 01/12/2009

Juice: 24

Thanks Ryan,

If anyone has any questions regarding the site setup/design/construction, please don't hesitate in contacting me. I've received a lot of help and support from the community over the last 12 months and would like to 'pay it forward' so to speak.

Harry

Ladybug Markets - The market place to buy and sell Australian handmade art and craft online

#3 Submitted on Sun, 07/26/2009 - 09:19 Top View page

lodhi

Joined: 07/26/2009

Juice: 2

hi harry
Yes your site is nice.

I am new to drupal and ubercart (i was using oscommerce for some development and i found that was very good)
i want to give a try to drupal and ubercart so i m developing a site using that.
now i am looking for some free ubercart themes

which theme you used.......

regards
lodhi

#4 Submitted on Thu, 07/30/2009 - 02:14 Top View page

harryhobbes

Joined: 01/12/2009

Juice: 24

Lodhi,

Get into Drupal, is my biggest suggestion and the sooner the better. It's such a fun and easy CMS. I'd looked at a lot of options when considering the site until I stumbled upon Ubercart (which I hadn't heard of). Couple with the marketplace module (and some minor customisation) I finally had the perfect foundation for Ladybug Markets.

The theme on the site a custom theme designed by a designer friend of mine. Sorry I can't be of more help regarding the design.

Harry

Ladybug Markets - The market place to buy and sell Australian handmade art and craft online

#5 Submitted on Mon, 07/27/2009 - 23:44 Top View page

@eminkel

Joined: 06/27/2009

Juice: 18

Harry, great looking site. I remember seeing it when Ryan sent a tweet out to the world. Great implementation of Drupal, Ubercart, and the Marketplace module.

#6 Submitted on Wed, 07/29/2009 - 19:09 Top View page

purpldragon

Joined: 07/29/2009

Juice: 2

Hi,

I am new to website building and have only just found drupal- It's great to be able to see how each module works and can do by looking at real sites.
So it would be brilliant to know what modules you have used for your project.

I used to live in Oz and know several people who I'm sure would love to use your site
Good Luck with it!

Thanks

#7 Submitted on Thu, 07/30/2009 - 02:33 Top View page

harryhobbes

Joined: 01/12/2009

Juice: 24

Purpldragon,

The backbone of any drupal installation is usually:

CCK
Views
Pathauto
Global Redirect
Admin Menu (that's for the developers and a god send)
Devel
Block Cache
LoginTobboggan

Ladybug Markets uses these plus:

Ubertcart
UC Marketplace
Advanced Profile Kit
FAQ
Buddylist
Views

And some little gems I found along the way:

Search 404
Page Title
SEO Checklist
Update Status (incl. in drupal 6.x onwards)

Most of these have excellent manuals/documentation and a lot include documentation in the drupal handbook.

Please pass the site along to all your creative (and not so creative) friends.

Harry

Ladybug Markets - The market place to buy and sell Australian handmade art and craft online

#8 Submitted on Fri, 07/31/2009 - 09:49 Top View page

rdo2006

Joined: 07/31/2009

Juice: 2

This is by far the best looking ubercart store I've seen! I'm not really familiar with ubercart as I've been working with Magento for well over a year now, and have grown weary of the constant battles with that platform as well as the nature of its license and $$$ of modules.

I think I may now be ready to build a 'test site' using your recommendations. I love Drupal and have built my business website on it as well as others.

I'd love to see more regarding the admin/backend of ubercart.

Anyway - outstanding job! This is what an ecommerce site is supposed to look like!

#9 Submitted on Fri, 07/31/2009 - 22:30 Top View page

harryhobbes

Joined: 01/12/2009

Juice: 24

I agree with your comments regarding Magento. Ladybug Markets was originally designed and testing on Magento until I realised that the customisations I needed to make were just way to complex and time consuming (I have been developing PHP professionally for 6 years and have been using ZF for the last year, which should illustrate how annoying magento got at times). That's when I found Ubercart and the Market Place module and everything else just fell into place. I went from a 6 month development life cycle to an 8 week one!!!

I've had a few requests for the MP_Seller module that I use and although I'm happy to release it, it just isn't at a stage for public use yet. There is a lot of abstraction that I need to add to the code which is currently specific to LBM.

Thanks for all the kind words.

Harry

Ladybug Markets - The market place to buy and sell Australian handmade art and craft online

#10 Submitted on Sun, 08/23/2009 - 18:42 Top View page

jvc

Joined: 08/23/2009

Juice: 5

Hi Harry -- this site looks great, and it's almost exactly what I've got in mind for a project I've been mulling over for a long time (a very different industry, but a similar platform). I've been looking around for the platform, and like yourself, I think I've settled on drupal/ubercart/marketplace as the best fit.

I'm sure I'll have a few more questions at some point down the road, but my initial one is: roughly how long did it take you to build? As a newbie I'm trying to get a sense of the learning curve involved before diving right in.

Thanks!

-Jonas

#11 Submitted on Mon, 08/24/2009 - 20:22 Top View page

Stomper

Joined: 04/18/2009

Juice: 21

Just want to reiterate what everyone else has said - great job! I am especially impressed by the integration of UberCart Marketplace, definitely something I have my eye on.

Great website concept too, was it difficult to finder sellers for your website? How did you go about promoting/marketing the website?

How straightforward was it to implement UC Marketplace?

#12 Submitted on Tue, 08/25/2009 - 23:11 Top View page

harryhobbes

Joined: 01/12/2009

Juice: 24

Thanks for the kind words.

@jvc - Only working on the site after work and on the weekends it ended up taking about a 240 hours from concept to completion, however you know what they say about measure twice, cut once! I think second time round I could do it in half the time

@stomper - The marketing/members has been the responsibility of my partner. She is very active in the community which we cater for and I can't encourage word of mouth enough for new start-ups. I think we have about 100 items and the site has been live for 7-8 weeks, which is on track with our biggest hopes for the site. We don't market at all except for a very small budget for Ad Words which I don't think is really doing a whole lot.

Ladybug Markets - The market place to buy and sell Australian handmade art and craft online

#13 Submitted on Wed, 08/26/2009 - 08:33 Top View page

Stomper

Joined: 04/18/2009

Juice: 21

Very interesting. Was most of the functionality you were looking for already provided by UberCart Marketplace, or was there a lot of custom coding? You are using the first version of UC Marketplace (D5/UC1.0) correct?

#14 Submitted on Thu, 01/28/2010 - 14:43 Top View page

Canadaka

Joined: 01/07/2010

Juice: 11

Very nicely made site!

I have a question about how you are using uc_marketplace. I notice you added some custom code to limit the buyer from adding products to their cart from multiple sellers. From that I guess that your payment process then pays the seller directly rather than paying the ladybug store and ladybug then paying the seller using masspay. If so how are you doing this?

#15 Submitted on Thu, 01/28/2010 - 21:23 Top View page

harryhobbes

Joined: 01/12/2009

Juice: 24

Yep, you're correct. We just provide a market place for the seller and a liaison for any time the seller and buyer need to contact one another (arbitration, if you will).

I'm at work so can't look at code, but from memory the seller has a paypal account associated with there LBM account (they cannot list items until this is added). At the checkout page UC normally adds the sites paypal account as a hidden field in the form, however here I've customised the code to add the sellers paypal account instead.

Hope this helps.

Ladybug Markets - The market place to buy and sell Australian handmade art and craft online

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