Drupal Learning Journal 12. "Using Drupal" – Chapter 10 – Online Store

I finally reached Chapter 10 of Using Drupal, where I can learn some of the secrets of how to set up an e-commerce site/online store, with the help Ubercart. I started to work on a site a few months ago, but had to abandoned. Hopefully after reading this chapter I can go back to it. I will be taking more notes as usual, so I could go back checking it even after I gave back the book to the library.
Ubercart (UC) modules (page 342):

• Cart – including checkout
• Conditional actions – for taxes and shipping
• Order – ordering, invoicing, hooks for fulfillment
• Product – available items
• Store – management interface
• (optional) Core (page 344)
  – Attribute – product variation
  – Catalog – categorization
  – File Downloads – digital products
  – Notify – email to customers
  – Payment – framework for Test Gateway, Payment Method Pack, recurring Payments, Credit Card
  – Report – sales reports
  – Roles – turning customers to members
  – Shipping – calculating shipping costs, generating labels, creating tracking numbers
  – Shipping Quotes
  – Taxes – rule specific
• Extra (page 348)
  – Cart Links – to construct URLs that will add certain quantities of specified products – to be use don external sites for “buy now” links.
  – Importer – does export/import of UC data
  – Product Kit – grouping products to be sold together
  – Repeater – Update product info on remote UC stores
  – Stock – tracking and managing stock levels

Mixed tips and reminders

• Each product class has its own specific properties; they need to inherit the base product field (page 354)
• Check for “Vocabulary Catalog has been identified as the Ubercart catalog” at Store administration or do it by hand at store admin -> config -> catalog
• “Continue shopping link URL” can be set (for “catalog”) at Admin -> Store admin -> Config -> Cart setting
• Shopping Cart block (e.g. for top left)  can be set up at …blocks

Payment/encryption (page 369)

1. Add the test gateway payment method at Admin -> Store admin -> Config -> Payment setting -> Payment methods
2. Create “keys” directory for encrpted CC datae that is not web accessible, e.g. /home/username/keys
3. Make it temporarily writable (a+w)
4. Expand the “credit card settings” fieldsate and enter the path for “Credit number encryption key filepath”
5. In the checkout workflow” section ensure that “Attempt to process cc payments at checkout” is checked
6. Enter additional info at “Check settings”
7. reset keys permission to a-w

Permissions (page 375):

• “view cc details”: OK for editor
• “view cc numbers” (last four): only for admins
• “delete any order”: for admin only: it can remove already completed  orders

The Secure Pages module will “redirect the required pages to a SSL version of the page.” (Page 377) Drupal 7 version is in dev.