Selling Online with Drupal e-Commerce: Walk through the creation of an online store with Drupal's e-Commerce module (repost)

Drupal is a free and open-source modular web application framework and content management system (CMS) written in PHP that can run in many environments, including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD. Drupal e-Commerce is a free, open-source, feature-rich, flexible package of modules that seamlessly adds full e-Store capabilities to Drupal.

Drupal e-Commerce is the combination of Drupal, the award-winning Drupal 5 content management system, and the e-Commerce package of modules that can be plugged into it, bringing a wealth of e-commerce functionality to the software.

In this book you will learn how to use the Drupal content management system along with its e-Commerce modules to set up and manage an online shop. We will install the software, have a look at its features, plan our shop, create our shop, look at customer management, create a design for our shop, and cover security, taxes, shipping, and even marketing our business!

If you're new to Drupal and want to set up a powerful e-commerce system, this book is for you. If you've some experience of working with Drupal and want to understand how its e-commerce options can be used to power an online shop, this book will also prove invaluable.


What you will learn from this book

* Why to choose Drupal for e-commerce
* Installing and configuring Drupal and its e-Commerce module
* How Drupal and its e-Commerce module work
* Creating and managing content
* Creating and managing user accounts, roles, and permissions
* Things to think about when planning to sell online
* Structuring your site, your product catalogue, and framing a shopping process for users
* Framing business policies to handle legal and professional issues
* Branding your site by customizing default themes
* Installing new themes and creating a custom theme
* Customizing the checkout process for processing orders
* Creating a better selling experience
* Attracting customers with discounts, coupons, auctions, donations, flexicharges
* Working with taxes and shipping rules in Drupal e-Commerce
* Drupal e-Commerce's shipping API modules
* Securing and maintaining your site (deploy, backup, restore)
* Creating and managing invoices using the Invoices module
* Integrating CiviCRM to manage appointments and log phone calls
* Improving traffic with Search Engine Optimization
* Advertising programmes, newsletters, and viral marketing campaigns