A Guide to Drupal eCommerce and Site Development

I'm a speaker at DrupalCampLA 2010, with the following as my session topic. However The purpose of this post is to provide a public download link to my PowerPoint slides. (See the attachement to download those slides.)

Due to preparation time constraints, and the realization that custom import / export would take more than an hour, while a custom digital download store would take significantly less, my two sessions are combined into one. First I'll be covering why and then how to create a circular import / export system via a custom module and Excel. Key items covered will be:

• Why existing solutions do not apply to Ubercart
• Bulk import of downloadable product files
• Bulk import of files referenced by Product Nodes
• Bulk export of Products of a given Class
• Bulk import/update of Products of a given Class
• Excel tips

I'll be outlining how to create this module for your custom situation, with my slides intended for later reference to write code. Lots of key Ubercart database linkages and logic will be covered. In the time remaining, or first, if there's enough interest: One of the more interesting types of eCommerce is creating custom digital products that are created on-the-fly with information the customer supplies at the time of purchase. Starting with a vanilla Ubercart installation, I will outline the additional contributed modules needed, and walk through the custom coding necessary to create a framework supporting custom digital products. This framework can be used for purposes such as watermarking digital purchases, as well as more sophisticated operations such as an 'automated 3D digital actor' system that I've created. This session will also include details of my use of Services for remote complex processing.

Update: gave the talk, here's the video.