By Wombats

Developing Ubercart was a wonderful experience. I learned a lot about software development, Drupal, web technologies, and worldwide communities. At the end of my time leading the project, I could also see that thousands of people were using the software to sell products for profit, bring people together at events, and raise money for many worthy causes and organizations. Seeing now a book written to help even more people do these things is an added treat.

I was asked to review Drupal E-commerce with Ubercart 2.x published by Packt and received an e-book and three physical copies to give away at DrupalCon San Francisco. I started reading the e-book on that trip and finally finished on the plane home from DrupalCamp Colorado.

What follows is my review with a chapter by chapter analysis of the content. What I saw was very encouraging, and I applaud the authors, George Papadongonas and Yiannis Doxaras, for their effort in delivering this work to the community. My review picks up on what's great about the book, what could use some work, and who I think would benefit most from owning it.

Before the in-depth analysis, here's a quick summary:

• This book provides a very comprehensive look at Ubercart's major core and contributed features, modules, and themes (free and commercial). It's the most expansive summary of all that Ubercart offers I've seen. The value in this exposure can't be overstated, and it's for this aspect of the book alone that I'd recommend it to anyone diving into building e-commerce sites with Ubercart.
• The book includes chapters and content introducing the user to Drupal itself. I suppose this was to make it a standalone resource for building e-commerce sites on Drupal, but I think the book would have benefited from a sharper focus on Ubercart itself. Referencing one of the many general Drupal books, even titles published by Packt itself, would have been sufficient for topics such as installation, search engine optimization, and theming.
• The book introduces all of Ubercart's features but doesn't often address the reasons for a particular feature's existence or the best practices for implementing it. For example, chapter four could have provided a lengthier introduction to product attributes so readers have a fuller understanding of the reasoning behind the system, when and how to use them, and what to look out for (like losing adjusted SKUs when attributes are modified on a product). If the book were made shorter by removing the general Drupal instruction, the content could easily be made up in those sorts of discussions.
• In other areas, the discussion is particularly well thought out and helpful. I thought the payment discussion was great.

Read on for the chapter by chapter summary and review. As I said in the first point, I'd recommend this book to any newcomer to Ubercart. Experienced users might not find much new here but could still employ the book as a desk reference. Anyone looking to write modules and customizations for Ubercart won't find much here - but that wasn't really the point of the book.

For more information, resources, and errata, you should refer to the book's own website, http://www.drupalubercartbook.com/.