By Wombats

Well, I had to keep mum while it was developing, but Lullabot has now announced their Do It With Drupal conference scheduled for December 10-12 in New Orleans, LA. With the doors open for registration, I can post about how awesome it is that they decided to use Ubercart to handle the registrations and gave me the chance to flex my UC muscles in putting it all together. I can also finally express my excitement about being invited down to present Ubercart sessions to the lucky folks who register before the conference fills up.

So, Lyle and I cooked up a module now available through drupal.org called UC Node Checkout for DIWD. This allows you to tie newly created nodes of specified node types to products in a customer's shopping cart. You can expand the node type however you want with CCK so you end up with a robust, customizable product form. When the customer completes checkout, you can execute a little bit of PHP to loop through the products on the order, check for a related node ID, and process the referenced nodes accordingly.

DIWD is of course using this for conference registration nodes, but anyone looking for customizable products that go beyond what Ubercart's product attributes system has to offer can take advantage of UC Node Checkout. I've already got ideas for improving the module, but right now it's a pretty rockin' system.

A hearty thanks to Lullabot for hosting what's looking to be a great conference, getting me out of Louisville as the cold weather sets in, and making sure others can take advantage of the code put together to make their conference site run smoothly.

The first 100 registrants get a $100 discount, and prices go up after that as the date of the conference approaches... so register soon if you want the best deal. I look forward to seeing you there!