Integrating Drupal ecommerce into already built site

By Dee-j on 28 Aug 2015 at 01:10 UTC

Hi all,

I am a new to the Drupal community. In all honesty - and I want to state this first and foremost - the only reason I joined was to ask this single question, though I may find myself returning over time.

I am going to explain my whole scenario in detail so that someone can help be better. I have already built a simple online store using a program called WYSIWYG Web Builder 10 (The acronym means "What You See Is What You Get", for those that aren't hip to it). My store is pretty much ready to go, HOWEVER......the only thing I am not too satisfied with is that the program's only ecommerce features is using PayPal. The way the program has it setup for you, Paypal is very simple and convenient to integrate into your site. It's as simple as dragging and dropping the buttons and going into the options to edit the information and your done. However, my only issue is that I prefer a fully functional shopping cart actually built into the site, as well as your other typical ecommerce features.

With that inadequacy in mind, I looked into Drupal and downloaded the latest version today, but at this current point I have not YET purchased a domain and hosting. I will do so shortly though.

So having said all of that, I just wanted to know if Drupal can be used to somehow integrate ecommerce into an already constructed website or would I have to rebuild everything from scratch using Drupal itself? I have a very specific theme that the entire site adhreres to, so if I were to use Drupal, I want the shopping cart portion to match the theme.

Another thing too is that -although it is not necessary for my online store in particular, given the way it's setup - I wouldn't mind having customers to be able to login and be able to keep track of their orders and having a wish list among other goodies. Again, my store is a simple setup so it is not necessary but it would help. Is any of that possible to build with drupal? And if so, could I incorporate that into my already built store or do I have to start from scratch?

If this question has been answered elsewhere, I would like to apologize for the redundancy and would appreciate if someone could refer me to that specific thread.

Thanks in advance!

Comments

You will need to start over

nevets commented 28 August 2015 at 03:38

You will need to start over if you use Drupal. And Drupal allows for customer logins.

nevets: Thanks for the

Dee-j commented 29 August 2015 at 03:11

nevets: Thanks for the response! It is unfortunate to know that I will have to start from scratch if I plan to use Drupal. My site isn't that hard to build, but it has a good bit of information in it, and not to mention forms already programmed, etc. Would definitely hate to go through all of that again but I think I may have to chalk it up.

If your information is in a

nevets commented 29 August 2015 at 05:24

If your information is in a database, you may be able to migrate it over to Drupal. When using Drupal, you really want to use the forms API (either through existing modules or custom modules), so generally port existing forms is not a good idea.

In the same boat

Rubyru commented 3 September 2015 at 03:10

Hi Dee-J,
I am in the same boat as you. I created my site with Webbuilder 10 as well (I've been using it for a few years), and I have been tirelessly trying to find the perfect solution on little to no monthly fees, for a cart feature, where I can just place 'Add to cart' and 'Cart checkout' buttons on my site without the use of paypal. I prefer the checkout to not redirect buyers to a third party for more control over the final look for branding.
Though I do not have the option mentally, to rebuild my entire site from scratch with drupal unfortunately (Too many pages and info and time).

I downloaded drupal for the jquery aspects as one of the carts (snipcart) I was looking at for the features I mentioned above, can only be implemented with jquery (which I know nothing about), if you have the current WB10, have you not looked into the jquery UI slot within the toolbox in WB10? I just looked into it today, so not sure it would suit either of our needs, but thought I would point it out in case there was something in there that might work for you/us, with some proper tweaking and searching the web for tuts or infos.

Sorry if this sounds dumb, but is there a way to use drupal widget factory, to create a block for a add to cart or cart features to reside so that you could just add a block onto your site vs created the entire site out of Drupal (this is not necessarily directed at you :)?

Though to be clear, you would still need a payment gateway, which is why I was looking at the cart I mentioned above, it looks like they take 3 different ones, but allow the checkout to remain on your site and not redirect.I will still be investigating Drupal to see if it might suit my needs (though it might be too intricate for me to handle (coming off of WB10). I am always up for learning.

Much luck in whatever direction you go.