By paulcoghlan on

So I have spent the last few hours playing with Ubercart and feel like pulling my hair out. I don't consider myself particularly slow when it comes to setting things up but Ubercart is certainly the most involved module(s) I have set eyes on.

All I need is as follows. I have a site (www.coghlancapital.com) where I issue charts and analysis for traders. There is a subscription fee (monthly and quarterly, with auto-renew) for access to charts. I only have PayPal at the moment which is causing problems so I want to find a simple module that allows me to accept credit cards.

I looked at 2checkout but they don't accpept any site that deals with financial services so that one is out...

Anyone have any idea for a simple setup?

Thanks,
paul

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

Probably the simplest way is to just accept ccards with paypal.

narcissus921’s picture

narcissus921 commented

You could sell roles (and length of time) through ubercart pretty easy. I haven't set it up completely, but I've done some work with setting that all up.

It should be pretty easy, and you can integrate PayPal into your payment method for the store.

I can probably offer more insight later when I'm not at work =)

paulcoghlan’s picture

paulcoghlan commented

Thanks for the replies.

PayPal isn't accepting credit cards and so no that won't work. I am dealing with businesses and people some of whom don't like PayPal so I am trying to find something independent. When trying to process credit cards through PayPal buttons each buyer is forced to sign up for a PayPal account, not cool.

I am looking at e-commerce with the Authorize.net add-on at the moment.

narcissus, ubercart blew my mind. I seemed to need a ton of modules when trying to use it. If they had a simple "Getting Ubercart Configured" guide I would have stuck with it but it really does seem to be cracking a nut with a MASSIVE hammer.

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

Not sure why you're having a problem with paypal for cc-- but they don't require a paypal account for cc payment (even with the 'standard' version of the service).

Ubercart can be overwhelming at first, but you don't need to use or enable all the modules. 'Ecommerce' varies so much by site it has to carry a lot of functionality to be able to service all types of sites. And there's lots of good docs over at ubercart.org.

Sorry but since I use either paypal or ubercart for ecommerce I'm not sure what else to suggest. Maybe take a look at the ecommerce module.

paulcoghlan’s picture

paulcoghlan commented

Thanks but using the current PayPal generated buttons the user is presented with an option. Either pay WITH PayPal OR with a credit card.

BUT, using either requires the user to sign up for a PayPal account...

Taken from the screen - "Signing up for a PayPal account will be required to complete this purchase"

Most odd

narcissus921’s picture

narcissus921 commented

Have you tried the Ubercart install profile? That worked wonders for me in terms of ease of setup.

Also - check out

http://www.ubercart.org/docs/user/3366/selling_site_access_role_promotions

This would be a similar setup, and then probably after that, payment configuration.

I saw an E-Commerce book on Packt, and picked it up, but haven't cracked it since I got into Ubercart. You might want to check if it's D5 or D6, as I can't remember at the moment, but I am leaning towards 5, but most of that should be the same/similar in 6.

https://www.packtpub.com/drupal-ecommerce/book

http://www.thesexysalad.com/content/sites/all/modules/ecommerce/docs/use...

AFAIK, and that's not much, but we use Authorize.net to do recurring billing, and I don't know who else besides Paypal would integrate with Ubercart/E-commerce since I haven't looked past those two.

Hope this helps,

Narcissus

paulcoghlan’s picture

paulcoghlan commented

As I have had 2-3 people click through to my site recently I thought I would update as to what I did.

I took the plunge and went for ubercart.

It works fine, I use recurring payments and role expiration and all is well. I have allocated role allocation to various products too.

A WARNING...
Try to avoid PayPal for subscriptions as there is a major issues that I am surprised is so little mentioned. Once a subscription is in place you are unable to increase it by 20%. No such limit applies to non -PayPal subscriptions.

My monthly subscription went from $55 to $95 and I had no issue with the CC paying members but could not increase the subscription for the PayPal paying members. I ended up having to have them re-subscribe on a new subscription. Thankfully half of them moved to CC at that point.

I offer free trials and again ubercart provides a free product which when combined with role expiration means it is self managing. You can assign a role to a product, meaning that when someone buys the free trial product they are awarded the TRIAL role with a one week expiration, simple. ubercart emails them to warn them the trial is coming to an end and removes the role if they don't subscribe. If they subscribe ubercart replaces the TRIAL role with the MEMBER role, easy! Members can purchase a PREMIUM role which gives access to additional content, through the NODEACCESS module.

ubercart is likely a little OTT for what I need but it works, is powerful and has good admin screens. I would recommend it.

Now, moving to Drupal 7 later this year...that is another matter

I hope some of this has been helpful for those considering a content subscription site using Drupal.

Paul

ccdoss’s picture

ccdoss commented

I have tried ubercart, e-commerce, and lm_paypal because I am using paypal. E-commerce doesn't have documentation for the most recent version. I tried using uc_recurring, but it doesn't seem to work with paypal wps. It, as well as lm_paypal, require a paypal account. I tried using the paypal_buttons, but it doesn't show much information to the subscriber, such as when their next payment is going to bill like uc_recurring.

So, what did you wind up going with to process credit cards?