The release of Ubercart 1.0 was announced earlier today.  Ubercart is an open source e-commerce package (shopping cart) that fully integrates your online store with the open source CMS, Drupal.  We've been watching Ubercart for some time and like some of the look-and-feel it borrows from osCommerce.

Some of the features in Ubercart 1.0 as reported by their shopping cart's Website include:

• Configurable product catalog includes catalog pages and a block to display product categories.
• Flexible product creation system. Create normal products by default. Add fields to store additional product information using Drupal's CCK system.
• Flexible product attributes system. Create user selectable attributes for your products that modify the price, SKU/model, and/or weight of items as the customer adds them to his or her cart. Set default attribute/option sets for each product class to easily create many similar products.

I know I'm a week behind about this, but I just came across the link via Gadgetopia:  Open-source PHP applications that changed the world.  The CMS related applications that were determined world changers are listed below.

• PHP-Nuke - 1999
• eZ Publish - 2000
• osCommerce - 2000
• phpBB - 2000
• Gallery - 2001
• Drupal - 2001
• MediaWiki - 2002
• WordPress - 2003
• Joomla! - 2005
• Magento eCommerce - 2007

When you split the list into three sections, you get the feeling that PHP-Nuke, ezPublish, and osCommerce have been around for a very long time.  More importantly, you begin to think that it is time for Gallery, Drupal, and MediaWiki to either be seen as mature applications or for those applications to finally grow up.

A tool for migrating your osCommerce site to Magento has been updated at Magento Connect.  For those of us that our osCommerce users looking for other options, this is exciting stuff.  The new version offers improvements in UTF8 conversion and product image importing.  This tool even has its very own wiki page.

Webdistortion, a web design studio in Northern Ireland, recently reviewed nine different e-commerce platforms. All nine platforms reviewed were open source software packages.

With e-commerce webdesign really starting to take off, its never been more important to choose a platform which suits you as a developer (i.e. one that you can support) and one that will provide your clients with the features that they need to run a successful online shop.

There are a number of ways of getting a shop online, and we’ve focused primarily on open source e-commerce platforms here.

Those nine e-commerce platforms under review include: osCommerce, ZenCart, VirtueMart (Joomla!/Mambo), Magento, DashCommerce, CubeCart, X-Cart, LiteCommerce, and Shopify. If you're looking for a brief and consolidated review of open source shopping carts, then the Webdistortion reivew is a nice place for you to visit.

For those curious, I found this story via DZone.

Last week marked the official release of Magento 1.0, an open source ecommerce platform. Magento has been on my radar scope for some time thanks to those who have left comments about it here. Since, I likely will have need of a good shopping cart this year for a planned project, I've decided to put some focus on Magento. I will be removing Mambo from my top 30 "CMS Focus" list to make room for Magento. My apologies to Mambo fans.

Magento isn't just a "shopping cart" but attempts to also be an "ecommerce platform". Magento recognizes that it needs to improve and introduce additional features, but for a 1.0 version the variety and quantity of features are impressive. Some of Magento's well rounded features include analytics and reports, RSS feeds, site and content management tools, search engine optimization, promotion tools, and multiple theming.

Harald Ponce de Leon: "We are proud to announce an advancement of the osCommerce 2.2 release series with the new osCommerce Online Merchant v2.2 Release Candidate 2 release. This second release candidate addresses issues introduced in the previous release candidate release and addresses longer termed issues from 2.2 Milestone 2."

Complete Story

osCommerce Webmaster’s Guide to Selling Online is a new book from Packt Publishing that will help users increase their sales and profits with expert tips on SEO, Marketing, Design and Selling Strategies. Written by Vadym Gurevych, this book is packed with expert advice and practical examples of effective store design and report creation to help anyone administering an osCommerce site make better decisions, formulate more effective strategies, and measure success.

osCommerce is an open-source e-commerce solution written in PHP and MySQL that can be set up on various platforms. More than 10,000 businesses and sole traders all around the world have benefited from its features and flexibility. There are many modules for osCommerce that further extend its functionality, making it suitable for almost every business's requirements.

Steven Peck, associated with the Drupal project, wrote about an article he came across regarding a comparison of the vBulletin forum and Drupal's forum. The article is titled, Goodbye vBulletin, Part 1: Reasons to Switch. The author of the article writes:

The aim of this article is not to poke holes, or say ‘vBulletin sucks’, but to provide constructive criticism of a successful product, proving that vBulletin is not always the best choice. In places the article compares vBulletin to Drupal, this is the platform The Webmaster Forums will be switching to and represents many of the things vBulletin should—in our humble opinion—aspire to.

Mr. Peck's reaction to the article (and my emphasis in bold):

Now this was a interesting. A well written article on why one site is switching over to use Drupal's built in forum rather then continue to use vbulletin.

In other words, Peck and many of us that pay attention to how the forum applications stack up against CMS native forums don't see too many articles like this. It is rare to see someone using a standard forum application such as vBulletin, SMF, or phpBB switch over to Drupal primarily for its forum functionality.

One of the things I like about browsing the Web for posts on various CMS topics is that they always seem to show up on the Web when when I need them the most.  For example, I'm starting to consider whether I'll continue to use osCommerce for some sites that I manage.  While the yet to be released osCommerce 3.0 will likely be an option next year, I'm open to other possibilities.  What I would like to see is a shopping cart that integrates well with a full CMS.  In the past, I've found Joomla's Virtuemart extension and Drupal's e-Commerce module to fall just short of the client's needs so I've stuck with pure shopping carts such as osCommerce.  Yet, I still keep on hoping for better open source options.

Good news for osCommerce fans, osCommerce Online Merchant v2.2 Release Candidate 1 was released early this month.  If you're not an osCommerce user you're probably wondering what all the fuss is about a release candidate for the open source shopping cart.  Consider this, osCommerce 2.2 first went public with Milestone 1 in early 2003 which means that the version 2.2 will be around for almost five years before it is considered "completed".  In other words, an update of any kind to osCommerce is significant to it's developers and users alike.

This osCommerce release candidate also introduces a new name for the software titled "osCommerce Online Merchant".  According to osCommerce, the new name helps strengthen their presence and marketing efforts for upcoming releases.