Is Drupal a good choice for this...

[markross]

I have taken on a project to develop a bespoke ecommerce site for a ticket printing company.  It will consist of a few basic pages describing their range of services and company info.  The main part of the site will be the ecommerce system which will allow customers to choose the type of ticket they would like to order, create a design for their ticket, place the order and make a payment.  This will be quite a complex system as it will need to manage the full order lifecycle and there will be several paths depending on the type of customer, the type of ticket they are ordering etc.

 

I would like some advice on the best system to use to implement this. I am quite an experienced PHP developer and have used several CMS's including Wordpress, Joomla and Expression Engine.  I also have a reasonable amount of experience in CodeIgniter.  So I think the options available to me are:

 

1. Build the whole thing by hand on a framework like Codeigniter (which I use quite regularly).  However I would also have to build all the CMS parts and user management / authentication etc which seems silly when a CMS could provide this.

 

2. Use an opensource e-commerce system like Magento.  I have no experience of opensource ecommerce systems but get the feeling they may not be suitable due to the specialised nature of this application.

 

3. Use a CMS and build an extension to support the ticket ordering process.  I could do this in Joomla as I have coded extensions for Joomla in the past, however I am not much of a fan of it.  From what I have read about Drupal, it seems like it might be a better choice so this is currently my plan of action especially as I have been wanting to learn Drupal for a while.

 

So I am just after some confirmation that Drupal would indeed be a good way forward or whether I am completely off the mark and headed for a disaster.

 

Any alternative suggestions also welcome.

[magentonews]

I think you could use Drupal along with Magento.

[markross]

Is Magento suitable for this type of ecommerce system i.e. not a traditional shop selling a range of products?  They would only be effectively selling one type of product (printed ticket tickets) and the person would be presented with an interface to design their ticket before checking out.  All the data regarding the ticket design would need to stored in the Magento database with that order (i.e. logo image, event text, price, venue address, start and finish times, number of "perforations" on the ticket etc).  Would Magento support this kind of functionality?  I presumed it was only suitable for more traditional online stores selling a range of products with minimal options for each.

[lee20]

I am a Drupal advocate for CMS and eCommerce and I know how to spell Magento, but that's about all I know about it.

 

Drupal is more flexible and has a larger community than Magento and Joomla.

 

But it may be harder to learn to develop for. There are literally thousands of Drupal modules, but using each one requires some overhead in finding it, knowing what it does, and learning how to use it.

 

If you have sufficient time to get acquainted with Drupal, do it! I pulled out all of my hair during my first project using Drupal. Now, three years later, Drupal is what I rely on for nearly every web application I build.

 

It's hard to know which system matches your needs best and would require being familiar with all three systems.

 

From what I know about Magento is a great choice for eCommerce as well. If you can get by using Magento, this may be the path of less resistance.

 

Either one you choose will only get you part way there out of the box, from there you'll have to discover how to make changes to the system as you need.

 

If you choose Drupal, you will be learning a system that can do many things beyond eCommerce. Whereas, Magento is more geared for eCommerce.

[markross]

@lee20 - this is what I understood with Drupal.  Very steep learning curve but once you've got your head round it the sky's the limit.  This project doesn't have a particular deadline so I think it would be a good opportunity to learn it.