Getting Started

As you've likely read, Drupal Commerce is an open source e-commerce framework built on Drupal 7. Many businesses and Drupal development shops use it to build flexible and highly customizable e-commerce websites. If you're evaluating the project for your next e-commerce project, here are some things you should know:

  • Drupal Commerce is tightly integrated with Drupal 7, the latest and greatest version of the Drupal CMS. This means we can depend on the same great tools used to customize core Drupal components to customize the various e-commerce components defined by Drupal Commerce, such as products and orders.
  • It lets you quickly create tailor-made e-commerce solutions by making as few assumptions as possible about the business model of merchants using the software. Where the project does make assumptions, it implements them through customizable systems. In short - you aren't stuck with any particular configuration.
  • We're developing pre-packaged distributions of Drupal Commerce that bundle everything together that you need to install and go, including Drupal 7, the Commerce modules, and additional contributed modules. The primary beginner distribution is Commerce Kickstart, and we're working to provide additional distributions tailored to specific use cases and business models.
  • You can easily extend any aspect of Drupal Commerce through the use of third-party plugins called modules that are also open source and freely available through drupal.org. These modules integrate third party e-commerce services for payment, shipping, and accounting and add additional features like coupons, file downloads, and checkout extensions.

The quickest way to see Drupal Commerce in action is to browse the demo store to get a feel for the customer experience "out of the box." As you're browsing the site, you should keep in mind that literally anything can be customized, whether it's through the user interface or adding custom CSS to your site's theme.

We don't have a public administrative demo just yet, so your next step would be to refer to the Administration guide to find out how to install Drupal Commerce and configure it either on your own web server or local machine if you have the capability.

We strive to be developer friendly. We've included copious amounts of comments in the code itself to help developers understand the core APIs and inner-workings of the Commerce systems. We're continuing to flesh out the documentation here on DrupalCommerce.org, and we encourage developers to file bug reports in the issue tracker and find support in IRC (#drupal-commerce on irc.freenode.net) where we try to be very responsive.