Drupal Commerce: not just for selling t-shirts and hats

I recently had Ryan Szrama as a guest on the Beyond Blocks podcast.

Ryan is the CEO of Centarro - the company behind Drupal Commerce, the eCommerce platform built on the Drupal CMS.

I've used Drupal Commerce for a number of projects since it was released in 2011, as well as Ubercart before that.

One of the major things I like about it is its flexibility.

The Commerce Kickstart distribution is a great way to create a demo Drupal Commerce project that shows a typical eCommerce store selling everything from books to hats, furniture and inflatable flamingos.

I've used Drupal Commerce for these typical scenarios but also for some non-typical ones.

I created a multi-site Drupal Commerce store for a gadget insurance company, dealing with many products and product variations. I built a custom Vue.js form that created an order with the required items before passing customers to a Drupal Commerce checkout flow.

I created a yearly photography competition website that photographers can enter by purchasing a product and uploading their photographs to the order. I built custom judging functionality, which allows jurors to score each entry and the site owner to see the totals and which submission won the competition.

I created an events management and booking website where each event was a product with different variations based on the different prices - early bird, regular and last minute. Each event had a maximum number of places and, potentially, a waitlist.

This website also included a loyalty scheme for event organisers and attendees, who received coupons after organising or attending a certain number of events.

Drupal Commerce can do a lot and isn't just selling t-shirts, hats, books or furniture.