I've just finished work on a commercial website which uses dotnetnuke and the store module and I thought I'd share my experience with anyone else thinking of doing the same.

Firstly, the site is located at http://www.retropack.co.uk, uses DNN 4.03.04 and store 1.00.01.

I have to say that a huge amount of effort has been put into the store module by the developers (thanks guys!), and I hope that the work continues, because it has the basis of a great module.  Unfortunately the current 1.00.01 release though should really not be used by anyone who doens't want to get their hands dirty.

I don't want to be harsh, as I know a lot of work has been done, but the module really is only half finished in it's current state.

I've been working fixing and upgrading my copy of the store module for what amounts to about 30 man days and have just got it working how I wanted.  I've added and tweaked probably 30 features, including category ordering, sub categories, order searching, order statuses, automated status change emails, proper paypal cart handling, changed the product listings such that images are clickable and many, many bug fixes in both ASP.Net and my SQL server database.

I am really grateful that the team behind store have given us the base to move forward on though, as it's only through their hard work that I've been able to launch our site at all.   I do also realise that my splinter development has meant that I won't be able to upgrade to the next version of Store once it's released, and I'm sorry about that because I'd like to see where the code base goes in the future.

The main point of this thread though is to warn people who may be considering using the store that I don't think it should be used unless you are:

1) An experienced developer with experience in ASP.Net and what ever database you're using.
2) A person with a fair amount of time to spend on fixing code and adding new features (you will need to build new features to run an ecommerce site via store 1.00.01).
3) Someone with a lot of patience.

On the other hand, the alternatives are few, there aren't any other free modules, and things like catalook are quite expensive and very confusing to use.

I love the DNN framework, but without investing a lot of your own development time (or money if you choose catalook) then I don't think you can use DNN to support an ecommerce site at present.

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Allan Thompson
Email: allan.thompson@emerald-solutions.co.uk
Site: Emerald Solutions

eTailer - Easy eCommerce with AJAX and DNN

I think the store module is a great starting point as I said without the groundwork loid by the store team I wouldn't have got our site off the ground.

When I get a spare afternoon I'll document all the changes I've made and the bug fixes I've implemented.

I believe in open source, collabarative, development and will certainly contribute as much as I can to the Store module.

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Allan Thompson
Email: allan.thompson@emerald-solutions.co.uk
Site: Emerald Solutions

eTailer - Easy eCommerce with AJAX and DNN

Nice work. Do you own this site? Could you post more information about how you've extended the store module. 

Thanks,

dp