The two popular e-commerce modules for Drupal are E-commerce and Ubercart, so when the MD at work mentioned he would like some E-commerce functionality on our company website I went looking for what is available. I've had some experience with the E-commerce module about 3 years ago when I was making an art website so that was the first place I looked.

Drupal is notorious for its contributed modules (ie anything not included as part of core Drupal) lagging behind core development, with stable releases of major modules such as CCK, Views, and Panels pending more than 6 months after Drupal 6 was released, but I was still surprised to discover that there is no Drupal 6 version of E-commerce - not even a development version.

Next stop was Ubercart but the best they have there is a very early alpha release, and it is extremely early and completely broken in a number of important places. Unfortunately it is also dependant upon a number of other modules that are incompatible with a module I am already using.

Drupal has such a short period between releases, with only the current and previous versions being supported, that contrib modules can barely keep up with the major changes between them. The Drupal core team are actively pushing people to test Drupal 7 already, meaning attention has already shifted away from Drupal 6.

It's enough work maintaining the existing version of a module between Drupal versions. CCK and Views received major overhauls, which contributed to the delayed release, but such a thing was only possible because both modules are incredibly popular and have most of the Drupal developer-base working on them. Smaller, less popular, modules can only dream of such attention.

So I'm left hoping that E-commerce gets a Drupal 6 version sometime soon, because there is no way in hell I am regressing to Drupal 5 with the promise of Drupal 7 appearing to remove all support.

I don't know what it is about cameras and me, either I have my eyes shut or am focusing on something else causing myself to look spaced-out. Lunch was very nice, especially with Kim and Darren as company. This was also our first Australian meal since arriving.

During our visit to Melbourne Kim was Oui's scarf buddy, making it so that he didn't feel quite so self-concious about wearing one.

Update: Oops, I just realised he wasn't wearing it in this photo

The morning of our second day in Melbourne Oui decided to take some amazing photos of the garden. This is one example of how something you see every day is so beautiful if you look at it from another perspective.

I don't know if our visit was premeditated, but am I ever glad we went to this place! The vanilla flavoured mini-cupcake I had was absolutely divine but then again, anything vanilla falls into that category.