BuyPlayTix Blog

Infrastructure Release

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 14:50:46 -0600

Quickly on the heels of 4.4 is release 4.5. This one is mostly filled with uninteresting things that make the back end hum better and fix bugs.

Donation Emails

You can now customize the email sent to donors under Settings-Global Settings. Then click on the Donation tab.

Tunes to Add Production
The add production wizard was not as robust as it needed to be. Now you can no longer delete shows if there are already reservations for it. It also validates that you’ve entered the data more rigorously.

Ticket Locks
I added this feature for discount codes, but now your shopping cart is good for 15 minutes. As long as your patron keeps clicking around their tickets will be good, but if they go off to cook dinner and come back their cart will be empty.
Previously if people were fast enough the last few tickets for a show could be sold to multiple people. That won’t happen anymore.
Patrons will get a message that the show is almost sold out if there are still unbought tickets in others carts. They can refresh the page to see if those tickets revert to un-bought or if the show sells out completely.
If this is greek to you, don’t worry. This is more than likely how you expect things to work.

As always you can see all the bug fixes in the Release Notes. And please don’t hesitate to contact me if there’s anything you need help with.

New Release!

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 10:54:30 -0600

Version 4.4 of BuyPlayTix was released Monday night. It brings with it a few cool new features and many bug fixes:

Default Ticket Prices

Currently ticket prices are sorted from highest to lowest, with the most expensive option selected. Now in the Add/Edit Production wizard you can choose a default price that will be selected instead of the most expensive price.

QR Codes

By default a QR Code will be generated for your production on your production’s Link page. Click on it and print it out or put it on all your promotional materials. This is especially great if you’re doing printed posters. A QR Code at the bottom makes it trivial for users with phones to go directly to your ticket site and buy tickets. If you’d like to discuss QR Code strategies further please contact me.

Better Mobile

Getting BuyPlayTix to work well on mobile has been an ongoing process. With this release it truly becomes easy to buy tickets using a cell phone. You can watch a video below of the mobile site for The Hidden Room Theater’s Mystery Show. Please excuse the speed. I had to capture the movie on a simulated cellphone which is quite a bit slower than a real one.

So what would you like to see next? Please let me know with a quick email to support@buyplaytix.com!

Discount Codes

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 13:54:00 -0500

In the latest release of BuyPlayTix I added discount codes! You can find them under the Productions menu. So what can you do with discount codes?

Generate simple discounts (Buy 0 tickets get up to 100 for $3.00 using code CHEAPTIX).
Generate complex discounts (Buy 3 tickets for the Sunday Matinee and get 2 free using code BRING_A_FRIEND)!
Generate a unique code to send out to cast members for complimentary tickets. Each cast member gets ‘x’ comps per code and they just enter the code at checkout. No more comp management! Directors can breath a huge sigh of relief.

This feature is very much still in flux. So play with it. Let me know what you think and how it can be improved.

A Question of Contact

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 10:53:00 -0500

Current Contact Screen

I’m currently reworking a lot of the user interface behind BuyPlayTix. Much of how it was designed was based on just copying “that’s how it’s done”. I’m currently working on making the site accessible through Facebook and from mobile devices and so I’m trying to think about what people need rather than what most web applications provide.

Right now I’m looking at the Contact Page. It’s already gone through one redesign. But currently it’s just a simple table with a pager. Loaded Gun Theory has 102 pages of Contacts. And that’s not the largest number in the database. Is anyone really going to page through 102 pages looking for a specific Contact?

New Contact Screen Mockup

We have Dynamic Mailing Lists that let you narrow down to a list of contacts by criteria. And we have search. I think both of those methods are better way of finding specific contacts.

So do you think there’s any value to still having a table with 1020 rows that you can browse through?

Taking the Work out of Art

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 14:58:28 -0500

So, one of the promises of BuyPlayTix is taking the work out of art. I’ve added two new features this week that hopefully do a little more of that.

Email Raplet

Rapportive is a cool browser extension for Gmail. You can download it here:

http://rapportive.com/

Once you’ve got it installed you can click on the ‘Rapportive’ at the top middle of your screen in Gmail and choose ‘Add or Remore Raplets’. Click ‘Add This’ next to custom raplet, and enter the URL:

https://secure.buyplaytix.com/raplet.html

Now you’ll get a box that will show you contact information from BuyPlayTix when you pull up an email in Gmail. It also includes information about what shows the user has seen and how they’ve been tagged.

I used it just today when one of our Stage Managers sent me her updated cell number. I was instantly able to tell within Gmail that the number we had on file was incorrect, and clicked the edit button to change it almost instantly.

You also could use it to subtly remind people about your shows. When you get an email you’ll instantly be able to see the contacts ticket buying history so you can subtly remind Joe when he asks to borrow your lawnmower that tickets for your latest opus are now on sale. Hint. hint.

Email Tracking

The first is email tracking. You’ll find a report under the Reports menu called ‘Email Report’. This will have details for each email you send out to your mailing list detailing how many people opened the email, how many viewed it online, and how many unsubscribed.

Hopefully these will make things a tiny bit easier for you.

Invite Friends!

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 12:25:00 -0500

When you buy tickets on BuyPlayTix you’ll now see a link on your receipt page to “Invite Friends!” This will share the fact that you bought tickets on Facebook and let your friends buy them too. It should ensure your patrons don’t have to sit alone and that you take more tickets. There’s also a new Link Share Report that reports on how many times each link has been shared, commented, liked, etc.

But in the process I beat my head against the wall quite a lot, so I’d like to share in case you would like to share a link on Facebook. These are quick and dirty instructions, there are a lot more options you can read about here.

So let’s say I want to share a link like http://www.hydeparktheatre.org (they have a great show going on right now called “Body Awareness”).

I’d put the link in my page using the following HTML:



Invite Friends!

That does a fine job of creating a button and popping up a link, but if you want to share more than just a link you’ll need to adjust the meta tags in the page you’re linking to (in this case http://www.hydeparktheatre.org). Inside of the tags you need to add something like this:

And that’s it! When they share it on facebook they’ll see something like this:

Come see ‘Body Awareness’ with me!www.hydeparktheatre.orgI just bought tickets to go see ‘Body Awareness’. Join me!

2 hours ago · Comment · LikeUnlike · Share

If you want to find out how many people are sharing your link you can get stats by going to:

http://api.facebook.com/restserver.php?method=links.getStats&urls=http://www.hydeparktheatre.org

BuyPlayTix goes one step further and adds the correct date so your friend and you end up at the same show. But that significantly increases the complexity of the exercise.

Have fun sharing!

Calendar

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:14:27 -0600

So today I’m introducing one of my favorite new features. It’s a calendar for BuyPlayTix. This is a feature that just works. And requires no extra work on your part. Each producer gets their own calendar. You can check out Hyde Park Theatre’s calendar for Frontera Fest at:

http://hpt.buyplaytix.com/calendar.html?start=2010-01-10&end=2010-02-13

That calendar rolls up to the calendar at:

http://www.buyplaytix.com/calendar.html

Which will eventually accept community input as well. The calendar is quite customizable. If you go to ->Calendar Settings you can play with the various settings and setup a default view. There are day, week, and month views. And you can choose which days to show (so you don’t have to waste space displaying Mondays and Tuesdays if you never perform on them). You can also style the calendar. Each capsule on the calendar has a CSS class for the show name and the venue, so you can colorize by either of those criteria.

As with everything let us know what you think and how we can make it better. Eventually we hope to make this the start of a community calendar where all shows are listed whether they sell tickets on BuyPlayTix or not.

My first attempt at a screencast. One of the great features...

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:11:00 -0600

My first attempt at a screencast. One of the great features about BuyPlayTix is that you can tag contacts. Want to keep track of your laughers? Your actors? Your whales? Just tag them.

Then when you’re ready to create a mailing (whether email or postal), you can follow this video to generate a custom mailing list. BuyPlayTix lets you create lists by tags. By the production or show date a patron attended. Or by the type of data. Need to export only contacts with phone numbers? We can do it! This video shows you how.

Beta could be betta!

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:29:26 -0600

In the latest version of BuyPlayTix you’ll notice that we’ve added a icon to some of the features. While on the one hand this signifies features that are new, less used, and less tested. On the other hand they represent opportunity.

They are the germs of a good idea. For example right now the Survey functionality is currently in . Mainly because it’s a feature in search of more input. Almost all theater companies ask audience members to fill out surveys. But what do they do with that data? Is it valuable to have that information associated with the reservation? Is it more interesting to just have statistical information? And what sort of presentation would be most useful for that information? Graphs? Tables? With the features you can help us suggest and try out ideas, and see what works and what doesn’t. You can help design the future.

Want to help? If you have an idea about a feature (or any feature for that matter). Click on Help->Contact Support and send us a note.

YourMailingListProvider integration

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 10:39:40 -0600

YourMailingListProvider.com is a great low cost mailing list provider. They are now integrated into BuyPlayTix. Simply go to plugin settings:

Click on the YourMailingListProvider tab:

Click on the YourMailingListProvider link to open the website in a new window and login or create and account. Once logged in click on API in the left hand column:

Then click “Enable API Access” and click Save. Copy down your API key:

And insert it and your username into the YourMailingListProvider tab in BuyPlayTix:

Click ‘Edit PluginSettings’ and you’re done. Now all the email addresses for users who haven’t unchecked ‘Signup for mailing list’ will automatically be exported into your YourMailingListProvider account.

BuyPlayTix version 3.8 released

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 10:18:54 -0600

A pretty exciting new release. I’ll go into detail in the future on this blog, but here are the highlights:

Event Calendar showing all your shows in an easy to use (and configurable) calendar format.
Export email addresses automatically to YourMailingListProvider
Send surveys using SurveyGizmo so they’re waiting in your patron’s Inbox when they get home after seeing a show
Easily insert links to your calendar, ticket page, or facebook event in status updates, shorted by bit.ly
Added an export button to Manage Lists, letting you make complex email and mailing lists and easily export them to another program for processing.
Signup now needs just 4 pieces of information. So it’s easy to signup and try out BuyPlayTix

In addition there were too many bugfixes to mention, and automated testing was added to help keep silly bugs from keeping you from managing your theatre.

Mobile Technology and the Arts

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:09:23 -0600

I’ve been seeing a lot of announcements lately about arts organizations getting iPhone applications. This seems like a great idea in the short run. You get to really connect with your audience with something that’s hip and cool. And frankly if you have a volunteer building it for you and covering all the costs there really is no downside.

But as an Arts Organization I’d warn against building a custom application. Because what do users on Google Android devices get? What do users who have phones with the full featured mobile Opera browser get? Or the upcoming mobile Firefox? Unless they’ve got an iPhone they can’t connect with your organization’s message. And while iPhones are certainly popular right now, there are still plenty of cellphones on other carriers.

I’d highly recommend investing your resources in building a standards compliant mobile web application. There are libraries that will let you hook into the various cool features of the phones (like location detection), without having to build a custom application.

And if the next trendy phone happens to be running Google’s Android operating system, or something else, you’ll still have a presence.

Ticketing and Twitter

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:45:35 -0500

Just saw a patron request a ticket reservation over twitter. Anyone think that would be a cool feature to have? Let me know in the comments.

Finding the Production Link

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:38:08 -0500

Generally you’ll simply point buyers at your main ticketing site and they’ll be greeted with the ticketing page for your current production. But occasionally you’ll want to sell tickets to more than one show at a time. You can get a nice link for each show, by first going to your show list:

Then click on the “view production” icon.

It will open a new window with the URL directly to that production. That’s it. Simple!

While you’re there you can also check out the link for an iCal file (a way for your patrons to add your event to their calendar) or creating a Facebook Event.

Status Updates

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:22:39 -0500

Status Updates are now in the application. You can find them under Contacts->Status Update.

Facebook Status Updates are posted as coming from your Page. As long as the user you use to setup your facebook account is an admin on that Page, it should work seamlessly.

There are some great new features revolving around tracking sales that come from facebook and twitter coming soon.

And if you have any ideas please let us know. We’re still in the Wild Wild West when it comes to utilizing social networking to sell tickets, so ideas are welcome!

Facebook Status Updates

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:49:00 -0500

Facebook has improved their API to allow status updates for pages. This is great news and support for it will be in the next version of BuyPlayTix.

You’ll be able to update your Twitter account and Facebook status from the same page in BuyPlayTix.

There’s even more exciting new stuff coming in the next release too. Stay tuned…

The Day You Hope Won't Come

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:54:42 -0500

My theater company had to cancel a performance tonight. Of course with cancelling a performance comes notifying ticket holders. BuyPlayTix has a great feature for handling this, which took my stress level from a 9 to an 8.95.

Better than nothing, I guess.

To create a notification list based upon people reserved for a given night go to Contacts->Manage Lists. Enter a name for your mailing list. Then look under criterion on the right. You should see a “Show” capsule. Chose the correct production and show.

Then drag the capsule from the Criterion box to the Query box. If you do it correctly you’ll see all the contacts for that night populated at the bottom of the page. Click ‘Save’ and you’re ready to go.

Go to Contacts->Compose Message. Chose the list you just made from the List box, then type your message of regret and hit send.

At least one piece of cancelling a performance can be easy.

Extension Simplicity

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:40:09 -0500

One of the goals of BuyPlayTix is to be a great starting point for small theater companies, and to provide the features they need to grow.

There are a lot of features that are not used by the majority of users, so starting with release 3.5, they’re going to be hidden.

If you go to Productions->Global Settings, and click on the ‘Extensions’ tab you’ll see the following:

By checking these boxes, new features will show up in BuyPlayTix. Let’s go over them, one by one:

Enable Shopping Cart
The shopping cart lets the user add more than one ticket before checking out. This is especially useful if you have more than one show running at a time, or if you have multiple prices (for instance a customer wants to buy 1 student ticket and 2 full price tickets).

Enable Passes
There are currently two pass types - Festival and Season passes. Enable this feature if you would like to offer one of these pass types to your customers.

Box Office
Most companies will simply print out their reservation list and record their box office manually, but the Box Office software is to help you take tickets at the actual event. It lets you keep track of walkups, season passes, and reservations. It also offers some advanced reporting.

Those are all the extensions for now. Let us know what you would like to see, and how we could make BuyPlayTix simpler for you!

Barcodes

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:50:00 -0500

Just got my cuecat barcode scanner in the mail. You can get one of these barcode scanners for less than $15 including shipping off of ebay. Just plug them in and you can scan barcodes. Ok, there is a bit of a learning curve to scanning with them, but the price can’t be beat.

BuyPlayTix is adding season and festival passes in the next release. I’ve implemented them with a barcodes since manually typing in the pass code each time would be a bit of a pain. Couple a barcode scanner with the boxoffice software and you can easily lookup passes by scanning them.

We’ll be adding barcodes to all tickets in the near future. Our whole goal is to make taking tickets fast and accurate.

Welcome

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:50:00 -0500

Welcome to the BuyPlayTix blog! BuyPlayTix exists to help take the business out of creating art. To that end we’re constantly adding new features that not only help you take tickets, but also market to your existing patrons and keep track of your budgets.

This blog will be a starting point to introduce new features, explain existing ones, and start a discussion about how BuyPlayTix can serve your needs better.