selling tickets for an event

[DReborn]

hi all, i built a simple site, www.yadvashem.org and need to sell tickets to an event from the site.

what's the easiest way to do this? i know i could make a simple paypal button but it is not very configurable.

i was going to make a link from the homepage "Buy Event Tickets Here!" and then have a simple checkout page.

if i do paypal how will that work with keeping all the ticket information? will i be able to print out a current list?

anyone have experience selling tickets online?

thanks!!

[ronaldb66]

The functionality you need borders on e-commerce applications; however, it sounds like the typical applications available are a bit too much.
If you would use one of these you'll have to do a bit of customising; the payment and order & user administration functionality could be used practically straight out of the box, though.

Although not open source, I'd recommend CubeCart (http://www.cubecart.com/); if you consider tickets as physical goods, I imagine it could be set up pretty quickly.

An alternative would be to hand roll you own simple e-commerce solution; this would require a good deal more time and a decent skill level in the scripting language of your choice.

[Graft-Creative]

Although not open source, I'd recommend CubeCart (http://www.cubecart.com/); if you consider tickets as physical goods, I imagine it could be set up pretty quickly.


Definately. What's great about Cubecart is it's templating system - it's just so easy to incorporate into pretty much any existing design.

You could install Cubecart in a sub-directory, use your existing html as the template for it, then it's just a case of popping a few tags (I'm not sure what these are called, but they look like this {SOME_TAG} ) into the appropriate place in your html, a few tweaks of the stylesheet, and you're all set to go :)

Plus you get all the usual stuff common to most ecommerce packages: order tracking etc. etc. You could even sell the tickets as digital goods, say as a downloadable PDF?

Worth thinking about anyway.

Kind regards,

Gary

[DReborn]

thanks guys!

i've never heard nor used cube-cart but I will give it a look.

what do you think is the best way to integrate it into the site? just have a link from the main page "To Buy Tickets" and then link that to the cube-cart page?

the cube-cart seems a little overkill just for selling tickets to my one event but it does look fairly simple to setup.

what i'd really like is just a link to a form that people would fill out and then have a paypal pay button. it "seems" simple...but it never is, is it? =)

[oracleguy]

Well if you want to use PayPal, they have a lot of documentation on their website for integrating PayPal into your website. Basically how it would work is the user fills out a form on your site for what they want and the form gets submitted to PayPal and then they do their thing there and pay for it, then PayPal will redirect back a page on your site of your choosing with some information and that way you can mark their order as paid.

You'll need to use some server side scripting language and a database to do it.

[DReborn]

and of course if i have no knowledge of server side scripting...? =)

i am finding out more information for the event and details they need and will post some more info

thanks again for all the help!!