OpenTickets was an Open Source, WordPress based Ticketing Platform that integrated directly with WooCommerce. With over 50,000 lifetime downloads, the platform was a resounding success. The most common features were available for free in the Community edition. For those special circumstances, OpenTickets also offered a comprehensive set of Premium Plugins that could literally solve any need for a theatre or event. In the spotlight on their Premium side was a fully interactive, drag-n-drop, browser based Seating Chart plugin that worked in every browser of the day. They even offered one of the first POS plugins for WooCommerce so that ticketing box offices could take in-person payments!
Chris was the inventor of OpenTickets, during his time at Quadshot Software, and the sole engineer on the project. The core Community version of the plugin offered tools for WordPress site admins to create and manage events and tickets to those events, using WooCommerce. This direct integration with WooCommerce made it the plugin of choice, as reported by WPTavern and several other publications. Chris implemented a special type of product that was linked to a proprietary event scheduling algorithm, guaranteed to never double-book.
Beyond this core hit plugin, Chris also invented and solely engineered 12 Premium add-ons. Features like interactive touch-sensitive seating chart, family ticket booking, season tickets, box-office POS admin tools, and advanced reporting were highlights of the Premium suite. Hundreds of customers opted for the full suite, and customers like Artisan Center Theater used the suite for years. This innovate, next-level plugin earned Chris respect in the WordPress community of Las Vegas and worldwide.
Highlights from Services Provided for Ticketing Platform
Development & Implementation
- Complete, from scratch plugin implementation & design
- Composition of free and premium plugins
- Software licensing solution to manage license keys for premiums
- 12+ premium plugins for advanced functionality
- Interactive seating chart that worked in every browser of the day
- Advanced reporting and analytical tools
- POS system built right into the admin
- Deep, deep integration with WooCommerce and all available WC plugins
- Core WordPress contributions to patch core bugs
- Core WooCommerce contributions to patch core design flaws
- Invented & implemented 100% anti-double-booking algorithm
- Customized solutions for 100s of clients using the suite
- many, many more features
Maintenance
- Daily releases, updates, security, and stability improvements
- Iterative improvements on software speed, SEO, user acquisition, analytics, and reporting
- 1-second granularity backups and recoveries on hosted clients
- Hosting migration, setup, and daily management of this ticketing platform
- Third-party service exploration, selection, deprecation, replacement and improvements
- Complete server & hosting management on AWS for hosted clients
Security
- Comprehensive WordPress security analysis & report
- Server & Services level audit
- Complete server management, setup, and lockdown
- Auto scaling enabled based on user patterns
- Password policy creation & enforcement
- Firewall level client blocking
- Round the clock security monitoring
- Identified abuse and responded for this ticketing platform
Custom Themes & Plugins
- Completely custom, high-availability plugin, even in non-cached environments
- Over 10 Premium plugins, and 100s of custom functionality plugins for clients
- Completely custom admin tooling and pages, and special custom logic for some clients
- Integrations with a variety of third-party tools and APIs
- Admin improvements for staff efficiency, like built in POS system
- Caching & security plugin improvements and contributions
- Merging of WordPress and Modern JS for presentation
- Search and feed algorithm invention
- Analytics service and accompanying plugin
- Integrations with majority of AWS services
Search
- Performance & structural improvements on WP core search
- Algorithm for increasing conversions
- Improvements to Admin dashboard search capabilities
- Integration with AWS Elasticsearch
- Auto classification & tagging of content and event data
Hosting Setup
- Evaluation of hosting costs monthly, for select clients
- Multiple migrations of hosting providers, for select clients
- AWS account setup and daily management, for select clients
- Configuration of Multi-zone N+2 AWS Auto-Scaling & EC2 + Aurora, for select clients
- Integration of CloudFlare & interaction with CloudFlare API, for select clients
- NewRelic setup and administration, for select clients
- Advanced automated monitoring and response workflows, for select clients