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Web Designer Testing Environment

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Version 9.25.00 of Theatre Manager is the minimum requirement.

Many of our clients engage the services of, or have in-house, a web designer who prefers to customize the online ticketing web site themselves. Arts Management Systems is often asked how to set it up so that web designers can work independently and off site in a testing environment and see the effects of changes to the online ticketing web pages before making it live. The following outlines the steps to take to create a Web Designer Testing Environment:

Step #1: Duplicate the Current Web Templates

The directory for all the online web pages is located on the Web Server and depending on the platform:

  • Mac HD>> BoxOffice >> WebPages >>1 if your Web Listener is Mac -and-
  • Window Local C: >> BoxOffice >> WebPages >> 1 if your Web Listener is a Windows machine.
  • Duplicate the WebPagesEN folder and name the copy WebPagesTS (where TS denotes Test).
AMS Cloud or GIT users need to do somerthing similar:
  • find the WebPagesEN folder in your GIT repository,
  • duplicate it, and
  • name it WebPagesTS

Step #2: Setup Remote Access

  • For AMS Cloud users already using Git
    • Skip to step 3
  • For self hosted venues
    • Consult with your IT Department to establish a way to get web pages to the web server.
    • We recommend a Git repository established through Arts Management so that you push your web pages to our site and they are then migrated to your web site.

Step #3: Testing Changes in a Web Browser.

  • Change the files in WebPagesTS folder as desired using your favourite editor. This will not affect your live web pages.
  • Migrate the changes to your web server
    • If editing the pages directly on the web server, you have nothing to do for this step
    • If using Git, just push in your changes
    • If using some alternate method like FTP, of file sharing, move the pages to your web server
  • Force reloading the web Cache. There are 3 ways to do this:
    • By accessing the director and clearing the web page cache (self hosted only)
    • By asking AMS support for the special URL to clear web cache using a browser (it is not documented here on purpose)
    • By clearing the cache in company preferences inside Theatre Manager
  • Test the Page changes

    The TM Server is designed to be multi language. It comes provided with English (WebPagesEN) and French (WebPagesFR). To use the test pages, you just need to 'switch languages' using

    https://tickets.myserver.com/TheatreManager/1/online&event=0&lang=TS

    where tickets.myserver.com is replaced with your ticket subdomain.

  • Switch Back to English after testing

    https://tickets.myserver.com/TheatreManager/1/online&event=0&lang=EN

Step #4: Place the newly edited files.

When you like some or all of the pages you have changed in WebPagesTS

  • Save a copy of the original pages in WebPagesEN so you can revert them back if need be
  • Copy the tested pages from WebPagesTS into WebPagesEN folder in the same folder structure
  • Migrate the changes to your web server using the same method as Step 3
  • Test test your web pages again .. just to make sure. And do a complete checkout.
    https://tickets.myserver.com/TheatreManager/1/online&event=0&lang=EN