There were a significant number of changes that occurred runde the hood between version 6.39.xx (or earlier) and version 6.48.xx (or later). The key change was the support of cookies by Theatre Manager and storing the state information in that cookie.
A number of people asked to be able to use Theatre Manager
web sales without frames and for more flexibility in re-arranging the pages
in any way that they desired. To do this, we needed a place to keep the
current state of the user and where they were as theey purchased on line.
The only way to do this is to use a cookie.
The advantage of not using cookies
is that you can support people buying tickets with their internet browsers
set at full security, however, this makes it harder for some people to
manage a web site because of the level of knowlege required to link pages
together.The advantage of using cookies is that it makes it much easier to
write pages and put more of them on your ISP's web server. This reduces the
load on the Theatre Manager web listener and makes it easier for most people
to support the web site. The disadvantage - people need cookies turned on;
and not all corporations support it. Happily, most sites do use cookies these
days, so the chances of people not allowing a cookie is small.
The following steps are the general steps that were successful in converting 3 web sites to use cookies (note, this does not have to be done, but is recommended). Any absolutely mandatory step is highlighted.
| Step | Task | how to do it |
1 |
Update TM.CGI |
The 'tm.cgi' perl script must be updated. A new copy is in the 'tmCGI' folder. You will need to find the part of the script that looks like: and change the '192.168.1.61' to be the IP address of your firewall/router. Then you will have to put the tm.cgi onto your web site in the cgi-bin directory. Make sure the priviledges are 755. |
| 2 | get rid of PI in 'gets' | find all instances of in all your web pages and get rid of them be replacing them with nothing. |
| 3 | get rid of PI in 'Posts' | find all instances of
in your html forms and get rid of them |
| 4 | fix up ?&* | Replacing pi might leave some " in your code. You will want to find all of these and replace with just the final " |
| 5 | replace reloadNav | Find the file 'reloadNav.html' in the tmScripts folder in your OLD WebPages folder. Replace it with the new version of reloadNav.html in the folder distributed with this installer |
| 6 | replace tmError.txt | find the copy of tmError.txt in this version of WebPages and put it into your old WebPages folder |
| 7 | Fix <BODY > | find all the <BODY tags in your web site. If you removed the reloadNav() function in them, you will have to put that back it.... it is now what writes the cookie to the users browser. So, find all and you may wish to make them look something like |
| 8 | Fix </HEAD> | if you removed the before the </HEAD>, you wil lhave to put them all back in. If you have older pages, these may look like which are ok. |
| 9 | Install tmVenue | Add the folder called 'TMVenue' and all its contents to your web folder |
| 10 | Update TMEvent | find the files in the TM event folder that start with 'TMEvent' and update the method of setting the input parameters. The way of passing the should be changed to |
| 11 | Update TMPass | do the same as the above for files in the TMPass folder. In this case, instead of P_SEQ, the variable will be MT_SEQ. i.e. you will be changing things to look like |
| 12 | Update TMCampaign | do the same as the above for all files in the TMCampaign folder. Instead of P_SEQ, the field will be DC_SEQ |
| 13 | copy SetVenueList.html | copy the file setVenueList.html from the tmTemplates directory in the sample web site to your tmTemplates. This is a new file |
| 14 | update rowticketevent.html | find the file rowticketevent.html in the tmtemplates folder. find the button in it that buys tickets and change the code to look like. It may simply be that btnSelectEvent=PB_SEQ just need to have the '=' changed to a '&' |
Mostly, only the names of a few variables were change on some web pages to support the outlet version and the ability to have mutliple web sites talking to one database. If you are using a web site management tool like Dreamweaver, you should be able to search and replace to change all occurances of variables within the site and things should work.
The sample web site has many of its web pages changed to update the look, reduce HTML and incorporate some new tricks and features we learn about over time.It also has a number of changes to support an anonymous browser (certain buttons are hidden on the navigation buttons, for example). You do not have to incorporate those changes to achieve anonymous browsing - your existing pages should work with anonymous browsing. You many, however, wish to check how the sample web site behaves with anonymous browsing and then update you pages, if you like the look.
The searching on the ticket window was enhanced. It supports search by venue, date, month, AND/OR event and the numbert of search buttons has been reduced to one common button. To do this, a new search button called 'btnGetEventList' was added. The older buttons 'btnGetEventAll' and 'btnGetEventRange' still work -- however, they simply pass on parameters to 'btnGetEventList'. In the long run 'btnGetEventList' should be used instead as the old ones will go away some day.Key variables that were changed
| Former Variable Name | New Variable Name |
| D_BACKUP_ELAPSED_TIME | SPR_BACKUP_ELAPSED_TIME |
| D_FORCE_LOGOFF_DAILY_AT | SPR_FORCE_LOGOFF_DAILY_AT |
| D_TAX1_DESC | SPR_TAX1_DESC |
| D_TAX2_DESC | SPR_TAX2_DESC |
| D_TAX3_DESC | SPR_TAX3_DESC |
| D_DON_AMOUNT_PLEDGE | DD_AMOUNT_PLEDGE |
| D_DONOR_NAME_OF | DD_NAME_OF |
| F_SOLD_PERCENT (new) | |
F_LOGGED_IN (new) has values of:
|
|
| D_DONATION_DATE | DD_DONATION_DATE |
| D_DC_SEQ | DD_DC_SEQ |
| TMhome.html | revised to use new system preference variables |
| tmnavSide.html | sample includes the use of F_LOGGED_IN |
| TMdonation.html | uses new donation variable names |
| TMsysBackupInProgress.html | uses new system preferences variables |
| NotifyEmails/tmEmailDonation.html | uses new donation variable names |
| tmTemplates/tmNavButtons | this was changed to only show buttons pertinent to the logged in state. An anonymous browser will not see the home, mail list, or account information. Clicking on the login, or checkout buttons will cause that person to be logged in |
| tmTemplates/stylepages.css | the style sheet was updated to include 3 more stylesheet templates. These include a row header template and a row detail template for tables. This should make it easier to customize colour and font for an entire row |
| tmVenue | A new folder that can contain a description of the a venue (plus maps, etc.) |
| tmVenue/TMVenueDefault.html | a default page that will show generic information about a venue, if the user clicks on a link that takes the person to the venue. If you want something different for each venue, then create a file in this folder called 'TMVenueXX.html' where xx is the venue number. |
| TMError.txt | has some new error messages added to it at the end. Messages 10017 and 10018 were also changed to be more meaningful. |
| tmTemplates/rowOldCartheader.html | this was changed so that the table recognizes which cart is the current active cart and changes the buttons to say 'view cart' and allows a 'checkout' from this page. It does not need to be changed.. it just shows additional functionality. |