Tickets -- multiple browser tab warning?

[parsonjack]

It's likely there will be a clearer idea if that's right after Thursday.

[5co77ie]

I tried the URL earlier this week and much to my surprise got through to a ticket choice page for Glastonbury 2014 - which said there were no tickets available - it's been re-directing for the last couple of days now.

[eFestivals]

 You categorically DO need cookies on for anything that implements a session, even if it's a server based session, the client is still linked to the session via sessionId in a cookie.

according to what I read earlier (when double-checking), session data can be transferred via the header without use of cookies.

</me goes off to test if cookies appear with the sessions implementation I'vew built into a part of efests....>

[eFestivals]

</me goes off to test if cookies appear with the sessions implementation I'vew built into a part of efests....>

hmmmm ... there's a cookie that I've not created called 'PHPSESSID', which may well be the server session I've written into the website using cookies.

Well, I never knew that.

[Joeskeppi]

Learn something new every day That's the default name of the php equivalent cookie.

You can test it easy enough, turn cookies off and you get logged out the forums.

While it would be possible to send something via an extra http header it wouldn't solve the issue of needing to store something on the client. HTTP is stateless, you connect, get page, disconnect. Once you've disconnected, something has to be sitting on the client to send back when you ask for the next page.

[jeffie]

What on earth are you all talking about?

[eFestivals]

Learn something new every day That's the default name of the php equivalent cookie.

You can test it easy enough, turn cookies off and you get logged out the forums.

that's a different thing to the thing I was testing (which is all my own work; the forums are not). Even if cookies and sessions were entirely separate there can be good reasons why someone might choose to use cookies alongside sessions, so a test of the forums tells me nothing of use without first knowing how all of the forums code hangs together.

The problem with that test of the sessions I've implemented is that it sits on top of the forums login (whilst being 100% separate to the forums login), so I can't test my own implementation of sessions without being first logged in to the forum.

(that might sound a strange thing to do, but I've created a bespoke system for a specific purpose).

When a get a free moment I'll kludge together some code to test just a server session, for my own interest in how it works. Until a few months ago I'd not ever coded a server session.

While it would be possible to send something via an extra http header it wouldn't solve the issue of needing to store something on the client. HTTP is stateless, you connect, get page, disconnect. Once you've disconnected, something has to be sitting on the client to send back when you ask for the next page.

ahhh, very true. I'd not considered it in that way.

[eFestivals]

What on earth are you all talking about?

nothing of much relevance towards the ticket sale.

Useful knowledge can be acquired in all sorts of ways, and to me this is useful to know.

[euler]

Of course, a proper queuing system would sort all these problems. You log in - you join a queue ; you get told how many people in front of you and that you will be allowed to place your order in 25 minutes (or whatever).

Problem (for us) is that Seetickets *know* the tickets will sell out - so they have no incentive to make the system fair and equitable.

[eFestivals]

Of course, a proper queuing system would sort all these problems. You log in - you join a queue ; you get told how many people in front of you and that you will be allowed to place your order in 25 minutes (or whatever).

Problem (for us) is that Seetickets *know* the tickets will sell out - so they have no incentive to make the system fair and equitable.

how is a queue any fairer?

The only advantage with a queue is that you know straightaway whether you're getting a ticket or not.

It's only fairer if you believe that 'first come first served' is the *ONLY* fair way to distribute over-subscribed tickets.

Yet being first in a queue for online ticket sales says nothing about a person's desire to go to that event, it only says something about their timekeeping.

It's no less "fair" to say that those who show the greatest desire for tickets (via perseverance) should be rewarded with tickets.

"fair" is one of those highly subjective words that's become a recent trend for politicians to use, used to try and sucker-in the non-thinking via the use of a word that means positive things to everyone while also meaning something entirely different to everyone. In short, it means nothing and anyone using the word should probably in all seriousness be ignored.

It's actually Glastonbury that drives the features of the sales system rather than See, and pleasingly they've decided to go for a middle ground between 'first come first served' and 'desire'.

But their decision is not really any surprise. Any festival that gave those with a strong liking for the festival no extra chance of tickets over the most casual buyer is probably not going to remain popular for very long.

[HoTWire]

So in the real world, See would need to use a cookie to store the session ID so that it worked across a multi-server system... but that still doesn't open up any vulnerabilities as long as the queuing system on the server is well constructed (such as by relating each session ID to an IP address).

[jeffie]

nothing of much relevance towards the ticket sale.

Useful knowledge can be acquired in all sorts of ways, and to me this is useful to know.

[jeffie]

Dear Lords of the Great and Technical,

Dids't thou ever come up with a your final supposition on the best way of your minions maximising their chances?

[parsonjack]

http://glastonbury.seetickets.com/Tour/Glastonbury-2014

currently available....the page that is...not tickets.....

[Tsaress]

I'd have a punt on the first ticket choice screen being http://glastonbury.seetickets.com/Tour/Glastonbury-2014

The page exists on See's system, but at present everything pointed at glastonbury.seetickets.com appears to be re-directed to the registration page.

To be honest though going direct to this page will save you very little - a single DNS lookup and re-direct - but in this game any saving of a microsecond here and there is at least a pyschological bonus.

[parsonjack]

That page is currently showing the below message. Honest I'm not getting over excited.

Glastonbury Festival 2014

Welcome to the Glastonbury Festival booking site. To get started, please select an option from the available ticket packages below.

Don't forget that you will need the registration numbers and postcodes of all of the people you wish to book tickets for.

Sorry, there are currently no shows available

[parsonjack]

yep....i'd guess that once the registration window is closed that http://glastonbury.seetickets.com will be simply redirected to the URL above and that will become the landing page until ticket choices for coach travellers go live on it on Thursday.

[jamiejc]

The registration window is closed now... So hoping things will start rolling now...?

[jamesrfisher]

In preparation for Sunday i will have the above link to copy/paste.

Will be using multiple browsers, have got Safari, Firefox, Opera and Chrome on the iMac. Will also be using the wife's laptop,the ipad and iphone.

Will be trying to get through on the landline just in case.

Has anybody ever had any success via landline?

[jamiejc]

I had a friend who had boradband he was having no luck, so he fired up his old dial up service... Got stright through maybe just pure luck...?

[eFestivals]

maybe just pure luck...?

that's pretty much it.

It's dependent on your page request hitting the server at the exact moment the server is able to deal with a new request for the buying page.

The more times you try making that request the more chances you have of getting lucky - which gets to mean hitting F5 to refresh rather than waiting for it to refresh automatically.

[ladybird33]

http://glastonbury.seetickets.com/Tour/Glastonbury-2014

currently available....the page that is...not tickets.....

[parsonjack]

Showing off my complete lack of IT knowledge now ... I think it was mattberr who said to visit the see tickets page a few times in the week leading up to the sale. I know its all about luck at the end.of the day, but i'll take anything to help at this stage. Does visiting this link assist at all leading up to the sale? Does this make any sense?!

[frostypaw]

Christ don't give people that idea, they'll start hammering it from days before

Everybody calm the fuck down! You don't need six different browsers with loads of tabs hammering away - all the excess requests are what screws the system up. One, maybe two, windows. Count to ten, refresh, count to ten, refresh....

[purell]

Good tips here.

Here are a few from me:

- Co-ordinate and get friends in different houses to try and buy tickets. A joint effort over different locations. I really think this is the #1 plan and requires no technical know how.

- Using your phone and/or tablet as well as your PC is probably a good idea.

- If you're using Windows and Chrome, you can use this plugin to create multiple sessions.

- If you added glastonbury.seetickets.com to your hosts file last year then remove it. In Notepad open %systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts to check.

Clever people, let me know if anything I've said is incorrect.