QR Code leads to 404

Do you by chance have a security plugin installed… maybe ‘better wordpress security (aka: iThemes Security)? I know it has a setting that prevents access to ‘long urls’ and ‘suspicious urls’. In the past, we have noticed that the check-in urls can sometimes fall under both categories, which causes the security plugin to block them with a 404 or worse.

Another possibility is that you are not using ‘pretty permalinks’ (the ones with https://mysite.com/postname/ instead of https://mysite.com?p=123). Currently, the check-in process only works when that core wordpress feature is in use. There are plans to make this more universal; however that is not currently in the code.

Hope this helps, and if not, hit us back,
Loushou

Hi Loushou,

Thanks – I can confirm my permalinks were set to “Default” (/?p=123) rather than “Post name” (/sample-post/).

I changed this setting, but then all my events and other pages were 404s! It turned out my WordPress and Apache were not set up for permalinks. If anyone else gets stuck there is more info here:
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Using_Permalinks

For me, this meant editing the .htaccess file in the WordPress root directory to what the page recommends, as well as changing httpd.conf to set “AllowOverride All” (the one you want to change is located just under the definition of AllowOverride).

So I can confirm the checkin process now works! Thank you very much ??

EDIT 2: I have found two problems now with this process. First, sometimes when one is buying a ticket but returns to the homepage instead, the Event page will show that a ticket is reserved but the Basket will be empty. This makes continuation impossible without updating the reservation number to 0.

Second, though my first checkin worked perfectly, all my tickets are now showing as “already checked in”, even the ones I have just generated! So I make a new booking, see my new ticket, scan my new QR code and it tells me that the person has already checked in… :S

I have reason to believe now that the two problems I outlined above are related.

Somehow I managed to complete the checkout process with a quantity of 0 tickets, and now I realise all my tickets I have generated that were for 1 ticket have scanned and told me “[/0]” tickets had already checked in.

When I tried a case where 3 tickets were ordered, it worked correctly, counting up “[1/3]”, “[2/3]” etc.

I’ll try doing a few more things and see what happens.

Hey @creasechris,

Glad to hear that the steps from my last post helped lead to the solution to the original problem. Also to reiterate, we there are plans to make this compatible with the regular non-pretty permalinks soon. That being said, it sounds like you may have identified a different, unrelated problem, where the interface for purchasing the tickets did not show up on the individual event pages, until you changed the permalinks. Did I interpret that correctly, or are you saying that you found a different problem? On that note, if in fact I did interpret the issue correctly, can you see if you can get this second issue to re-manifest, possibly provide some reproduction steps? I do not seem to be able to get the interface to not show on my dev environments, so any information you can additionally provide will help me track it down.

Thanks again for the great question and the additional issue report,
Loushou

Hi loushou,

It seems you replied to my original edit, which seems to have disappeared when I made the second one. The text you replied to was roughly as follows:

“EDIT: it seems this has also fixed another problem: previously the ticket purchasing interface did not show up on the individual event pages. Perhaps this should be added to the FAQ?”

As you can read above, I’ve also noted two other concerns with the system.

How could I message you a link to my site in private (perhaps with login if you’d like) so you can see the problems for yourself?

I have an update on the checkin issue.

It seems that “the same user cannot have more than one ticket of the same quantity checked in at once”.

I did as follows:
Made event
Guest booked 1 ticket – checked in fine
Admin (me) booked 1 ticket – checked in fine
Admin booked 1 more ticket – could not check in.
Admin booked 2 tickets – checked in fine
Admin booked 2 tickets – could not check in.
Admin booked 3 tickets – checked in fine
Admin booked 3 tickets – could not check in.
Admin booked 4 tickets
Admin booked 4 tickets
I then alternated checking in between the two sets of 4 tickets – both checked in perfectly fine throughout.
Then Admin booked 4 more tickets, which reported themselves as “already checked in”.

This also seems to have the effect of resetting the “Availability” counter on the calendar view.

Very strange problem it seems!

Actually, the “Availability” counter seems to obey the formula

“max occupancy” – “last number of tickets sold”

rather than the expected

“max occupancy” – “all tickets sold to this date”.

For example: there are 50 tickets available. I buy 20. There are 30 left. I now buy 5 and there are 45 left!

EDIT: And going back, it seems the ticket purchasing option does indeed appear on the event pages regardless of permalink structure – but only for the event pages which have dates.

For each event, there is a page for the event (which has no links to anything else nor options to buy tickets, which is confusing) and pages for each date for the event (which have links to buy tickets, which work perfectly).

This is very good information @creasechris . I will take some time to look into these things and post back here once I have tracked down the sources.

As for the confusing event landing pages: these pages are meant to serve as the event long description pages. You do have the option to additionally show the event description on the individual event pages, but often times our clients have reported that if one of their customers is on the individual event page already, they already know what the event is, and should be streamlined to buying the ticket, instead of cluttered with the description of the event. This will obviously not always be the case, so we made that an option.

With that in mind, we made the landing pages to serve as the description just in case it is not available anywhere else. You can simply not show the page if you feel it is confusing to the end users, which in some cases it may be. Most people however will not ever see that page unless you specifically open a link to it, since most people will be coming through the calendar page, which does not have a link to that description page.

I will keep you posted when I have more information,
Loushou

@creasechris I’m just pinging you to let you know this is still on our radar. QA is going through various scenarios to attempt to replicate the check-in issue.

@creasechris – we made a new version yesterday, 1.10.1. This version includes several new features, and does address the situation that can cause the issue you describe here. One thing that helped this along was a better way of managing how the codes are generated and how they are interpreted, so that they are more unique, more secure, and less prone to edge-case issues like the inability to check-in tickets where multiple have been purchased. Let us know if you see the issue return, or if you have any other questions.

Loushou