Live Music Promotion Tool

[Loki1987]

Hi guys,

 

I've read that the PHP community ia one of the best around so here goes..!

 

I run a a live music venue in the UK, and also put on concerts/tours independently across the country. Without wanting to get too bogged down in what that entails, a large proportion of my time is spent relaying what is essentially the same information in different templates to different parties:

 

-My Press List

-Online Ticket Vendors

-The bands / Tour managers involved

-My website

-Social Networking Sites

-My mailing list

 

With a work flow of something like:

 

-Details are confirmed

-Advance this info to bands/those involved on the night

-Announce the show to press and ticket sites so it is publicised and on sale

-Add to our website's listings

-Create Facebook Event etc

-Send to mailing list (usually organised by genre)

 

As I say, this is mostly the same information just in different orders, with a different focus each time. Detals like location, price, date, web links, etc.

 

So I'd like to create an online form where I create a show as an entity (record in a database I suppose) with ALL info, and i can send the right/relavent info in the right order to each party, and create Facebook events etc with the click of a button. No typing, copying and pasting, etc. It will literally save me hours a week.

 

So.. Before I start I would be very grateful for any advice on:

 

-Whether it's easily achievable or not

-Overall structure, what kind of files are needed/sensible and in what order?

-Any 3rd party tools that I should use?

-Any existing systems that I could/should be basing it on?

 

(Regarding the last two - I have read in some places that it would be not only more time consuming, but also inferior to create it all from scratch when there are so many tools out there that have various functions perfected.. e.g. mailing list database/services)

 

Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

Loki

UK

[AMcHarg]

It's not that difficult to achieve. I'm not sure about any third-party software for this purpose (there may be some).

 

You would create a form and a php handler for the form to stick the data into the database. You could then create various templates to extract the information from the database and show it in various different ways.

 

Getting the information on Facebook isn't hard either. All you need to do is create a script to make an RSS feed, and in your Facebook account you add the route to the feed on your website. Facebook then updates (I think every half hour). I've heard that Twitter is a bit more complicated, but one of the guys I work with has done one for Twitter too, so it's not too hard.

 

Hope it helps.

[Muddy_Funster]

Sounds like you need a full project analysis on this rather than the advice of a community forum.  To answer you in deapth could take pages (although it would require more information from you).  If you're wanting to run with it here we will need some more information to effectivly answer your question:

 

1- What skills are you bringing to the table regards web development?

2- What systems are you planning to run this on?

3- What are you planning to spend on it (ball park obviously).

[Loki1987]

Thanks Muddy for your reply.

 

1 - I can use html / css, and create record management systems locally with things like MS Excel, MS Acces. Don't know PHP yet but wanted to make sure i wasn't barking up the wrong tree before spending weeks on it.

 

2 - I was hoping to use a webform, accessed through a browser, in terms of inputing the data and viewing records... Using php to power what I presume is essentially a database, as well as the listings section of the site. Facebook API to create events automatically. And I thought it might be simple to access different mailing lists from the database, launching templates which contain the date/time/title of an event that needs to be sent out.

 

3 - I was hoping this would be relatively cost free, but if you have any suggestion then I'm all ears. Given that I'm a novice, would I maybe be better off designing this as a local database (e.g. fairly simple with MS Access) and paying for a service that converts my creation to PHP?

 

I had seen the project panning out as something like:

 

PHP Database - stores gigs and mailing lists

Webforms - to Create, View, and Edit records

Email Templates - Populated by a singular record's data

Facebook Events - Populated the same way

Listings Section (on our website) - Displays all gigs, populated from all records displaying only the date range today-infinity

 

Essentially, a record management system that I can access online, sends emails using templates and publishes to a couple of clever places too.

 

Thus saving hours of typing, copying & pasting, FB event creation, and manual website updates - all from the same place

 

..Apologies if I've missed the point of your question / the infuriating nature of my general ignorance.

 

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Edit: Thanks AMcHarg (sorry didn't see your reply at first).. that's very helpful and encouraging. Plenty of tangible answers that I can at least research and buid into a design.