UKH

So my partner is running some forest school sessions over the summer and wants to put some kind of booking and payment form on her website so people can book sessions through it.

I'm a coder and so in her eyes can just sort this out in a few minutes of my spare time...
I don't however code anything to do with websites and so although I'm sure I could figure out something I thought somebody might be able to give me some pointers as to what to use to do this.

What we want -

A booking form where you can select dates and times from a pre-determined range. It would be great if we could enforce constraints on it, e.g. a minimum booking is 3 hours. Also it would be great if there was something to indicate if you wanted us to supply lunch.

Something that'll add up the cost of the things you've selected and manage that (a shopping basket type thing) and something to take payment such that we can get the money (paypal?).

She currently has a free (I think it's free, or at least very cheap) account on wordpress.com. It would be great if we could have something on there but a link to elsewhere would work too.

Any pointers as to where to go with this?
Will this be a pain to do or is there some off the shelf solution that'll do this?
It's not a big money making exercise so something that takes a percentage off the payments is fine, something where we pay monthly is probably not what we need because the sessions will probably just be over the summer hols.

In reply to MeMeMe:
WordPress will have a plugin for this.
There will be a tried and tested solution that does what you want but it might not be exactly what you want and it might not be free.

I assume you'd have to get a hosting deal rather than run it on WordPress.com.

WooCommerce* is the "default" for WordPress ecommerce.

Magento* is the "default" for "proper" ecommerce

*it would be interesting to hear opinion of others on ukc on WooCommerce/Magento for SME ecommerce where you can't really justify bespoke development.

In reply to MeMeMe:

As above you'll need to move to a hosted install of WordPress (instead of a WordPress.com) to install any of the plugin's you'll need. You'll be able to migrate the site easy though.

This plugin is a good one for manager events and taking payments: https://eventsmanagerpro.com/

I'm not sure if it'll do the extra options like lunch. There's a free version of it (without payments) that you could try: https://wordpress.org/plugins/events-manager/

In reply to MeMeMe:

Websites and ecommerce are a world of pain; they are the primary target for every hacker in the entire world, and they all know more about it than you!

There are however plenty of off the shelf solutions out there, e.g. Booking Bug, which I would look at carefully before embarking on any bespoke development.

In reply to MeMeMe:

Looks like woo commerce has a bookings extension - https://woocommerce.com/products/woocommerce-bookings/ which might be useful.

From what you've both said it sounds like I'd need to host the site somewhere else, or at least host the bookings somewhere else. Anyone got any recommendations for good yet cheap hosting?!

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

Booking Bug looks interesting.
I think you're right about off the shelf stuff, I don't really have a lot of time to devote to this, nor experience with this type of development so paying something reasonable for someone else to solve this problem would be ideal.

In reply to MeMeMe:
Eventbrite

In reply to MeMeMe:


I've sent you an email.

In reply to MeMeMe:

If you're still looking for hosting, I can recommend Ghandi.net, not quite the cheapest, but seem to work no trouble, good ethos: "no bull".

As said, plugins will work, but can be expensive, or addons (such as booking features) can be.

Wordpress runs on php/mysql, so basic knowledge of these is probably helpful.

In reply to elsewhere:

He said he wants a good solution. That disqualifies eventbrite.

In reply to Removed User:
We used to use booking bug, but it was totally useless and the cause of much heartache! Can't say I would recommend it.

In reply to MeMeMe:

Anyone tried https://www.acuityscheduling.com ?

It _almost_ does what I want but maybe _almost_ is the best I'm going to get...

In reply to MeMeMe:

Don´ t overlook that your partner will now be now online selling if she is taking payment and there are some special rules she must follow. You´´ ll find details on gov.uk.