While we are all still nursing our registration hangovers, I just thought I'd open up this thread to talk about some of the things that did go right with registration. 

1. Registration was on a Sunday!! - This was totally awesome. I know not everyone has a standard M-F, 9-5, but for those that do, this was really great. I didn't have to take off work, and I was able to concentrate fully on registration. Please, do this again next year.
2. Updates were quick and frequent - Derek, Aleta, Meri, and everyone else involved with keeping us (on the forums) up to date, did so with amazing patience and restraint. They deserve a big round of applause. Even if they couldn't tell us anything, at least they were here to tell us that
3. Staggering TD and Event Reg - In theory, this is a great idea. Honestly, if they had had better servers (or more servers) this might have been enough to keep reg from crashing. Either way, this was a great idea. Next year, we just need to work on its execution.
   

Now, while this is all fresh in my mind, here are a few suggestions.

1. Be Prepared! For goodness sake, if you have extra servers that can be added at the last minute, just add them ahead of time! Who knows how much smoother this would have been if they had all been hooked up prior to registration going live?
2. Fix Shopping Carts! Please allow conflicting events to be placed in shopping carts - just don't allow people to check out with them. An error message (WARNING: Events conflict, please remove RPG00001 or RPG00002 before checking out) would be much easier to deal with. At least you wouldn't lose both events, instead you could choose which one goes bye-bye instead of having your entire cart dumped
3. Fix your website! GenCon.com is terrible to navigate and not at all intuitive. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say the layout of the website blows donkey balls. There is nothing at all intuitive about the sitemap. In fact, the only way I can find to even log in and make it to the main menu is by following this meandering path:
   GenCon.com > GenCon Indy > Attendees > FAQ > Register Here (link that is buried in FAQ) > Login > Main Menu.
   Yeah, that is ridiculous. Is it that hard to have a login box on the main screen? No, it's really not, and, IMO, should be remedied immediately. 
   

Feel free to add your comments and suggestions, as well as mention what did go right for you.

1) This wasn't because of GenCon directly, but without that separate website to search for last-minute changes, I would have been so frustrated. So that was wonderful. It would actually be a very cool thing if that site were posted somewhere for other attendees to use. Beside the forums. The genconhighprogrammer site, that is.

2) I second the YAY on Sunday, and the times were grand for me.

3) Glory, this was pointed out to me. gencon.com > Gencon Indy > REGISTER NOW!

Suggestions: Instead of register now, maybe put login here underneath? Keep the register now, but also add login. Or maybe make it Register here. It currently just looks like a banner thingie.

Yes. Please. Extra servers.

Some way to drop events back into the pool after being paid for, even if it means system credit.

I agree with all but #2.  I actually hate that they worry about conflicting events. A lto of the times, an event is knowingly over booked by an hour or more, or you might just want to play a couple hours of a game instead of all 3.  

I'd far more prefer it if instead they had a way to return and delete items that you've purchased.  

I used to play a lot of CCGs and Monopoly tournament and would frequently book confliting hours and stil lmake it to every event.  i sucked at magic so an 9 hour touranment lasted 2 for me and I creamed opponents in monopoly so a four our game took 30 minutes.  

As for #3 you could also cick the register no button on the right of the main page to register, but considering it is concealed to look like your run of hte mill day graphic that sucks as well.  

dontadow:

As for #3 you could also cick the register no button on the right of the main page to register, but considering it is concealed to look like your run of hte mill day graphic that sucks as well.  

Wow, I sort of feel like an idiot as I never even thought to mouse over it. I just figured it was a banner or some such. Lame, GenCon.  

I have to say that after more than 6 hours of frustration getting registered for events that only 2 things went right:

1) Registration opened over the weekend. If I would have taken a day of vacation for that I would have been really upset.

2) I was eventually able to get the events that I wanted even if they were in different time slots.(I know many of you weren't able to get many or any of the events that you were hoping for.)

Good: 

Sunday registration was a big help.

Some sessions crashed right. My wife and I both hit submit on our windows at 4:00 and some seconds. They all crashed of course, but 40 minutes late we found out that some of the items, presumably all the items on one form, had gone into my wifes shopping cart and we had all but one of the things we really wanted.

 There was evidence in the forums that someone was working on the problem. That's better than the alternative.

Bad:

  Some people got everything, some people got nuthin. As a "have" Im ok, but the "have-nots" have good reson to be unhappy. With many events having, say, 4 or 6 or even 12 slots, out of a half bazillion people, getting what you want when you want it is going to be a mess, and that's life, but it would be nice to spread the win out across more people.

  Not even generating an error page. Redirecting to an error would look more professional.

• Staggering TD vs Event Reg again this year was a good idea.  Just one issue (below)
• Everything else worked great for me, just as it has in the past.

Concerning the over swamped out systems.  May I suggest the possibility of having TD registration, one hour downtime, Event Registration only, one hour downtime, then TD and Event Registration.

Please add more servers, especially if you already have them

Finally, redo the website.  I go to http://registration.gencon.com to login but yeah, the website is pretty horrendous.  A good website, to me, doesn't need to contain flashy banners, mouse-overs, drop down menus, java or Flash.  It just needs to be functional. 

I'm truly not trying to imply anything or call anyone out here, but; what has been going on since the last Gen Con?  There was no SoCal or Celebrations to worry about as in years past.  There should have been plenty of time to address these issues...the same issues that have been brought up in the past years regarding the website.  Most of what appears to be broken should be able to be fixed in a week's worth of work.  Most of the information is good, it just needs to be reorganized, updated and made functional.  No need to completely recreate.

I'd rather you just had a plain text version with the links easily displayed.  To sound like a grumpy old man, I much prefer websites of 1994-1998 then I do the bandwidth hogs of today.

dontadow:

I agree with all but #2.  I actually hate that they worry about conflicting events. A lto of the times, an event is knowingly over booked by an hour or more, or you might just want to play a couple hours of a game instead of all 3.  

I'd far more prefer it if instead they had a way to return and delete items that you've purchased.  

 I agree with this sentiment,  mostly because I buy tickets for my husband and myself, and it's such a frustrating system as it is, it's even more annoying when I have to monitor three windows (his events, my events, and events we wanted to do together) to get them to process than just one (possibly two, depending on how many events we want).  No one cares at the con whose name is on the ticket once you present it, so if I could just purchase everything under my name in one go, it'd make registration slightly more pleasant.

 It only took me about 20 or 30 minutes to register, and then I didn't worry about trying to check out - I'm glad the tickets last for 24 hours in the cart on the first day.  It was definately more pleasant to do the checkout in the evening when the servers weren't quite so overloaded.

 /ali

Glory:

dontadow:

As for #3 you could also cick the register no button on the right of the main page to register, but considering it is concealed to look like your run of hte mill day graphic that sucks as well.  

 

Wow, I sort of feel like an idiot as I never even thought to mouse over it. I just figured it was a banner or some such. Lame, GenCon.  

No you're not an idiot. It is in a terrible place and there is nothing identifying it as a button. it took me days to find it and my brother never found it either.  Its one of the reasons I question the webdesigners that WoTC hired.  It just reeks of poor web design.  

dontadow:

I agree with all but #2.  I actually hate that they worry about conflicting events. A lto of the times, an event is knowingly over booked by an hour or more, or you might just want to play a couple hours of a game instead of all 3.  

 

I'd far more prefer it if instead they had a way to return and delete items that you've purchased.  

I used to play a lot of CCGs and Monopoly tournament and would frequently book confliting hours and stil lmake it to every event.  i sucked at magic so an 9 hour touranment lasted 2 for me and I creamed opponents in monopoly so a four our game took 30 minutes. 

If allowed anyone to book anything at any time, though, we'd have two potential problems:

• Lots of people would ask for cancellations and refunds for events that they didn't read quite right and didn't realize conflictsed. We'd also end up with many more people asking for refunds after their events were over because they didn't realize their was a conflict.
• There would be more player no-shows as people would double-book themselves and then can't show up for one or another game.

Tournaments shouldn't conflict with anything on a date/time check (since you might be eliminated we don't want to block you from registering for anything on Friday just 'cause you got eliminated in the first round of a 12-hour tournamnet) so you can play your CCGs, wrap up early and head off to the Monopoly tournament. If an event blocks you from registering for anything else during it's duration, then it's assumed that you are expected to be there for the entire game, from start to finish.

And if an event organizer doesn't mind people showing up late/leaving early they can always request that it not block out people's schedules. I've had a few cases where people have asked for that happen - and a few where the EO has said he explicitly wants it to block out, despite players asking for it to be opened.

I think we can definitely improve the schedule blocking, but I just wanted to chime in quickly to try to clarify that simply allowing anyone to buy any ticket for anything won't solve everything - it'll come with its own set of challenges.

Except for trying to work reg around working off-site, it went fairly smooth for me. I had the same problems as everyone else with TD, and since that was probably my biggest crunch time, it got old quick since I couldn't keep trying to get in. Eventually I got a set of tickets, even though they weren't the ideal time slot, I got some.

I really, really wish there was a page - jump feature on the search. With the horrendous lag on the system, I knew the events I wanted were on page 9 of 15. Each page refreshing took several minutes, and you had to go page by page. This meant higher probability they would be gone by the time I got there, or the system would boot me AGAIN by the time I got there and have to start over. Since many of us checked into the system early, we had a feel for what was where, and we just had to check the availability of it.

Some form of quick payment would be nice. Either use Paypal or some kind of system that you can have your info pre-entered and just hit pay now. This would be especially helpful if you buy a small batch, pay, search, buy a small batch, pay, etc, rinse, repeat. Having to pull out the credit card repeatedly (or having it saved to a file on my pc) seemed very inefficient.

I must admit that the regular registration went remarkably smooth for me, which is a good thing since I really didn't have time to fight with it right then. My 2 busy times at work were 12-2 and 4-4:30 EST.

Being able to return events for system credit would be a nice feature as well, even if it meant getting a hat or pocket protector or something of that type, and could even mean more sales for you.

Glory:

Be Prepared! For goodness sake, if you have extra servers that can be added at the last minute, just add them ahead of time! Who knows how much smoother this would have been if they had all been hooked up prior to registration going live?

More servers isn't really the issue with the Gen Con registration system. Those of us that have enough IT experience know that the real problem is one of system design and architecture. The page timeouts and when they happen in the process are a dead giveaway as to where the bottle necks are. The problem is that Gen Con is unwilling and/or unable to do the major restructuring and rewrite that is need to address the problems. Some day computing hoursepower will be sufficient to solve the problem via brute force, but for now it is not. 

Braelun:

I'm truly not trying to imply anything or call anyone out here, but; what has been going on since the last Gen Con?  There was no SoCal or Celebrations to worry about as in years past.  There should have been plenty of time to address these issues...the same issues that have been brought up in the past years regarding the website.  Most of what appears to be broken should be able to be fixed in a week's worth of work.  Most of the information is good, it just needs to be reorganized, updated and made functional.  No need to completely recreate.

The real problem is the way the system is architected. Any truly significant improvement will only come via a major redesign/rewrite. Minor changes are not going to produce any major improvements in performance.

It was good that it was on a sunday this year, but I would have TD register on saturday, I would think that would help with everything.

atstepchild:

I really, really wish there was a page - jump feature on the search. With the horrendous lag on the system, I knew the events I wanted were on page 9 of 15. Each page refreshing took several minutes, and you had to go page by page. This meant higher probability they would be gone by the time I got there, or the system would boot me AGAIN by the time I got there and have to start over. Since many of us checked into the system early, we had a feel for what was where, and we just had to check the availability of it.

Were you searching for event times during registration?  If so, that would definitely hamper your chances at getting the slots you wanted.  Others were registering while you were searching.

I look over the times/events beforehand and have them in notepad.  Then I just copy paste into the system and Add To Cart.

Sunday registration...good

Staggering TD and mainstream events....good

Not thinking to implement servers on the busiest online GENCON event of the year....bad

Consider splitting the event look up server, the sign-up server and the checkout server up.  This would reduce server load considerably.

Allow people to 'walk through' the process ahead of time...the week leading up to registration allow people to go in a see how things work.  This might also provide some suggestions from the group on tweaks also.  Provide some non $$$ events people can practice buying so they can

Bring every thing down 1 hour before registration and bring it back 1/2 hour before registration start allowing everyone a fair chance to log in.

Drop the graphics/streamline the scripting...the more you can do with straight HTML the better.

Sunday Registration: Good

Staggered TD / Events: Good  - But I would seperate them by an entire day, not just a couple hours.

Servers : Bad - I mean, come on, it's the same every year. I got lucky this year, and I freely admit that, but all you have to do is check the boards to find those frothing at the mouth over how hosed they got. Something has to be done to smooth out this process. I don't care what it is, just get it done!

 Splitting the servers and eliminating the graphics to streamline the process would go a ways in the right direction

Anyway, as I say, I got lucky this year and got all 10 of my events, but this is the first time that's happened for me ever. *shrug*

There are probably some definite issue with streamlining the graphics/etc.   But this talk about servers may be completely premature.   It all depends on one thing.   Was the amount of server traffice the problem, or was it the database behind the server?   If the serve was having issues and could not keep up with it's demands, then yes, adding servers woudl help.   But if it's the database that's timing out/locking up, then you can keep adding servers till the cows come home and it won't help a thing.   I agree with waht someone else said, there probably needs to be a complete rearchitecture of the system.

 It would be interesting to know a bit about the GenCon registration architecture.

atstepchild:

I really, really wish there was a page - jump feature on the search. With the horrendous lag on the system, I knew the events I wanted were on page 9 of 15. Each page refreshing took several minutes, and you had to go page by page. This meant higher probability they would be gone by the time I got there, or the system would boot me AGAIN by the time I got there and have to start over. Since many of us checked into the system early, we had a feel for what was where, and we just had to check the availability of it.

I had all my regular events lined up. I even got all my regular events with no problem. I was just searching for available TD runs. The listing had the combat runs first, then the puzzle runs. I prefer puzzle to combat, so I ended up going to last and working back, but it still took a while.