In mid-2004, HI~Arts invited competitive tenders from a number of potential online ticketing providers to provide the system for its Ticketing Project.

Three broad options were considered:

1. Buying into an existing ticketing service, entirely based and administered online.
2. Developing a new and simple online system from scratch to suit the particular needs of the small to mid-scale and voluntary cultural organisations of the Highlands & Islands.
3. Purchasing a reliable off-the-shelf software-based ticketing product, and developing an intuitive online interface to enable ticket sellers to manage their events and ticket allocations simply through any Internet connection.

Given that the system had to be intuitive and user-friendly for even the least computer-literate user, existing online systems appeared to be too complicated for our needs. On the other hand, devising a totally new ticketing system from scratch seemed like reinventing the wheel and presented too much of a risk to the project.

Therefore, the last option was chosen as a "middle way" - purchasing a tried and tested software based system and then developing a simple online to interface with this robust core system.  This online interface has become known as the "Promoters' Interface", and will allow ticket sellers to log in and manage the events and allocations of tickets that they are selling online through the system.
 

The Promoters' Interface will be developed by Sitekit Solutions.  Sitekit are based in Portree on the Isle of Skye, and developed the award-winning HI~Arts website and events database (www.hi-arts.co.uk) which now receives around 5,000 visitors every day.

Below is a techinical diagram of the proposed architecture for the entire ticketing system, drawn up by Sitekit.