New Halloween Balloons
4 New Halloween balloons added to The Balloon Race.
Wrong Payment Notification
Why did I receive a payment receipt from Stripe when I didn’t buy the balloons? Stripe can only complete a transaction with a valid email address. If an invalid email address is entered the card payment box appears greyed out so it’s not possible to enter any card details. Rather than refuse the payment stripe […]
Women’s World Cup
This month we’ve added 32 new flag balloons to represent every country entering the Women’s World Cup. Included is a stadium background which you’ll find in the backgrounds library. Fingers crossed not everybody goes for “England”. We also have instant setup: https://balloonrace.net/selfregistration/ This is a personal relief for me as I’ve been manually setting up […]
Flag Balloons
Just in time for The Coronation we’ve added some flag balloons. Like most updates this was requested by a race administrator and I’ll look to expand the flag selection depending on popularity. I’ll need to add these to the downloads page which will happen over the following week.
Apple & Android Pay
Apple & Android pay have been added to the checkout. Everybody seems to be buying their balloons & ducks on the move so this makes payments easy and helps those who don’t carry their bank cards. The confirmation email link now displays an “Already paid for” message to stop those paying twice for the same […]
Balloon Count doesn’t match my Paid Count
Always be careful accessing the “administer the balloons” section when your sales are busy. If a balloon has just been created it will show on your list as “inactive”. Whilst you’re looking at your list the buyer completes their payment and on the server their balloon is now active (but on your screen it’s inactive). […]
12% Cost for integrated card option (stripe)
I know 12% sounds steep, hopefully the below explains how I only just break even. If it was highly profitable I could offer the race for free and just take the 12%… but it’s not. The concept for taking card payments and sending a BACS was requested by those using the race who had no […]
Balloon Race New Server 2023
The move to PHP was completed in September 2022 and everything is running so much better. During the changeover there were live races on both servers so to save confusion I ran the old server as balloonrace.com and the new as balloonrace.net. Now the move is complete both domains point to the new server. The […]
Selling less than 200 balloons?
The easiest way to run the race is to use the stripe option and I bacs a payment to your bank account. Stripe will accept payments from all over the world and you simply set the page up, share the URL and watch the sales build. If you sell balloons by cash you can add […]
How do I contact the winners?
There are 2 ways to find contact details for the winning balloons. Login to your admin area, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click “administer the balloons taking part” to see all names & contact emails: Alternatively scroll down to the bottom of your admin page and click “Download the balloon data […]
Upgrade from ASP to PHP
The upgrade is now complete, more info here: The balloon race software was built in 2008 when ASP was “a thing”. Over the years PHP has been the go to platform and ASP has been left behind and is now dated. In August 2021 balloonrace.com is being completely rewritten to go live in September. The […]
“Buy a Balloon” Button
You control when your sales start and finish by selecting “show” or “Hide” for your Buy a Balloon button. From within your admin area you can customise where the button links to and even change the style. The top button is the default “Buy a Balloon” and if “Show” is selected links to the “Register […]