I’m looking for a targeted opinion, and I hope you all can help. I also hope that communitytheater.org is gracious enough to allow me to post this.  I would like some brutal critiques of the web site, http://www.phillygig.com/.  It’s a pilot project of mine, and need some feedback.  I’d appreciate the time you take to look, and I look forward in participating in this community.

Thanks! 

I'm listing things as I hit them so I apologize if I'm being quite critical, but that's how things get better right?

My confirmation came immediately.

So I'm checking it out to give a proper opinion and I clicked edit profile. You might want to add text that says "Who can view" next to each pulldown.

Why are you asking for contact email in the profile? Couldn't you just pull the email info from the registration?

Why is there a blue bird on the light? Is that perhaps a Philly thing?

Okay, hard truth time.....

This probably won't work for you. There's nothing that sets it apart from facebook or myspace or anything that really identifies it as a theatre social network. No matter how much you tweak it, at it's heart it's still a packaged Elgg.org generic social network creator. I should know, I tried creating one for my town a while back using Ning.com

http://jtconnection.ning.com/

About 50 people or so signed up and were using it for a bit but it fizzled because why use that site when everyone in the theatre community already uses Facebook? Why have multiple social network accounts? I realize a lot of people have MySpace AND Facebook, but that's just a natural progression.

If it takes off for you then congratulations but in reality there's nothing unique about it to get people to use it.

Perhaps if there was some sort of built in show database where you could have it list parts you've played and those parts were connected to specific productions from specific theatres it might be useful, but as it stands it's a facebook knock off which of course is no fault of your own.

I was in the same boat almost a year ago so I know you are just trying to provide a great service to your theatre community. Unfortunately the internet has been distilled down to Facebook for most people.

Eventually, even sites like this could die.

Yep, it went to my Spam folder. Strange that is did that since the e-mail has very little content that would get it flagged as Spam. Maybe your host IP addresses are on a SPAM blacklist. Another strange thing is when I clicked on the confirmation link in Yahoo mail it just returned me back to my Yahoo mail page. When I then cut and pasted the link the site came up with multiple "Your registration has been confirmed messages".

@ isamember -- I totally agree, there are just theconventions and basics.  People make a social network, and customization and content makes a community that people want to engage and visit again.  Building Web communities is not easy work.  It is what it is ... building value is the fun part.  It also take a lot of patience.  So far, I've gotten  some really good feedback, and I appreciate it.

@ Dan --  It's good to get a Web programmer's perspective.  ie 6.0 ... transparent PNG files were not supported.  I realize that I'm cutting a few people out.  And I am ready to change hosts very soon. I'm more in the all-arond Web profession myself, so

Thanks again to both of you -- I'll keep at at.

OK, I've done it again - new name, more features and content.  Your opinions are very welcome. http://www.theatrestory.com/