Community Theater Green Room Discussion Board: WEBSITES

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John Luzaich
Celebrity

Joined: 2/24/08
Location: United States
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 174

Topic: WEBSITES - design, content, tips
Posted: 3/04/08 at 2:40pm

Some of you that have a lot of posts, or that have been coming to this site for awhile, like: Patrick, Tony, Joe, Marty.... I need your help with this, please respond.

A Question more for those of you that have good websites, or good & bad experiences in developing or changing your websites. Ours is very basic and really lacking. We're going to look at a complete overhaul and redesign. I'm asking for two things here:

(1) websites you like that you can refer us to and explain what's good about it (or them if you have several good sites you like). Please give examples or website addresses to look at.

(2) some do's and dont's in new development or redesign.

I usually like to benchmark and look at other successful things. OK, and steal other good ideas. But, our site is really lacking. Like many of us, I think we do many things well, but one of the things we don't do well is our website. We use a basic microsoft frontpage program.

I've learned it's OK to dream big. We can look at other big theatres or venues or performing arts centers sites. Maybe not all of that pertains to us, but we can scale it down and try to use or replicate what works for us. I've seen some with video from youtube which are really cool. And I've seen some that have way too much content and are way too wordy.(like it's their personal file for everything).

Thanks much,

John

John
cfct@cfu.net
http://www.osterregent.org
http://www.facebook.com/osterregent

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trutter
Star
Star

Joined: 11/13/06
Location: United States
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 81

Posted: 3/04/08 at 4:14pm

Hi John,

Ive been somewhat quiet lately, but think I'll chime in a little...

I'm the lead programmer at a web design firm in Iowa, so sometimes it is hard for me to my own personal projects, but our theater's current web site is as close to "good" as I think we have ever achieved.

Ours is at http://www.actorsinc.org

Consistency is my big thing. I'm not one for decorating each show's pages in a different way. Also, it is great to keep historical things on the site, such as photos, cast, etc.

I have a lot more information I want to add to ours, but for right now it is pretty informative as is.

My advice is keep it simple, keep it classy, keep it consistent.

If I would redo ours today, I would probably add a "president's blog" with RSS, and be trying to fill in historical photos like a madman. People like to see photos.

Troy

------
Troy A. Rutter
Author, "Kids in the Biz: A Hollywood Handbook for Parents"
http://www.kidsinthebiz.com/
A Heinemann Drama Publication

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bbpchick
Star
Star

Joined: 7/17/07
Location: United States
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 86

Posted: 3/04/08 at 6:47pm

Hello John,

Check out our website www.murphysblackbartplayers.com

We actually use Yahoo! Site Builder. For someone like me who is html illiterate, this software is great. Everything is basically point and click. Another thing I like about Site Builder is that it is only 11.99 a month. Which is great for us cost wise.

One thing to do is make sure everything is easy and clear to get to.

One compliment I have gotten over and over again, is that it is easy to navigate our site.

As Trutter said, consistency is always good. Have all the pages have basically the same color scheme and layout. This makes building new pages easy and then it all looks like one site.

People also like to have pictures of past productions, posters, and other historical items. I design the posters for our shows, and I always try to find posters done by other theaters, for ideas. I also always love to have pictures so everyone involved in the production can be highlited.

So anyway, feel free to check out our site, and here are a few others in our area that I like.

http://srt.derekmaxson.com/index.html

http://www.stage3.org/

http://www.murphyscreektheatre.org/

Hope this helps.

Kendra
www.murphysblackbartplayers.com
You are NEVER too old to dress up!

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gracie
Walk-On
Walk-On

Joined: 4/04/07
Location: United States
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 0

Posted: 3/10/08 at 3:34am

John,

We ended up hiring someone (very reasonably priced) to revamp our website. Before that it was very very plain jane.

I first did a google search with the simple term: community theatre. After looking at several websites...I think I looked over every hit on the first 5 pages of search results...I made a wish list of the information that would be beneficial to have on our new site.

I took the wish list and created an outline from it for what would be associated with what page. I gave all of that info to the web designer and continued compiling all of the information. Some was gleened from things like our letter to patrons, news articles about us, our historical information, etc. The resources are endless.

The web designer was great to work with. I talked with him on the phone a couple of times, so he could get an idea of what style we were looking for. We really wanted something classy and eye catching. Someone else on our board wanted a red curtain, etc. Most of the communications took place via email, such as sending the info to him that I complied. I did all of the writing. He did all of the design and layout. It really was a lot of work, but worth every bit.

We now have an email address so people can contact us, which is something we never had before. Over the past few months, we have had contacts from 3 folks who moved to the area and want to get involved on stage. We have had contacts from a couple of people who want to get involved technically as well. We were most recently contacted by a large corporation in the area who wants to add our shows to their company newsletter. This is great news, because it was someone we had that type of relationship with before and lost touch with them.

We have a forum on our website to allow easier communication of rehearsal schedules, audition announcements, and general discussion.

Like trutter, I would like to add more photos to our website, but finding the time is difficult. For now, we have moved on to revamping other areas of our operation. And we have yet to clean up from our major flood in January (come on warm weather). Love the idea of a presidents blog, but I'm not exactly sure what RSS is and how it works???

Right now we are also looking at adding an email form of a newsletter that can be sent out 4x per year. We definately do not have enough year round involvement from the community, except during whichever production they may be involved in.

If you would like to check out our website, it is: www.vermillionplayers.com

Two of the websites I found most helpful, as far as what type of information we should have on our website were: www.hct.org and www.communityplayers.org

Best of Luck and let us know how yours turns out.

www.vermillionplayers.com

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pdavis69
Celebrity

Joined: 3/26/06
Location: United States
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 437

Posted: 3/10/08 at 3:05pm

Our website is fairly bare bones but it gets our point across.

http://www.fortfindlayplayhouse.org

We lucked out with the design. One of our young actors was taking a web design course in high school and needed a project. We had a one page site prior to this that was updated maybe once every 2 years with just the address and phone numbers. I think our young friend did a nice job for us. We are looking at adding an archive section for photos at some near point in the future. This should be easy as we just had the last 40 years of slides transferred over to CDs.

Patrick L. Davis
Fort Findlay Playhouse

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doublezero420
Star
Star

Joined: 4/13/07
Location: United States
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 50

Posted: 3/13/08 at 7:29pm

Ours is http://www.rushcountyplayers.org

If you decide to do what I did and archive all the shows and put bios of all the players, be prepared for a lot of work. I put in around 40-60 hours per show just on the nuts and bolts kind of stuff. Happily, I'm "retiring" as my ct's webmaster after this season and won't have to mess with it anymore.

. It is going to be hard to pass my baby off to someone else though.

aaron

“One of my chief regrets during my years in the theater is that I could not sit in the audience and watch me” -John Barrymore

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Tracy
Walk-On
Walk-On

Joined: 7/25/08
Location: United States
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 0

Posted: 7/25/08 at 9:27am

I am just getting started with my organization. In order to get a website without spending a lot of money, I built one online at www.CitySlide.com for about $9.98 per month (a little less if you subscribe by the year). It comes with a lot of bells and whistles: text editor, message board, pages for photo albums, calendars, links, polls, newsletters, mailing lists, etc.

I purchased a web address at www.GoDaddy.com and was able to direct it to my website. In order to take full advantage of the design tools, you'll need a PC as opposed to a Mac, however. My website is at www.JoyfulHP.org. They have stock photos for the header, but I designed my own and it enabled me to use it instead.

Tracy

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tonyboling
Star
Star

Joined: 3/15/08
Location: United States
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 55

Posted: 7/25/08 at 10:00am

I don't do the site for our community theatre group but it's located at www.centerstagejackson.org

I'm not a fan of it and I actually participate with at least 3 groups in the area and in the spirit of keeping the "community" in community theatre i took it upon myself to develop sort of a "hub" for the theatre in the area.

As far as prices go You can buy a domain name for about $10 a year. Also you'd need web hosting which is about $10 a month. I used www.hostgator.com because they have a lot of extras that can be installed. I like Joomla as a "site builder" or content management system. it's like a website in a box and totally customizable and has a ton of skins available or you can make your own f you're into it.

It's important that I know HTML and CSS but I lack severely in web programming like php/mysql and if you want a nice dynamic and easily updateable website, you either have to know those languages or use a CMS like Joomla, mambo or something similar. Hostgator has a bunch on their server and you can just click a button and it'll install it on your site for you like a computer program.

Since I'm not running a theatre companies site, but rather a community site, I've switched over to www.ning.com which is a site that allows you to build a social network (think myspace). So now I have a myspace typ site for our community. they can create profiles, upload videos photos or whatever, join groups and pretty much whatever you can do with myspace. Since I'm the admin I can feature shows that are coming up. I'm digging it.

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dboris
Celebrity

Joined: 2/10/04
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 124

Posted: 7/25/08 at 12:35pm

Since we are all sharing sites here is the one I maintain for my group:

http://www.haddonfieldplayers.com/

I also did a show/actor database on my site that is fully searchable. I am considering turing this into an application that other groups could use on thier own sites.

Dan

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Dave Charest
Walk-On
Walk-On

Joined: 8/06/08
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 0

Posted: 8/06/08 at 11:44am

Hi John,

Just wanted to offer some tips for creating your website.

Purpose: You should have a specific goal in mind when creating your site. (E.g. to build your list, make sure you have a subscribe button. You should think about offering some type of benefit for subscribing. Your list is key for cheaply marketing via email.)

Layout: Keep it clean and simple. Too much info causes confusion. You want to encourage people to visit often so they can consume your message. Try to keep each page singularly focused.

Text: Writing for the internet is different than writing offline. Text portions should be kept to black on a white background.

Try to keep paragraph width no longer than 14 words. (Adjust your browser window now to reflect about 14 words per line. You'll notice it's much easier to read and causes less eye fatigue.) Try to keep paragraph length no longer than 4 lines. White space is very important online. Check out the major news sites you'll notice how they use this style.

People tend to scan before they begin reading. This is why formatting is important. If your text is inviting people will be more apt to read.

Include headlines and sub-heads. Use a Serif Font for these (e.g. Georgia). And the body copy should be sans-serif (e.g. Verdana.) (The exact opposite is true for offline printing.)

Hope that helps. If you need any clarification or have any other questions feel free to ask.

Warm regards,

D.

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Community Theater Green Room Discussion Board :Theater Administration :Money Talk

Topic: WEBSITES - design, content, tips( Topic Closed)
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Author	Message
John Luzaich Celebrity Joined: 2/24/08 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 174	Topic: WEBSITES - design, content, tips Posted: 3/04/08 at 2:40pm
	Some of you that have a lot of posts, or that have been coming to this site for awhile, like: Patrick, Tony, Joe, Marty.... I need your help with this, please respond. A Question more for those of you that have good websites, or good & bad experiences in developing or changing your websites. Ours is very basic and really lacking. We're going to look at a complete overhaul and redesign. I'm asking for two things here: (1) websites you like that you can refer us to and explain what's good about it (or them if you have several good sites you like). Please give examples or website addresses to look at. (2) some do's and dont's in new development or redesign. I usually like to benchmark and look at other successful things. OK, and steal other good ideas. But, our site is really lacking. Like many of us, I think we do many things well, but one of the things we don't do well is our website. We use a basic microsoft frontpage program. I've learned it's OK to dream big. We can look at other big theatres or venues or performing arts centers sites. Maybe not all of that pertains to us, but we can scale it down and try to use or replicate what works for us. I've seen some with video from youtube which are really cool. And I've seen some that have way too much content and are way too wordy.(like it's their personal file for everything). Thanks much, John
	John cfct@cfu.net http://www.osterregent.org http://www.facebook.com/osterregent

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trutter Star Joined: 11/13/06 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 81	Posted: 3/04/08 at 4:14pm
	Hi John, Ive been somewhat quiet lately, but think I'll chime in a little... I'm the lead programmer at a web design firm in Iowa, so sometimes it is hard for me to my own personal projects, but our theater's current web site is as close to "good" as I think we have ever achieved. Ours is at http://www.actorsinc.org Consistency is my big thing. I'm not one for decorating each show's pages in a different way. Also, it is great to keep historical things on the site, such as photos, cast, etc. I have a lot more information I want to add to ours, but for right now it is pretty informative as is. My advice is keep it simple, keep it classy, keep it consistent. If I would redo ours today, I would probably add a "president's blog" with RSS, and be trying to fill in historical photos like a madman. People like to see photos. Troy
	------ Troy A. Rutter Author, "Kids in the Biz: A Hollywood Handbook for Parents" http://www.kidsinthebiz.com/ A Heinemann Drama Publication
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bbpchick Star Joined: 7/17/07 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 86	Posted: 3/04/08 at 6:47pm
	Hello John, Check out our website www.murphysblackbartplayers.com We actually use Yahoo! Site Builder. For someone like me who is html illiterate, this software is great. Everything is basically point and click. Another thing I like about Site Builder is that it is only 11.99 a month. Which is great for us cost wise. One thing to do is make sure everything is easy and clear to get to. One compliment I have gotten over and over again, is that it is easy to navigate our site. As Trutter said, consistency is always good. Have all the pages have basically the same color scheme and layout. This makes building new pages easy and then it all looks like one site. People also like to have pictures of past productions, posters, and other historical items. I design the posters for our shows, and I always try to find posters done by other theaters, for ideas. I also always love to have pictures so everyone involved in the production can be highlited. So anyway, feel free to check out our site, and here are a few others in our area that I like. http://srt.derekmaxson.com/index.html http://www.stage3.org/ http://www.murphyscreektheatre.org/ Hope this helps.
	Kendra www.murphysblackbartplayers.com You are NEVER too old to dress up!
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gracie Walk-On Joined: 4/04/07 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 0	Posted: 3/10/08 at 3:34am
	John, We ended up hiring someone (very reasonably priced) to revamp our website. Before that it was very very plain jane. I first did a google search with the simple term: community theatre. After looking at several websites...I think I looked over every hit on the first 5 pages of search results...I made a wish list of the information that would be beneficial to have on our new site. I took the wish list and created an outline from it for what would be associated with what page. I gave all of that info to the web designer and continued compiling all of the information. Some was gleened from things like our letter to patrons, news articles about us, our historical information, etc. The resources are endless. The web designer was great to work with. I talked with him on the phone a couple of times, so he could get an idea of what style we were looking for. We really wanted something classy and eye catching. Someone else on our board wanted a red curtain, etc. Most of the communications took place via email, such as sending the info to him that I complied. I did all of the writing. He did all of the design and layout. It really was a lot of work, but worth every bit. We now have an email address so people can contact us, which is something we never had before. Over the past few months, we have had contacts from 3 folks who moved to the area and want to get involved on stage. We have had contacts from a couple of people who want to get involved technically as well. We were most recently contacted by a large corporation in the area who wants to add our shows to their company newsletter. This is great news, because it was someone we had that type of relationship with before and lost touch with them. We have a forum on our website to allow easier communication of rehearsal schedules, audition announcements, and general discussion. Like trutter, I would like to add more photos to our website, but finding the time is difficult. For now, we have moved on to revamping other areas of our operation. And we have yet to clean up from our major flood in January (come on warm weather). Love the idea of a presidents blog, but I'm not exactly sure what RSS is and how it works??? Right now we are also looking at adding an email form of a newsletter that can be sent out 4x per year. We definately do not have enough year round involvement from the community, except during whichever production they may be involved in. If you would like to check out our website, it is: www.vermillionplayers.com Two of the websites I found most helpful, as far as what type of information we should have on our website were: www.hct.org and www.communityplayers.org Best of Luck and let us know how yours turns out.
	www.vermillionplayers.com
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pdavis69 Celebrity Joined: 3/26/06 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 437	Posted: 3/10/08 at 3:05pm
	Our website is fairly bare bones but it gets our point across. http://www.fortfindlayplayhouse.org We lucked out with the design. One of our young actors was taking a web design course in high school and needed a project. We had a one page site prior to this that was updated maybe once every 2 years with just the address and phone numbers. I think our young friend did a nice job for us. We are looking at adding an archive section for photos at some near point in the future. This should be easy as we just had the last 40 years of slides transferred over to CDs.
	Patrick L. Davis Fort Findlay Playhouse
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doublezero420 Star Joined: 4/13/07 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 50	Posted: 3/13/08 at 7:29pm
	Ours is http://www.rushcountyplayers.org If you decide to do what I did and archive all the shows and put bios of all the players, be prepared for a lot of work. I put in around 40-60 hours per show just on the nuts and bolts kind of stuff. Happily, I'm "retiring" as my ct's webmaster after this season and won't have to mess with it anymore. . It is going to be hard to pass my baby off to someone else though.
	aaron “One of my chief regrets during my years in the theater is that I could not sit in the audience and watch me” -John Barrymore
	IP Logged

Tracy Walk-On Joined: 7/25/08 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 0	Posted: 7/25/08 at 9:27am
	I am just getting started with my organization. In order to get a website without spending a lot of money, I built one online at www.CitySlide.com for about $9.98 per month (a little less if you subscribe by the year). It comes with a lot of bells and whistles: text editor, message board, pages for photo albums, calendars, links, polls, newsletters, mailing lists, etc. I purchased a web address at www.GoDaddy.com and was able to direct it to my website. In order to take full advantage of the design tools, you'll need a PC as opposed to a Mac, however. My website is at www.JoyfulHP.org. They have stock photos for the header, but I designed my own and it enabled me to use it instead. Tracy
	IP Logged

tonyboling Star Joined: 3/15/08 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 55	Posted: 7/25/08 at 10:00am
	I don't do the site for our community theatre group but it's located at www.centerstagejackson.org I'm not a fan of it and I actually participate with at least 3 groups in the area and in the spirit of keeping the "community" in community theatre i took it upon myself to develop sort of a "hub" for the theatre in the area. As far as prices go You can buy a domain name for about $10 a year. Also you'd need web hosting which is about $10 a month. I used www.hostgator.com because they have a lot of extras that can be installed. I like Joomla as a "site builder" or content management system. it's like a website in a box and totally customizable and has a ton of skins available or you can make your own f you're into it. It's important that I know HTML and CSS but I lack severely in web programming like php/mysql and if you want a nice dynamic and easily updateable website, you either have to know those languages or use a CMS like Joomla, mambo or something similar. Hostgator has a bunch on their server and you can just click a button and it'll install it on your site for you like a computer program. Since I'm not running a theatre companies site, but rather a community site, I've switched over to www.ning.com which is a site that allows you to build a social network (think myspace). So now I have a myspace typ site for our community. they can create profiles, upload videos photos or whatever, join groups and pretty much whatever you can do with myspace. Since I'm the admin I can feature shows that are coming up. I'm digging it.
	IP Logged

dboris Celebrity Joined: 2/10/04 Online Status: Offline Posts: 124	Posted: 7/25/08 at 12:35pm
	Since we are all sharing sites here is the one I maintain for my group: http://www.haddonfieldplayers.com/ I also did a show/actor database on my site that is fully searchable. I am considering turing this into an application that other groups could use on thier own sites. Dan
	IP Logged

Dave Charest Walk-On Joined: 8/06/08 Online Status: Offline Posts: 0	Posted: 8/06/08 at 11:44am
	Hi John, Just wanted to offer some tips for creating your website. Purpose: You should have a specific goal in mind when creating your site. (E.g. to build your list, make sure you have a subscribe button. You should think about offering some type of benefit for subscribing. Your list is key for cheaply marketing via email.) Layout: Keep it clean and simple. Too much info causes confusion. You want to encourage people to visit often so they can consume your message. Try to keep each page singularly focused. Text: Writing for the internet is different than writing offline. Text portions should be kept to black on a white background. Try to keep paragraph width no longer than 14 words. (Adjust your browser window now to reflect about 14 words per line. You'll notice it's much easier to read and causes less eye fatigue.) Try to keep paragraph length no longer than 4 lines. White space is very important online. Check out the major news sites you'll notice how they use this style. People tend to scan before they begin reading. This is why formatting is important. If your text is inviting people will be more apt to read. Include headlines and sub-heads. Use a Serif Font for these (e.g. Georgia). And the body copy should be sans-serif (e.g. Verdana.) (The exact opposite is true for offline printing.) Hope that helps. If you need any clarification or have any other questions feel free to ask. Warm regards, D.
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