Running Your Website
Printed From: Community Theater Green Room
Category: Theater Administration
Forum Name: Running Your Theater
Forum Discription: General questions about how to make it work
URL: http://www.communitytheater.org/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=2523
Printed Date: 11/23/24 at 2:36am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 8.05 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Running Your Website
Posted By: SpaceCoast
Subject: Running Your Website
Date Posted: 7/10/07 at 6:59pm
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I'd like to hear some ideas on websites, and please post your website links. I would love to browse for ideas . You can visit mine in my signature for ideas, suggestions always welcomed!
One thing I'm doing now is looking at ways of communicating live with my visitors and online interactice ticket purchasing. So if you know of a company that does this please post a link! Thanks ------------- Devon http://www.spacecoasttheatre.com - SpaceCoastTheatre.com http://www.surfsideplayers.com - SurfsidePlayers.com |
Replies:
Posted By: ticketjunior
Date Posted: 7/10/07 at 11:52pm
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Devon,
Concerning interactive ticket purchasing. What exactly are you looking for? How do you envision the process of an interactive ticket purchase taking place on your site?
About donations. I see you have a donation form at the bottom of your site. How well does that work for you? Do people actually donate? In round numbers how much have you made in donations?
------------- -James P. Walters Phone: 404-272-4778 http://www.ticketjunior.com - www.ticketjunior.com "We're the little guy in the ticketing business." |
Posted By: SpaceCoast
Date Posted: 7/11/07 at 7:01pm
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Donations - Nope not yet on either of them, but they are new. And if you don't ask, you won't get, so I'm trying and praying.
With Surfside, their donations would go to them and with SpaceCoast, I would recieve the donations up to cost of running website (domain and hosting is all) then I would use the rest in the theatres to upgrade technology.
Example: At Surfside I have a internet touch screen computer kiosk in the lobby and will be installing wireless internet this month. Customers can visit surfside's website why in lobby, and they can have classes/networking in the internet cafe I'm setting up.
I registered at your website and look forward to sampling some tickets! ------------- Devon http://www.spacecoasttheatre.com - SpaceCoastTheatre.com http://www.surfsideplayers.com - SurfsidePlayers.com |
Posted By: bbpchick
Date Posted: 7/17/07 at 8:05pm
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Hello Devon,
I go through Yahoo! Business and use Yahoo! Site buildier to create my website. I am completely html illiterate so this program is perfect for me because it's all drag and drop, uses text boxes etc..so you don't have to write any code. For us it's a bout $11 bucks a month so it is great cost wise too. It comes with e-mail, so you have an official e-mail address on the same account. This makes it really easy for your customers to get a hold of you because of the user form.
As for online ticket sales, we go through paypal. I feel most comfortable with them security wise. On top of that you can create paypal buttons right in the Site builder program wich makes things easy as well.
We actually have a support us page that people and go to and donate that way. It gives the breakdown of our sponsorship levels and how they can donate and who to ask if they have questions.
Another feature is you can create a button that shows you are on line and if you have messenger, people can instant message you when you are online and talk to you right away.
I hope this helps.
Our website is http://www.murphysblackbartplayers.com - www.murphysblackbartplayers.com
And actually if any one has any constructive critisism for my site as well I would appreciate it =).
Kendra
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Posted By: SpaceCoast
Date Posted: 7/17/07 at 11:56pm
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Kendra,
Thanks for your post, and I have visited your website. I work on the web everyday, on websites and I try to improve mine daily. My theatre gets their website through me, SurfsidePlayers.com. I took it over about a year ago and cover all costs out of my pocket now. So a great deal for them!
One day I will teach them how to update it,
 . I do target marketing so I have keywords in my titles/articles so we are found by SE easier. If you visit any of the websites in my signature, you will see when you click an article the page Title changes to the article title. I use a CMS called Joomla (PHP/MySQL) and run dynamic database driven website, that grows constantly but the pages never change, because they are in the database. So my history increases my SEO too. I'm creating a social networking website, like myspace but for our local community theatres called SpaceCoastTheatre.com and I'm doing the same for Orlando with OrlandoKaraoke.com (check em out!)
So my tip to you is use keywords in your Page titles, like theatre/theater, city and topics that will get seats filled through internet.
I do like you sponsorship page/ticket buying through paypal. I will be doing something simular soon too.
Thanks again! and if you look for other posts by me, I'm posting theatre flash graphics for websites, I'm not sure where they are here, since I'm a newbie! ------------- Devon http://www.spacecoasttheatre.com - SpaceCoastTheatre.com http://www.surfsideplayers.com - SurfsidePlayers.com |
Posted By: gracie
Date Posted: 8/26/07 at 10:10am
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After a lot of discussion and nothing happening with our bland website, we finally managed to get it totally revamped, redesigned, and tried to put as much info out there as we could.
After some internal discussion, it was decided to pay an outsider to design and maintain our website. We got very lucky and one of our board members knew of someone we could trust to do right by us.
Browse around and take a look.
http://www.vermillionplayers.com - www.vermillionplayers.com
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Posted By: trutter
Date Posted: 8/26/07 at 11:19am
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Our web site is at http://www.actorsinc.org - http://www.actorsinc.org It was important to me to be standard compliant - IE use CSS instead of tables. While I can edit it with a text editor, we purchased a copy of Dreamweaver for the theater that allows me, or anybody we want, to be able to easily update it. With only 150 seats, we have little use for on-line ticket ordering. We do need more donation pages. What you don't see if also an online volunteer database that I am also building, so we don't have to go to the theatre to have access to call people from there. I also hope to put donor and patron information in there as well and be able to provide some sort of "theater appearance" database like the IMDB. If I get it to the point that I like it, I may offer it as a service to the theater community, but Im a long way from that. :) The photo gallery is rather new, but is growing in popularity. ------------- ------ Troy A. Rutter Author, "Kids in the Biz: A Hollywood Handbook for Parents" http://www.kidsinthebiz.com/ - http://www.kidsinthebiz.com/ A Heinemann Drama Publication |
Posted By: gracie
Date Posted: 8/26/07 at 11:26am
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Troy,
Very nice website. Love it. Easy to navigate and tons of information available.
Are your albums created in the Dreamweaver program or another way?
With our website being maintained by an outsider, to keep costs down I have begun using Google's Picassa to create photo albums. I put the link in our forum so folks can look from there and I then give the photo album link to the webmaster and he creates a page for past performances.
The only downside, Picassa has a limit on space. I'm sure it will take us years to reach that limit, but wish there wasn't one.  ------------- www.vermillionplayers.com - www.vermillionplayers.com |
Posted By: Gaafa
Date Posted: 8/27/07 at 12:22am
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This is our site;- http://www.phoenixtheatre.websyte.com.au/site.cfm?/phoenixtheatre/ - http://www.phoenixtheatre.websyte.com.au/site.cfm?/phoenixtheatre/ [I wish I could the hyper thingy, where by you can just type 'this'| Which we get for free, but there is only a limit of 6 pages & rely on our members to update. We use the state government [BOCS] ticket agency & not from the site. [rather pathetic] ------------- Joe Western Gondawandaland turn right @ Perth. Hear the light & see the sound. Toi Toi Toi Chookas {{"chook [chicken] it is"} May you always play to a full house} |
Posted By: gracie
Date Posted: 8/27/07 at 12:34am
I believe that is done thru the website http://tinyurl.com/ - http://tinyurl.com/
BTW, nice website and great theatre. ------------- www.vermillionplayers.com - www.vermillionplayers.com |
Posted By: Gaafa
Date Posted: 8/27/07 at 1:17am
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Thanks gracie - I will give it a go! We actualy lost our venue. Our city fathers decided to turn it into a performing arts centre & arts gallery/ Spending some $6.5 million. of which only $1.2 was alocated towards the theatre & the rest allocated to build a 100 square metre Art gallery & tart up the surounding park area? The main hiccup was the achy'tect & the city flunky's had no idea what was need in a performing venue. So 'we' hekped them out & tookb them in fact finding missions to other community theatres & performance venues, along with countless meetings advicing them the best & economical way to achive a useable venue. But the powers that be have muddled on & have started by knocking the wings off the building, that were added on 60 odd years ago. Then duplicating the facilities in satelite buildings, housing the green room & dressing rooms, interconected with glass covered walk ways, to the stage area. (which make a great excersize target for vandals & other deviates!] On the grand plan it looks great, as an artists impression, but not realy useable, nothing unusual in that! Also the city flunkies are rubbing thier hands together thinking about how much money it will generate. Another white 'effalump is created. - but that's all another story! ------------- Joe Western Gondawandaland turn right @ Perth. Hear the light & see the sound. Toi Toi Toi Chookas {{"chook [chicken] it is"} May you always play to a full house} |
Posted By: TotoToo Theatre
Date Posted: 8/31/07 at 11:55am
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What a fantastic site! This is my first post and I do have a recommendation regarding the background technology for a community based theatre group. Our website http://www.tototoo.ca - http://www.tototoo.ca is based on DotNetNuke technology. (You can google DotNetNuke) and our host is iHOST. Advantages for our group is that we can set different levels of permissions, edit the content online and live (without having to go through a webmaster) and have a very flexible and customized variety of e-mail forwarding addresses (tickets, board, actors, info) as well as individual addresses. I struggled to get our board to use this technology which we finally switched to about two productions ago and everyone is loving it - especially from the viewpoint that we can keep information updated easily and instantly. We do use PayPal for our online ticket sales. Our website generates about 1/6 of total ticket sales. ------------- Mark Webster http://www.tototoo.ca - TotoToo Ottawa's Gay & Lesbian Community Theatre |
Posted By: John Luzaich
Date Posted: 4/09/09 at 12:03pm
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Hey Spacecoast, you can check out our web site at http://www.osterregent.org - www.osterregent.org We worked on the redesign of it over the last few months. We did view a number of web sites from this community theater site and got some good ideas. We did some research and benchmarking prior to starting our work. There are several good books to read too. "Web Sites for Culture" by Eugene Carr, and "Arts Marketing Insights" by Joanne Scheff Bernstein. The last book is very comprehensive and she interviewed managers and directors of different venues all around the country. The main thing we found is: change it often and make sure it's current. We were looking at other web sites on pages in these forums and there were some that were last updated last Fall or last Summer ....... not good! Make sure it's interactive, make sure you capture e-mail addresses and hard mail addresses, have a survey on-line, have pics & video on-line. The bottom line is - if it's fun and up to date, people will continue to come back to it, and that's what you want. (An update to this original post - our web site has been up and running for almost 6 months now and we've had 6,459 visitors and 68,010 page views. I think our old site had 100 visitors in the entire year and I was probably 50 of them!) ------------- John cfct@cfu.net http://www.osterregent.org http://www.facebook.com/osterregent |