Back to Start PageBuilding a Theatre Website
PRE-PUBLICATION DRAFT
STAGE DIRECTIONS
COPYRIGHT 1999
AUTHOR: Patrick Finelli, Ph.D.
TITLE: Building a Website
Do you use posters to advertise your shows? Do you send brochures out through the mail? Would you like to recruit new subscribers? Would you like to let the world know more about your theatre? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, you might consider creating a website for your theatre. You only need a few basic computer hardware and software tools to get started, then you can add your theatre’s name to the list of "dot com" sites on the Internet. The advantage of the web is that you can forge new connections with your audience by publishing your season calendar with hyperlinks to your box office for ticket sales and special promotions. Since the web offers the potential for multimedia publishing, you can imagine the exciting possibilities for promoting your theatre company with pictures, video and audio clips, biographical data and reviews.
There are many model websites you can visit from Broadway to Regional Theatre to get an idea of the possibilities. Many are listed on Playbill’s site (Figure 1, www.playbill.com). We’ve selected three examples of regional theatres that have : excellent web sites for you to check out: Trinity Rep (Figure 2, www.trinityrep.com); Alabama Shakespeare Festival (Figure 3, www.asf.net) and American Repertory Theatre (Figure 4, www.amrep.org).
You could hire someone to create your own web pages or do it yourself, but before you begin the practical task of putting images and text on the world wide web, the first step is to decide how to organize your site. What kind of information do you want to put in front of your audience? Think of this in the same way that you would plan a promotional brochure. The main difference is that it will be an interactive electronic newsletter that you can update at any time. If you link to your local city guide, you may find that you can develop audiences in ways you never thought possible.
Here’s an example of what you might find on a good theatre web site: On the first page you’ll have the name of your theatre, your current production, the theatre’s address and an index to the rest of the site. A simple site will have an e-mail link so your audience can get in touch with you. A more advanced website will have a link to a page with forms for ticket sales by credit card. A sidebar might contain buttons with hyperlinks to more pages drawn from the following list:
Season schedule.
Advance tickets.
Cyber-coupons for ticket promotions.
Program notes.
A "Guestbook" for visitors to register for your mailing list.
Casting calls.
Lists of donors or volunteers.
Information about educational programs.
Special events for seniors.
A note describing the advantage of subscribing your theatre.
Job openings in case you need to hire an extra carpenter or stitcher.
A local map with directions to your theatre and parking.
Selected restaurants and hotels nearby.
A navigation link to your citysite, town or chamber of commerce web page.
Actor biographies.
Sample scenes (video clips).
Audio message or famous monologue.
Scenic design archive (digitized images).
Poster archive (digitized images).
Pictures of your theatre.
Pictures from past productions.
The process of building your website is not as difficult or expensive as you might think. You can hire someone to do the work or you can create the pages on your own PC and then upload to your own web server on an Internet Service Provider (ISP). Many ISPs such as AOL, Geocities or Theglobe will give you space for free or for a minimum charge. If you plan to sell tickets online via credit card, you should make sure that your ISP has a "secure server" that is protected from hackers by means of a "firewall," which is a software program that protects your pages from unwanted intruders.
The design fundamentals for a web page are the same as for posters or programs in terms of composition and color choice. You can use a word processor for the text files, although for making the actual web page it is better to use a program specifically designed for the task such as Microsoft Front Page or Netscape Composer. These programs make it easier to work with HTML (hypertext markup language), the code that tells the computer what to display. Your computer may already have a sound card to making audio clips to place on your site, such as a welcome from the Managing Director or a speech from a recent play. Other tools help you prepare your graphics and images for placement on your web pages. You could publish your director’s notes along with digitized promotional photos. We’ve covered a couple of devices that you can use to capture images for presentation ("Scanning the Horizon," Stage Directions, October 1998 and "Digital Cameras," Stage Directions, May 1999). You can create original graphics with other software programs like Adobe Photoshop or Micrografix Designer.
Some do’s and don’ts:
Don’t put dark fonts on dark backgrounds.
Don’t make readers search.
Frames can help, but be wary. Slower computers use "no-frames" option.
Don’t use a lot of flashy or memory intensive graphics.
Keep text readable, break it up into a graphic or bold subheading.
Remember the differences between Unix and windows in terms of case sensitive characters and file extentions html htm. Folder permissions.
Keep pictures to a minimum.
Don’t force viewers to watch video, but you might give them an option.
640x480, keep less than 600.
For graphics files, use jpg for photos and graphics, gif for single logos only 256 colors.
Test
General - put something worthwhile on every page.
Don’t overload, check your design.
Go for stylistic consistency.
© Copyright 1995-1999 by Patrick M. Finelli. All rights reserved. These pages are protected by United States and international copyright laws. Copying or distribution by any means is strictly prohibited. Please send e-mail to finelli@satie.arts.usf.edu