Live Arts is one dynamic theater. A dozen staff, two dozen productions, hundreds of volunteers, thousands of patrons and friends… there are a lot of moving parts. The requirements for their custom website included the ability for numerous people to easily add information to the website, streamline their office workflow, allow staff and volunteers to easily find documents and schedules and more.
We began with conversations about the flow of information for their events, classes and volunteers. Knowing who should have access to what and when allowed us to lay a proper foundation for the information architecture of the site. We used organizational charts of the web content, then schematic page layouts to map the most important information for each section of the site.
We deconstructed web sites of other theatre groups, taking the best of each – both functionally and aesthetically. We created a list of likes and dislikes and reached a consensus on each part before proceeding to the design phase.
With the organizational chart, functional specs and aesthetic preferences in hand, the design phase of the project fell into place quickly.
Built on a WordPress backend, we added some select plugins to make an awesome oversized menu, responsive layout of the page (content resizes and reflows to fit each user’s browser and device), multiple calendars and a few other choice additions. Staff are able to add images to the slider, featured events, new pages, additional navigation, upcoming shows, calendar events and links to the third-party ticketing office.
All in all, it’s a pretty spiffy redo for Live Arts that looks homegrown but professional; easy to use and full of useful information. We hope you enjoy using the site and take advantage of this wonderful Charlottesville theater.
