Welcome Town & Gowners to the NEW T&G website. I hope you were pleasantly surprised when you opened your web browser today and stopped by the virtual home of your favorite community theatre. Once you get over the initial "shock and awe" of the new site I think you will find a few new things here to interest you. I wanted to take this opportunity to personally walk you through tht enew site and all of its attributes. Follow me and let's take a virtual tour.
First, the site colors have been change to reflect a more theatrical look. Some have said looking at the website now feels like sitting in the audience waiting for the curtain to open. Essentially, that is the idea -- when you aren't at the theatre, you are waiting for the "curtain to open" by visiting our website to see what else is going on. The site functions have been streamlined as well with a general menu on the left and information in the box on the right side of the page. The page has also been reduced in width so we can accommodate users of the iPhone and other similar devices where people have a smaller screen on which to view the site.
The Home page now includes a variety of general information, including the full current season, upcoming production and upcoming auditions or other event.
The next page is the Current Production page, which has all the relavent information plus information on how to reserve tickets. It also has contact information for the director and box office personnel plus you can download a season ticket form right there.
Our Current Season follows that and has all the information from the season ticket brochure. This is the first page where you will notice "work in progress." Each show has options below its description including "Press Release," "Review," "Poster," "Program" and "Photo Album." With these links you will eventually be able to access all of these items. The press release and reviews will be links directly to news outlets that cover us. The posters and programs will be available in PDF format. The Photo Album will include several photos in an easily accessible format. With that being said, this will take some time to archive our back show. You will notice as we move forward through the site that many pictures that were previously available are currently not on the new site. This will be remedied slowly as time becomes available. In fact there are lots of things I will be adding as the month go by. Keep checking back often because you never knw what you may find on the new T&G site.
Now we come to one of the newest parts of the site. Besides the shows we produce each season, we have recently introduced the Stillwater area to two new groups affiliated with Town & Gown -- Cueless Improv and Playin' Around. Each group now has their own page on the T&G website. They will both be updated with information about upcoming meetings and shows and will eventually include photo galleries and much more.
Another new page immediately follows those two, but this one is different because it is only temporary. A page is dedicated to Play Submissions for the upcoming 60th season. Information is available there for anyone who may be considering a play to submit for this historic season. Once the Play Selection Committee has finalized their selections, this page will disappear until next year when submissions are opened for the 61st season.
The auditions page is a little different that before. Along with a big announcement about auditions at T&G we will be offering space for other area theatres to post their audition notices as well. Just a treat for our members since a few of them have been becoming active in other local theatres such as Ponca Playhouse, Cushing Community Theatre and Drumright.
If you just want to know a quick run down of all the events for the next few months, check out our News & Events page. This page will include meetings, plays, Cueless shows, Playin' Around dates and anything else that may be relevant. Their may even be notes about members being cast in other area shows, new things added to the website and lots more.
Next, we have information about Membership. People can now fill out the form online and we will send them an invoice for their membership fee or they can still download a form, print and mail it in with their payment. Also included on this page are our current Bylaws. You can browse them on the website or print them as a PDF.
The next page is an idea that has been in the back of my mind for a long time -- an official T&G newsletter! These newsletters will be emailed to our members and will have multiple links to our new T&G website and lots of information. Check out the March issue here and old issues will also be archived here for future reference.
Another new page for the site is the Committees page which includes information about all of the active committees at T&G and a contact for each one. Feel free to email the contact person for any committee you may want to be a part of and get involved behind the scenes of the theatre.
Another new page is the Board Meetings page which includes a summary of recent board meetings and downloadable meeting minutes in PDF format. This will also be a work in progress as we work backwards to upload past meeting minutes and will be a great resource for moving forward and seeing what has been done in the past. It will also help us get rid of a lot of paper storage and recycle.
The History page has a lot of information that you cannot access from the main menu but it all seemed to fall under our history so it found its home here. Of course that includes our past productions, but now you can access them alphabetically and by season. This is yet another series of pages that are in progress because their are currently not any photos or much information past what was on the former website. Photos, programs, posters, press releases and more will be coming soon. Eventually, you will also be able to click a play title in the alphabetical list and jump to the page with information about that show, instead of having to search through all 59 seasons of our history.
The History section also includes pages on the Wagner Art Gallery, the Infamous T&G Ghost (which ha been recently updated with my own ghost story) and Touring T&G.
The Links page has all the old links that were currently on the site plus a few more local resources and venues.
Finally, the Contact page has everything you could possibly need to get ahole of us. I wanted to include a morse code message but that was shot down. There is out physical address, mailing address, email addresses, phone numbers, a form to fill out for information, all current board members emails (if available) and a map to the theatre. Plus it includes links to our MySpace, Facebook and Twitter pages.
Anyway, I hope you like the new site and enjoy perusing it thoroughly over the next few days. It has been a project I have been working on for several months and I am no where near complete. The board and I are working on adding much more content and options in the near future. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Kevin Worley for his nearly ten years of web service. Without him it is possible we would not have a website to this day. Now that he has passed the webmaster reigns on to me, I appreciate the opportunity to work so closely with the information gateway to the theatre. Thanks also go out to the current Board of Directors for their support and encouragement during this redesign process. If any of you have any comments or questions, please send them to me. I would love to hear from you.
Again, enjoy and until next time I'll see you at the theatre!
Jared F. Cranke
President/Webmaster
jared@searchingforred.com
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