Why a festival CMS?
Your festival is not exactly a calendar and not really a blog, and most content management systems fall in these two categories. Focusing on festivals has allowed Gazebo to cover the specific features and quirks of a festival more seriously.
Web Program
As a gateway to your festival, your program site needs to be fast and easy. Every detail has been examined for clarity, speed, accessibility, and SEO. Devices of all sizes are tested and accounted for in the layout.
Gazebo uses the latest generation of web delivery: server-side rendering to plain HTML and progressive enhancement. That means your visitors see pages as fast as possible, but the site is also an interactive web app.
Special web features include:
- Dialogs with URL management
- Custom map markers that include the schedule itself
- Grid view for a big-picture schedule
- Print-friendly view
- Schedule planner that can be emailed
- Submissions and approval of community events
- RSS feed and podcast manager
- iCalendar feed
Mobile App
For Android and Apple devices, Gazebo is a first-class native app. This gives the best performance, with fast startup, smooth interactions, and caching for adverse network conditions.
The app supports push notifications (APNs and FCM), but not all users will enable them. To make sure people are up-to-date, the app keeps a connection to the server. Alerts and changes to the schedule are immediately reflected in the app.
App design and features are controlled through data and the manager dashboard. You can change not only the app's colors and layout, but also which tabs appear and how features work. These changes are also pushed to the app immediately, and do not require waiting for the app approval process.
Dashboard
As a manager of your festival or event, you'll have a dashboard to define locations, upload images, and of course, add all the items happening in your program. You can delegate to other people too. Each manager or editor is assigned permissions to parts of this database.
The dashboard includes:
- Items with multiple times, locations, and types of tickets
- Separating items by section
- Locations with addresses, GPS coordinates, and alternate names
- Sponsors for the program and individual items
- Push notifications and in-app alerts
- Information pages and specital text in the website
- Editing website's CSS
- Styling the app through JSON
Language Support
Special consideration has been given to supporting multiple languages. In Gazebo, translating an item does not mean making a new item. Instead, each field can be translated individually and as needed. Dates, times, images, and other item data apply to all languages, so your schedule remains accurate.
On the web side, language is selected from browser request headers, meaning your viewers see their preferred language automatically, but can also change language as a preference. On the app side, language similarly follows the preference on the device.
What About AI?
Yes! We think festival schedules are a great use of LLMs. We have a test implementation of MCP running and have been doing experiments with embeddings in the database.
Make It Yours
Gazebo has been developed in collaboration with our clients from the ground up. If you have special requirements or a feature you would like to see, let us know!
