Classic Chastain Park Amphitheater came to Tribal Chicken Designs for a redesign of their existing site. They sought a new design that would appeal to a wider audience and expand their key demographic, while still supporting their brand image as “Atlanta’s Favorite Outdoor Experience.”

The new site had to make it easy for the browsers to sample music, search a calendar and purchase tickets in as few clicks as possible. Likewise the client wanted to highlight the various concert series packages throughout the site.

The Solution

Design:
When considering the design of the new Web site, Tribal Chicken took inspiration from the types of performers on the schedule for the new season. The result is a design that is “a little bit Country and a little bit Rock ‘n Roll.” A light background with black text and red highlights make a bold statement, while design elements positioned on an angle give a dynamic feel. Flash-based scrolling menus allow for additional user interactivity while keeping the content in a standard-sized browser window.

Development:
The Classic Chastain Web site is hosted on a .NET 1.1 Web container within Microsoft IIS server. Several pages within the Web site feature rich media components authored in Macromedia Flash. These components include:

• Calendar Component
  This component displays the current month’s events calendar with the option of selecting a total of three months. The individual days allow a rollover to display the event detail. This component calls the event component if an event is selected or takes the user to the Ticket Master website to purchase tickets. The calendar remembers the last month the user selected per session using Flash, JavaScript and the session created by the .Net container.
  
  
• Event Component
  This component displays the details of an event when selected from the calendar, text and images meta data is retrieved dynamically from the content management system at runtime. The event component is launched by the user selecting an event either from the calendar component or from the home page events list.
  
  
• Media Player
  The media player is launched by the event details component and plays rich media such as video and mp3 files. The media is stored in an assets table in the content management system. The .Net components query the assets meta data and forward it via remoting to the Flash components, the on-page component then loads the mp3 and video assets from the file system based on the data from the content management system.

All components support "deep linking", one complaint about websites that incorporate Flash is the inability to bookmark a page properly. The Chastain Web site Flash components are all “state” aware, when a user uses a link to the Chastain Website in their browser, the Flash components can interpret the link and display the appropriate data to the visitor as is common with a regular HTML page link.


Communication Protocol
The Flash components retrieve assets from the content management system which Tribal Chicken built on top of the existing Chastain Microsoft SQL database. The data housed in Microsoft SQL server is retrieved by the .NET application and sent to the Flash components via Macromedia remoting technology. This follows an industry-standard architecture for Rich Internet Applications.

Event Viewer Example
The event viewer is displayed on a calendar-user interaction or from the home page list of event items. The event component itself has no dependency on the page it is displayed on or what component called it.

The Results

The site launched in March 2006, in plenty of time to accommodate Classic Chastain’s pre-Season Ticket buyers with no down-time whatsoever (please visit www.classicchastain.com). Online sales have increased and overall response has been positive (actual figures not available at this date).

After successfully applying this blend of high-design and technology to the Classic Chastain Web site, Tribal Chicken Designs was called upon once again to administer the same type of application to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Web site..

Some of the components built for Classic Chastain will be able to be updated and “re-skinned” for use in the Web site for the Atlanta Symphony. New components are also being created that display dynamic content that does not change often. These components will be implemented using XML for the data repository for easy updating and low complexity. The Symphony has also requested some simple but elegant “reveals” within pages. This will be implemented using code rather than timeline animation to allow the Symphony more freedom in the final timing and aesthetics of the effects.