Chicago Theater Database : Cut to the Quick: Splinters and Shrapnel @ The side project

We're so pleased that you're interested in the Chicago Theater Database - a work-in-progress. The information presented here is NOT COMPLETE – it was compiled from public sources and individual contributions as a way of testing and refining the system and infrastructure. Until the site is officially launched, the most up-to-date and complete information will still come from the companies and individuals themselves. But poke around. There's some interesting stuff just a few clicks away.

1/23/09

After taking a month to train Dan in the ways of rails (to say nothing of that show we opened), we now have two programmers working on CTDB code, and to celebrate, we are rolling out usernames for a whole new batch of beta testers this weekend, you can check out the new volunteers here. and all their contributions here. If you would like to join the beta and contribute your information, send us an email. Welcome, everyone!

12/13/08

Added a whole bunch of accountability and community-building features in the contributions section. Now, each record created or edited after 12/1/08 contains a history link that shows the edit history for that record, and this section contains an up-to-the-second list of the changes being made to the site. In the event of abuse, this page will help the community self-police and revert changes. Better still, users will get attribution for the often immense amount of volunteer work they do for the CTDB.

In addition, we now have a users section where you can follow along with the most active users on the site. You can get there by clicking on the "Most Active" and "Contributions" links in the site header.

12/8/08

URLS are now a little bit easier to read, and include some additional name information about the record, for instance chicagotheaterdb.com/artists/336-Tennessee-Williams

We have FESTIVALS mostly working now, through the old "Parent" / "Child" system we created on 12/3. Each Festival can either have a number of One-Act Productions, OR each Festival can have sub-festivals (or evenings / programs) that then contain a number of One-Act productions. Best of all, all this data and credit aggregates upward into the festival as a whole. For a quick example, check out the complex data we have assembled on the Side Project's Cut to the Quick Festival.

Unfortunately for the speed of data entry, each production within a festival must contain all the required fields (like venue and opening night) that ANY production would have, as some festivals might take place over several days or in different venues. To make data entry much faster, we've created a handy link on the production detail page: "Add Production to this Festival." This will auto-fill a form to create a NEW production with mostly the same information as the Festival, except the new record will be a part of the original festival. This link ONLY appears on productions that are marked as festivals - either by production type, or if there is a production title instead of a play link.

Right next to that shortcut on each production detail page, you'll also find a handy "Create Remount" link to pre-fill most of the production information into a new production form, minus the dates and venue.

One more thin mint? Company and Venue names that begin with THE now sort alphabetically, but display normally.

12/3/08

Plugged in the Parent / Child functionality for Artists, Plays, and Venues, which expands the capabilities of the "Parent Record" fields. Artists with multiple name iterations now can link multiple artist records together, and the main Artist record will contain all production, play, and company credits for all names for that artist. Likewise, "Parent" venues now aggregate all related venue productions into a central location. While Plays can be adaptations of other plays or source texts, all adaptations and productions of those adaptations will display on the parent Play. This all becomes pretty clear on a page like old Will Shakespeare's, where all productions of his plays *AND* adaptations of those plays are listed.

11/30/08

Added some rerouting logic that saves your last view location and returns you back to the last page if possible. This should help significantly with logging in & out quickly and improving user workflow when updating the database. Note the new 'add an artist' links on the company, production and play edit pages.

11/29/08

More progress on the road to a legitimate and open User interface today! Lots of progress, actually. So much that we've set a few minor programming goals for ourselves before we open the beta wide open to another group of new users. If you're interested, drop us a note. We've implemented a full-featured audit trail that tracks each user's contributions and changes to the database, which will be a key protection against potential site vandalism. But that's no fun to think about. What is COOL about this auditing system is that it allows us all to RACE. As in: whoever updates the most, gets their name smack dab on the top of the site header. Think of it like a high-score in an arcade game.

Speaking of the header, check out those clicky clicky 3-D buttons! Still playing with site layout a bit to make it easier to navigate, let us know if you have ideas!

The auditing functionality is a really invasive update, so do not hesitate to let us know if you run into any snags while updating.

11/26/08

Added a key chunk of User Community functionality today - Now Companies and Productions can be assigned or taken by a user, to create a quick pull list of to-dos so that the user community can coordinate its data collection efforts. When you're logged in, just navigate over to "My Company / Production To-Dos" to see what info you've signed on to update.

Also added some fancy navigation sprinkle to the site, including a new hiding "filter" menubar, and the ability to hide this little update bar here.

11/24/08

Changed some under-the-hood stuff to create filters, which can now be combined to filter records in combination. We'll be developing this feature a lot more as we work towards an advanced search, but if you want to play in the sandbox, try exploring the production and company menus above, and combining several filters like /companies/filter/active/league, which will give you a list of actively producing companies who are ALSO league members.

11/17/08

Added a number of related-record counters, which makes possible several interesting features - notably the ability to sort Artists by number of credits (writing first, then production), Companies, Venues, and Plays by number of productions. Now, the CTDB rewards the prolific and, eventually, the historically prolific, rather than the simply alphabetic.

11/3/08

Added a new 'Contacts' menu, which includes all the information you need to submit your script, headshot, or director's proposal to the Chicago companies that are accepting them. And more information on the history and mission of each company is, as always, just a click away!

Happy Exploring.

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