Stage Entertainment

Stage Entertainment is the biggest theatre producer on the European continent. Having more than 20 theatres over 10 million visitors attend Stage Entertainment productions and shows every year. AnyforSoft is genuinely excited about participating in Stage Entertainment’s mission by developing the new content solution and launching a revamped digital platform.

The Challenge

Stage Entertainment had all their European websites handled locally, they all used different technologies and analytics, which complicated the process of managing all those properties. When the new show was announced, Stage Entertainment team had to create a new website from scratch, not to mention that all the shows had different UI/UX designs. And only a single cohesive platform could solve all these issues.

Describe the challenge in more detail: several shows, new websites from scratch every several months.

Solution

AnyforSoft became a technical consulting partner implementing a cohesive Drupal 8 multisite solution. Working closely with the head of the product on the customer’s side AnyforSoft team made sure all business requirements were implemented.

The complexity of the project was in the migration of all Stage Enterinainemt’s online properties into one. Each property had different goals, cultural backgrounds, and diverse local planning, keeping in mind that all these peculiarities were constantly changing.

During the development phase, we visited Stage Entertainment’s office in Amsterdam while their head of product was in 2 of our offices several times. Those meetings strengthened our understanding of the project and improved project awareness.

The team that created

Technical Solution

Drupal multisite with a variety of Content Types managed on a page through Layout Builder, Pattern Lab based on Emulsify Drupal theme

Acquia lift Acquia Cloud - multisite applications with a single Master application which has the newest updates and subordinate applications receiving relevant up-dates through Acquia Pipelines.

Patternlab with Emulsify theme for styling and content hierarchy

1. Patternlab with Emulsify theme (npm, gulp, sass, twig) for styling and content hierarchy

2. Custom designed content elements called components, created based on content types, which, in combination with Layout builder provided the piece-of-art content management system

3. Custom Block library + Paragraphs for the most efficient content organization

4. Varnish, Bigpipe for fast page loading under various network conditions

5. Views, Config pages, Config Ignore, Config Split

Results

Stage Entertainment now has all the websites collected on one platform. Taking into account the current situation and disability to sell tickets offline, their digital presence became the only way to monetize their business.

It’s now much easier to create new websites with the help of reusable components. Not only it reduces costs and delivery but also increases team productivity

No need to develop new websites from scratch for the upcoming shows, and thus no need to reinvent the wheel!

The impact of the new CMS has been huge. There is more harmony and efficiency, and we have higher-quality components than before. This also allows us to work better together across the company.

Martijn Spaargaren

International Ecommerce & Digital Transformation Manager, Stage Entertainment

Business values delivered

As a result of more than 2 years of work, we’ve developed and launched 4 sites for 4 markets and 1 corporate site.

1. The vast amount of time usually spent by editors and copywriters for content creating has tremendously decreased due to reusable components.

2. All 5 sites implement the same look and feel and at the same time allow flexibility in presenting the content in a unique way due to customizable color schemes and Layout builder features.

3. The big amount of graphics doesn’t cause any complications for fast page loading due to a sophisticated combination of server-side caching, traffic compression, optimization of visual effects, and CDN.