Since 2000 I have been primarily working on web applications and systems based on the internet. I have found that the skills that I have developed through years designing and building interactive exhibits and exhibition stands work well with web sites too.

The Ambassador Theatre Group is the second largest theatre chain in the UK, currently with 21 venues throughout the UK including 11 in central London. They have many difficult technical requirements for their web site - it must be updated regularly to keep the listings up to date, it must integrate with an existing online ticketing system and it must present a common corporate image for all the venues in the group.

Their new site was completed in February of this year and incorporates a mini site for each venue and two corporate 'overview' sites, all driven from a central database of event data that is automatically synchronised with their ticketing system.

In order to keep the site up to date, an integrated content management system enables staff at regional venues to easily update the site contents.

To minimize the amount of work that regional staff have to do, the system running the site automatically assembles details of dates and times of all the performances at each venue by scanning the various online ticketing systems every night. It then presents a list of new productions for which new information is needed. All the lists showing what's on, current productions and booking pages are created and updated automatically. Shows that are added or cancelled at short notice are automatically updated on the site over night.

The site has a reasonably high level of trafic (around 10,000 page views per day) and so to reduce the loading on the server, a static 'HTML' version of the site is automatically generated each night.

My part in the project was the over-all design of the system, management of the project and most of the programming.

• Integrated content management system
• Automatic updating of central database from existing on-line ticketing system
• Runs on a dedicated server
• Driven by Apache / PHP / MySQL
• Visit www.theambassadors.com