Your public website (Presence)

Presence is your organisation's public website. Prompter builds it from what you already have in Prompter, and it lives at [your-web-address].get-prompter.app. It shows your current and upcoming shows, and can carry your auditions and ticketing.

You will find it under Presence in the menu on the left.

Screenshots show the light theme. The app looks the same in dark.

Switching it on

Your website is off until you turn it on, with the switch at the top of Presence ▸ Settings.

Presence is an opt-in module. Turn it on for your organisation when you're ready for the public to see it. Until then, your data stays private. You claim your web address (subdomain) when you create your organisation, and it is yours permanently. It's your address on Prompter whether or not the public site is switched on.

Switching it on does not publish it

Turning the module on lets you design your site. A new site starts in a short guided setup. It does not put anything in front of the public. Take as long as you like over the design and the wording. Nobody can see it yet.

Your site goes live when you press Publish. Until then, anyone who visits your address sees a short holding page that says the site isn't available right now. The page carries your name, your logo and your contact email if you've set one, so a visitor can still reach you.

Prompter asks before that first Publish, and names the shows and events that are about to appear. You can turn a show's public switch off first if you're not ready for people to see it.

Auditions are not affected. An open audition session stays public whether or not your website is published. A link on a poster keeps working while you are still building the site.

Publishing doesn't put any tickets on sale. That's the Box Office module, and it's a separate switch.

Taking your site offline again

Presence ▸ Settings has a Take site offline button. Visitors see the holding page again, and your pages, design and settings are all kept. Press Publish whenever you want it back. Your auditions keep working throughout.

This is different from switching the module off, which hides the website and closes the editor with it.

Back to contents

Using your own domain

On Produce+ your website can live at your own address, such as yoursociety.org. You will find it under Organisation ▸ Details, beneath your web address.

For now we set up custom domains with you personally, not through the form. Get in touch and we will connect yours. You add two records at whoever you bought the domain from, and we do the rest. DNS changes usually take a few minutes, though they can occasionally take up to 48 hours.

Both yoursociety.org and www.yoursociety.org will work. One redirects to the other, and you choose which is the main one. Once it is live, your own address is the one search engines use, the one your website links point at, and the one on any new audition links you share.

Your Prompter address never stops working. It keeps serving alongside your own domain, so nothing is lost and nothing breaks if you ever remove the custom one.

If your subscription lapses

Your domain keeps serving for three months. We warn you four times, by email and in the app, before anything changes. Renew at any point in that window and it carries on untouched.

If the three months run out, the domain is released and your website goes back to your Prompter address, which never stopped working. Nothing is deleted, and your productions, people and ticketing are unaffected. Search engines take a little while to catch up, and any printed links to your own domain will stop working.

Back to contents

How to set your society details

These are what your public site shows about your company, and what search engines read.

1. Open Organisation ▸ Details.
2. Check your web address. It is permanent, and it keeps working even if you add your own domain.
3. Fill in your name, tagline, founding year, location and links.

Back to contents

Setting up your website

A new site starts in Set up your website, six short steps with your real site beside them:

1. Name and address. Your web address carries your audition and ticket pages too, so if you already have one, the setup keeps it.
2. Your logo. It saves as soon as you upload it. You can skip this step.
3. Choose a look. One of four templates (see below).
4. Your home page. Tick the sections you want. Sections marked from Produce fill themselves from your shows and news.
5. More pages. About us, Auditions, Get involved, Venue hire and Contact.
6. Colours and fonts.

From step 3 you can press Finish now and keep the suggestions for the rest. Finish saves a draft and opens the editor. Nothing goes live until you press Publish.

A new page takes the words you have already written in your organisation's details. If you have not written them yet, the page stays empty and is hidden from the public until you do, so nothing half-finished goes live.

If your site already exists, Prompter offers the setup once. You can run it again at any time with Start again with the guided setup on the Presence page. It changes your draft only, and it never deletes a page you already have.

Back to contents

Designing your site

Open Presence ▸ Settings and press Edit your site. Your site fills the screen, and you edit it where it is:

• Click a section to open its settings on the right, in three tabs: Content (the words and pictures), Layout and Background.
• Click words on the site to type over them.
• The selected section has a toolbar at its top left. Edit and Layout open those tabs of its settings. The arrows move it, Hide takes it off your site, and ✕ deletes it.
• A hidden section is listed in a strip above your page, under Hidden on this page. Press its Show button to bring it back. Only you see this strip in the editor. Visitors never see it.
• + Add section sits at the bottom edge of the section you selected. An empty page has an + Add a section button of its own.
• Click the header or the footer to change what they show: your organisation's name, tagline, location, contact email and social links. These are your organisation's details, so a change also shows on your tickets, receipts and audition pages, and it is live as soon as you save.

The bar along the top holds the rest: the page you are editing, + New page, Pages, undo and redo, Desktop and Phone, Site styles and Publish.

In Site styles, start from one of four templates:

• Marquee: bold and dark
• Footlights: colourful
• Playbill: a classic serif. The only template that shows no banner photograph unless you turn one on. Its cover is typographic.
• Spotlight: clean and minimal

Then pick a one-click colour palette as a starting point you can fine-tune. The palettes are inspired by well-known musicals, and grouped Warm, Cool, and Bold. From there you can adjust your brand colours, fonts, and corner style, and Reset to template any time to clear back to the template's own look.

You can also match a look from a URL. Point it at your existing website and Prompter proposes a matching theme. If your organisation hasn't set a logo yet, matching will also pick one up from that site and save it for you. It never replaces a logo you've already chosen, so you can match as often as you like. You get five matches a day.

Back to contents

More pages

Your site can have more pages than the home page, such as About us or Contact.

• + New page in the top bar: type a title and press Enter. The page is created and opens at once.
• Pages in the top bar: rename a page, change its order, take it out of the menu, or delete it.

Once your site has a page in its menu, the menu shows Home and your pages. A site with only a home page keeps a menu of its home page's sections instead.

Back to contents

Why a section you switched on isn't showing

Some sections hide themselves when they have nothing to show, so your site never shows a heading over empty space.

Seven can do it: On Stage, What's On, News, Venue Hire, Past Productions, About and Get Involved. So can a text or embed block. Your Hero always appears.

You don't have to guess which. In the editor, a section that is switched on but would publish nothing is marked Won't appear in its panel, with a line underneath saying what would fill it:

Nothing to show yet. Add an event, give it a future date, and set it to public.

So if your News section seems to have vanished from your site, you usually have no published posts yet.

1. Open Presence ▸ Settings and press Edit your site.
2. Click the section on your site. If it shows nothing, it may be hidden from view too: open it from the page it belongs on.
3. Look for a Won't appear badge in its panel.
4. Do the one thing the line underneath names.

The badge only shows on sections you have left switched on. A section you hid with the eye icon has no badge.

Back to contents

Drafts and publishing

Your edits save automatically to a private draft, so nothing you change goes straight to the public site. The site you edit is the draft, so you always see what you are about to publish. Use Phone in the top bar to see it at a phone's width.

When you're happy, hit Publish to make it live. Discard rolls the draft back to whatever's currently published. The public only sees your published site until you publish again.

Back to contents

Your logo

You manage your logo under Presence ▸ Branding, not in the website editor. It's used across auditions, ticketing and emails as well as your website. Click your site's header in the editor for a preview of it and a link to Branding.

The one exception is match a look from a URL above: if you have no logo yet, matching saves the one it finds on your site. Once you have a logo, only Branding can change it.

Back to contents

Your banner image

You upload your banner image, the wide photograph across the top of your site, in the same place as your logo, under Presence ▸ Branding.

How it is presented is set in the editor. Click the banner on your site to open the Hero section. Its Layout tab crops it, sets its focal point and can hide the hero text, and its Background tab sets the overlay.

If you uploaded a banner and can't see it on your site, check these two before anything else:

1. Your template. Marquee, Footlights and Spotlight all show it. Playbill does not. It draws a typographic cover instead. Tick Show this image behind the cover in the Hero section to use a photograph with it.
2. The Hero section is not hidden. If it is hidden, the editor lists it under Hidden on this page. Press Show Hero to bring it back.

The upload itself is never the problem. It saves immediately, and you'll see it as a thumbnail in Branding.

Back to contents

Auditions and tickets on your site

The public site ties in with the rest of Prompter. During Pre-Production an Auditions button appears for shows taking sign-ups, and when the Box Office is open your Buy Tickets button goes live. The production's phase and settings control both, so your public site only offers what is available.

Every show you've marked public also gets its own page. Click the poster (or More info) on an On Stage or Past Shows card to open it. The page shows the image, the season dates and venue, your description, the same Buy Tickets / Auditions button, and any performing-rights billing exactly as you entered it. Share it when you post about a show.

Writing what the public reads

Open the production, then Presence ▸ Public Website, and fill in Show details: a subtitle ("or, The Town of Titipu"), a tagline (one line to sell it), the venue, the first and last performance dates, and a description, the blurb your audience reads. The subtitle, tagline, venue and dates also appear on your On Stage cards. Add the poster under Public Images, and the licensing credit under Rights & Billing.

Back to contents

Events and news

Your Presence area is more than the site editor. Alongside Settings (the editor above) you'll find:

• Events: social nights, workshops, AGMs and the like, which can appear in a What's On section on your site. See Events.
• News: short organisation updates (a season announcement, a review, a call for volunteers). Write a post under Presence ▸ News, give it a title and body, and publish it to show it in the News section of your public site. Pinned posts lead. Save it as a draft to finish later; drafts stay private until you publish.
• Reach: a simple read on how many people are finding your public site.

Back to contents

Putting your shows on your own website

If you already have a website of your own, there's a What's On embed. It's a small block of code you paste into your own site. It shows your current shows with live Buy Tickets and Auditions buttons, kept up to date from Prompter. You'll find it on the Presence ▸ Settings page, outside the editor.

You do not have to publish a Prompter website to use it. Switch the Website module on so you can reach the Presence page and copy the code, then leave your Prompter site unpublished. The embed keeps working on your own site.

What the embed shows is still your choice, show by show. It lists only the productions and events you have marked to appear publicly, exactly as your Prompter site would. So a show you have not made public yet stays private on your own website too.

You can also skip the embed and use plain links. Your audition sign-up link and your Buy Tickets link work whether or not your public website is on, so they can go on buttons on your own site.

Back to contents

A note on plans

Every organisation gets a full public site, and your own site shows your own logo on every plan. The free plan carries a small "powered by Prompter" line in the footer of each page, which Produce+ replaces with a quieter one-line credit.

Everywhere Prompter acts on your behalf, the free plan shows the Prompter mark: your ticket buy page, your audition pages, and the confirmation and reminder emails we send your buyers and applicants. On Produce+ those carry your logo instead.

Back to contents