Welcome to BigScreenBiz.com

Has anyone tried: http://www.godaddy.com

I'm paying GoDaddy $4.95 per month to host my site, and have found a talented local who likes to go to the movies for free to maintain it

Hey jacker5,

Hosting generally costs about 20-30 dollars per month, GoDaddy is quite good, but as a professional web developer, I much prefer MediaTemple.

Just a word of caution, if you build a website using a free service, and you don't have much experience with web design, there is a very good chance that no one is going to use the site. Free websites tend to be tacky and difficult to navigate and people today spend so much time on good websites, they have very little patience for a poorly designed website. If they can't find the information they are looking for in seconds, or if the website looks like it was made by someones nephew in the mid nineties, they'll simply leave the site and use some other service to find showtimes.

However, a well designed website can serve as an effective marketing tool for your theater, helping to foster an online community of supports, and can even become a source of revenue on its own. The two theaters I work with here in Ontario, pull between 300-500 unique visitors per day, all from the immediate area, making their websites lucrative targeted online advertising for local businesses.

Selling memberships, and paraphernalia online is another way you can use your website to supplement your theatre revenues.

If you are interested in a new website, want to maintain it yourself, and can budget $100 per month (which includes your web hosting costs), check out the service I am currently working on called Cinemon. If you have an existing web site, I'll move your content over for free, or design you a new site from scratch with any information you provide me.

Cheers!

Hey!

The site looks great, but please please please, kill the sound that plays automatically when the page loads. People generally find this very intrusive for several reasons.

If they are listening to other music while they visit your website, all of a sudden two competing songs start blasting through their speakers. They'll obviously have to choose something to close, and between their music and your music, they will always pick theirs!

If its early in the morning, (like it is for me right now), your visitors may not necessarily be in the mood for music. Please at least let me have my morning coffee first

Also, if you are in a public location checking a website, it can be very awkward when all of a sudden your computer starts making some random noise, and everyone starts looking at you.

If you have google analytics on your site you can actually see this effect. In google analytics their is a metric called the 'bounce rate', this is the percentage of people who leave your website after only viewing one page. I guarantee if you remove the music, your bounce rate will go down.

Aside from that small issue the website is great, its easy to navigate, and the most important information (current showtimes) is very easy to find.