Witches' Ball - Words & Website

I met with Laurel last night over coffee, and we went over the final drafts for the text to go on the Witches' Ball website.   We've purchased the url: http://www.thewitchesball.org and are creating a new website for just that event.
 
The theme this year is The Silk Road. The Theme page, the front page, the Costuming ideas page, et all will be finished soon & drafts will be sent to the web team.  
 
The research on the Silk Road that all of us have done these last 12 months is really paying off .  Laurel has painted a beautiful word picture, which will transport people to the world we are making. 
 
We choose this theme becuase it was a period in history when people from many different cultures and religions exchanged ideas, as well as goods, and they worked together in relative harmony (Want to get ahead? Then get along.  It's funny how the quest for money can do that to people).  
 
In a way, the Silk Road was the internet of it's day, which is another reason why the theme is important to us.  
 
I've asked Laurel to add in some more links and enhance the Venician aspect in her text. (We are emphasising China and Venice here, with notes about the other cultures as a sideline. ) Little else needed to be changed.   
 
Some of this history stuff is a bit obscure, but our folks like a historical challenge.  We're here to educate, as well as entertain, and I don't ever want to "talk down" to our members.
 
I think our guests will be thrilled when they see what an exciting theme this is - there are so many wonderful costuming possibilities here..... 
 
Mystic Hawk will produce a web draft in the next few weeks.  Once the FCE council approves this, we'll load it on the WB url.
 
Other pages for things like directions, food, vendors, etc. will be put up later.  We've agreed on separate, short pages for each main topic as this is easier for people to read and it also makes it easier to find the information they are looking for.
 
Once these initial pages are up, we can start putting up Sponsor ads and further advertising the WB.
 
I'd like the site to be up and running by the end of July, so that the advertising team can get to work selling banner ads, etc.
 
This WB site is going to be our base site or "template" for the WB website.   We'll use this from year to year and only the theme pages and some of the artwork will need to be changed.  It will be a great relief once it's done.    It's exhausting creating an entire webpage more of less from scratch every time we change the theme.   While Captain Lightning and I had a lot of fun making the pages for 2001 and 2002, it's a great deal of work.  By creating a "template" and building on what we've done before, we can make great pages and not kill our staff in the process.  The idea is to work smarter, not harder and to keep the quality high.  

Sia