A festival website that sells the line-up and gets people through the gate

Ticketing belongs on a ticketing platform

Festival tickets need capacity limits, ticket types, scanning at the gate, transfers, refunds and often queueing on release day. Anticode does none of that, and published pages can't embed a ticket widget. Use a ticketing platform and put a clear "Buy tickets" link in the header, on the line-up and on every ticket-type explanation. For a small free festival or a donation-on-entry event, a payment link for donations or a single paid add-on such as a camping pass may be enough, but anything with a capacity needs real ticketing.

On your site, explain the ticket types in plain words before people click through: day and weekend tickets, camping, children's and concession prices, accessible tickets and carer tickets, and what each includes. Say when prices rise, if they do, and whether you allow resale through the platform only.

The line-up in the CMS

A festival website gets most traffic when acts are announced. Keep the line-up in a CMS collection (artists for a music festival, traders or chefs for a food festival), with fields for name, a short description, day, stage and time once known, and a link to their own site or music. Each act gets a page at its own address, which people share and search engines find. When stage times come out, update the entries from the dashboard rather than editing a design.

Music can't be embedded on published pages, so link out to each act's tracks. A plain day-by-day schedule page in text is more useful on the day than a poster image that can't be read on a phone.

Getting there and accessibility

Travel

Nearest stations, shuttle buses and their times, car parking and whether it needs pre-booking, cycling and bike parking, taxi drop-off point. Link to maps rather than embedding them.

Accessibility

Accessible viewing platforms, accessible toilets and showers, the surface underfoot, quiet areas, carer ticket process, assistance dogs, accessible camping, how to contact the access team before the event.

What to bring and not bring

Bag rules, glass, food and drink, chairs, gazebos, pets.

Welfare and safety

Where to find first aid, welfare and lost children's points, and the policies you publish on harassment and drug safety.

Write the accessibility page from the venue's real layout, and update it every year. Many people decide whether they can come at all based on it.

Trader, volunteer and artist applications

Festivals take applications from food traders, stallholders, volunteers, crew and sometimes acts. Each needs its own form, and the built-in contact form's three fields won't do. A custom form tied to a site function can carry up to 30 plain-text fields: for traders, business name, what they sell, pitch size, power needed, hygiene rating or registration where relevant, and contact details. State the closing date clearly on the form page and take the form down when applications close.

Forms don't take file uploads, so ask traders to email insurance certificates and risk assessments once shortlisted. Send applications to Airtable or a Google Sheet with a connector to review them as a team. See volunteer sign-up process.

An installable site for the day

Every published Anticode site can be installed on a phone and has an offline fallback, which helps on a festival site where mobile signal collapses once crowds arrive. Encourage people to install it before they travel and keep the essentials (schedule, site information, emergency contacts) on short pages. Don't promise it works offline in full; tell people to screenshot their tickets and the site map too.

Design

Festivals have strong visual identities, and a design system holds that identity to one font family and one action colour. Brutalist (Archivo) or Playful (Fredoka) suit most music and family festivals. Keep the poster artwork as an image with full alt text listing the acts, and make the line-up itself real text. For one-off events see event website.

Limits

• No ticketing, capacity control or gate scanning; link to a ticketing platform.
• No embedded music, video, maps or ticket widgets.
• No file uploads on application forms.
• No live updates pushed to phones; people see changes when they reload.

Questions people ask

Can I sell festival tickets on an Anticode site?

Not directly. Link to a ticketing platform for tickets with capacity. Payment links suit donations or simple one-off add-ons.

How do I update the line-up quickly?

Keep acts in a CMS collection and edit them in the dashboard. Each act has its own page, and stage times can be added later.

Will the festival site work without signal?

It can be installed on a phone and has an offline fallback, but advise people to save tickets and maps separately too.