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Do you want to share your Costume records with visitors to your website?

Many of our Database customers want to share their collection with potential customers, designers, and staff.  

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Putting a lot of data and photos on a website it a big challenge. There are many issues to consider.  See the handout ==>>   

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There are several ways to publish data on a website:

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1) Do it on your own: 

    Create an Online Database - this means hiring  programmers and web designers.  This can be very costly and time consuming.

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2)  Use an existing Online Inventory Database - Search the web to see the options.

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3) Use the Theatre Inventory Database:

  •      Export your data to a spreadsheet (see options below)

  •      Select data through the Search Menu or Reports selections, print selected records to reports/PDF and put those PDF documents on the site.

Below is a link to a small Excel sheet with data exported from a test copy of the Theatre Inventory Database.  This is a very small data set with small photos.  If you plan to export thousands of records and photos - the file size can be quite large.

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You can click on the link and it will download a Zipped (*.zip) copy of the file.  Download the file you to your computer or tablet and extract the file.

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The Photos are linked to the Tag ID column.  If you open with a full version of MS Excel (PC or Mac) you can see the photos.  If you open with the web version of Excel 365 the pictures do not show up.  See the notes below.

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Please contact Costume Inventory Resources if you want more information.

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Notes: 

 

This method puts a copy of selected records and fields in a spreadsheet which the visitor opens on their own computer.  They cannot change any of your original data.  But they do have a lot of information about your collection on their computer.  Even if you were to create an on-line version of your database – you are still allowing visitors to have access to a lot of information which they could easily copy to their computers and share.

 

The way it works is:

 

  1. You (or someone in your costume shop) opens the Utilities Menu and selects Export to Web option (not available yet but it will be soon).  There is an export option now but it exports all fields – which is too many for the web version .

  2. On your computer – you will open a template file (that I will supply) and click a few buttons  to run some programming code  which will turn on the Filter bar, link the photos, etc.

  3. You then need to create a Zipped version of the spreadsheet using Winzip or some other similar software.  This is so your website will accept the file.

  4. Copy the Zipped version of the file to the a page on your website.

 

When a visitor wants to see the data – they will click on the link on your website and download the zipped file.  Then they will unzip the file and open it in MS Excel.  If they open it in a full version of MS Excel – they can use all the features and see the photos.  If they open it on a phone or tablet using the online version of Excel – they can’t see the photos but they can still filter and sort it.

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