Joomla theme development for the Dukes of Dixieland — one of the United States’ most decorated traditional jazz bands.
The Dukes of Dixieland are a New Orleans-based jazz institution with performances at the Kennedy Centre, the Hollywood Bowl, and the Smithsonian. Their website needed to serve two audiences simultaneously: promoters evaluating the band for bookings, and fans purchasing music and following the tour calendar.
The engagement covered the custom Joomla template rebuild announced in mid-2009 — replacing an aging fixed-width Joomla 1.x site with a redesigned build on Joomla 1.6 and a new custom template (dixieland). The rebuilt site launched mid-2011.
What the site delivered
- VirtueMart e-commerce: CD and box-set store with Add to Cart, product pages, and checkout — multiple titles including Deep South Blues and Fabulous Symphonic Jazz.
- GigCal tour calendar: Promoter-facing tour date listings in calendar view, kept current through the band’s active touring schedule.
- Audio player: Flash-based NiftyPlayer for streaming audio tracks directly on the site.
- Hierarchical navigation: Fly-out dropdown menus (TransMenu/mod_swmenufree) across History, Discography, Symphonies, Reviews, Tour Dates, Merchandise, Fan Club, and Contact.
- Fan club signup: FacileForms-powered member registration integrated into the site architecture.
Stack and context
Joomla 1.6, custom dixieland template, jQuery 1.2.6, MooTools Core and More. VirtueMart for e-commerce, GigCal for touring, FacileForms for fan registration. Fixed-width layout, XHTML 1.0 Transitional, Flash audio — standard for a live entertainment site in 2010–2011.
The current site has moved to Bandzoogle (a music-industry SaaS platform), with the same content sections — History, Discography, Symphonies, Gallery, Music & Merch — carried forward from the custom build.