A New Digital Stage: Mondavi Center Website Moves to SiteFarm
Quick Summary
- The Mondavi Center launched its 2026 season with a new digital presence by migrating its website to SiteFarm, the UC Davis content management platform.
- The site features a more responsive interface with real-time ticketing data and automatic event promotion through AggieFeed.
- The redesign closely aligns the center with the official UC Davis brand identity, utilizing campus color palettes to create a stronger visual connection.
- On the backend, the move drastically reduced event page creation time and comes with local campus support.
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When the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts announced its new season in April 2026, it also unveiled a new digital presence. The center transitioned its website to SiteFarm, the primary UC Davis web content management platform. The move comes with numerous perks: visitors benefit from a positive user experience that is equally accessible and brand-forward, while the back end bolsters many administrative efficiency upgrades.
“The SiteFarm team really thought critically about how to make our unique needs work within the university platform. We got far beyond what we anticipated in terms of design and development,” explained Reuben Greenwald, Director of Marketing and Communications for the Mondavi Center.
Several members of the SiteFarm team, comprised of experienced web developers and user experience designers from UC Davis Information and Educational Technology (IET), are also fans of the arts. They approached the project as technical experts and patrons of the Mondavi Center with a personal stake in its success.
“From simplifying code so visitors aren’t popping around the page to find ticket availability, to creating event templates with photo, audio, and video embeds to save time for site managers, each design choice was rooted in our own experience of attending shows at the Mondavi Center and creating usable, appealing websites for campus partners,” said Shawn DeArmond, Information and Educational Technology (IET) Web Architect.
Enhanced Visitor Experience
Visitors to the new site will experience a more intuitive and responsive interface – designed to make finding events and purchasing tickets seamless. Key improvements include:
- Real-Time Ticketing Data: A new backend integration allows the site to show up-to-the-second ticket availability, letting visitors know if there are a limited number of tickets available or if they’re sold out, directly on event pages without requiring extra clicks.
- Intuitive Navigation: The new menu structure search features allow visitors to filter and find performances more easily than the previous site design.
- Improved Accessibility: SiteFarm, paired with SiteImprove, provides site managers with robust accessibility tools, including automatic alt-text on images, readability scores, descriptive link assessments, and more to ensure the site is usable for all visitors.
- Automatic Campus Promotion: Events and any updates will be shared directly to AggieFeed, the campus activity stream that displays information and events from campus departments and organizations.
University Branding & Local Support
The new design aligns the Mondavi Center more closely with the UC Davis brand identity, utilizing the official campus color palette and updated web design elements from Strategic Communications. Reuben hopes visitors will feel more connected to the university when visiting the Mondavi Center.
“With our old site, we weren’t able to utilize as many UC Davis brand colors as we wanted,” explained Reuben. “With the move to SiteFarm, visitors are going to see more of a connection with both the university and Mondavi Center print materials.”
Administrative Efficiency Upgrades
For the Mondavi Center’s Marketing team, the update drastically reduces the time required to manage the site. Reuben noted that creating an event page now takes just 15-20 minutes, compared to nearly an hour on the old system.
“The SiteFarm team created event templates for us so now we’re not starting from scratch every time we need to add a new event,” he explained. “It makes the work so much faster and easier for our team, especially during new season launches when we have to create 40 to 50 events pages at once.”
The Mondavi Center team also benefits from built-in SiteFarm features like photo galleries, blogs, and media file hosting, and regular upgrades.
“By being on SiteFarm, they also get new features for free, such as the AI Assistant for writing summaries and alt-text for images, explained Shawn. “We are also working on a faceted search (filtering by genre or time) that they will be able to use once it's released.”
Ultimately, the update brings the Mondavi Center’s digital operations back to Davis. Moving away from an international vendor to an "in-house" team means the center now has local experts who are not just administrators, but fans of the Mondavi Center themselves. With a secure, brand-aligned platform and a campus support team, the Mondavi Center showcased its 2026 season with a website that truly reflects its identity as a cornerstone of the UC Davis community.