I am very excited to announce that the new ICG website officially went live on 11 March 2018.

Acknowledgements

Before describing some of the new features, I want to acknowledge and thank the ICG web team for all their hard work over the last two years to make this a reality, including Jacalyn Boggs, Andrew Assarattanakul, and Susan Toker.

Jacalyn did the bulk of the work to move the main website content over, and received a 2017 President’s award for her work. Andrew moved over the years of ICG news items and the entire International Costumer newsletter archive. I also want to recognize Kathe Gust, who spent many days laboriously proofreading every page of the new website and correcting a number of problems that came over from the old website. Finally, special thanks to ICG President Marianne Pease for her continued encouragement and support.

Tour of the New Website

The main page includes a special area for feature stories. Below it are recent announcements, short articles, and other stories of interest to members and the costuming community. To the right are areas for recent news items and videos.

There is also an events pulldown where you can view upcoming conventions, plus ICG, chapter, and other costuming-related  events. A new search feature enables you to filter events by type, location, dates, and keywords.

The menu at the top of the page enables you to navigate by topic, including the ICG (officers board, meeting minutes, and financial statements), Membership (chapters, SIGs, benefits and discounts), News and Events, Publications (International Costumer newsletter and the Costumers Quarterly archive), and Resources (Chapter and SIG resources, the Kennedy Archives and Gallery, the Marty Gear Fund, and the ICG GEL program).

There is also a new search feature that enables you to search the website by keywords and phrases, and select from a list of matching results from fixed pages, plus stories, news, and events.

The old website will continue to be available for the present at http://www.costume.org/index_old.html. Links to pages on the old website will continue to function, however, we will not be updating the old site.

What’s Next?

The web team is tremendously proud of the results, and we hope that ICG members will be too. Most importantly, this new web platform will enable us to offer many new kinds of content in the future as well as exclusive members-only content. ICG President Marianne Pease will discuss her vision for these in a future article.

One final note: the International Costumers Gallery is temporarily offline as we turn to the task of moving it over to the new platform. We will do our best to bring it back online as soon as possible, with many new features and viewing options for both desktop and mobile browsing. Stay tuned for updates!

Philip Gust
ICG Webmaster and
Chair of the ICG Technology and Web Committee