Associations play a critical role in organizing conferences, which often serve as a platform for continuing education credits or presenting papers and research. However, managing conferences can be a chaotic affair, particularly when there are multiple sessions, speakers, and tracks happening simultaneously across different time slots and locations, whether in-person, virtual, or hybrid. Therefore, it is helpful to have a dedicated conference website that showcases all the necessary information for attendees and speakers.

One such platform that can meet these needs is Raytha, an open-source .NET CMS that is versatile and customizable. The Raytha team has developed a demo of a typical conference website, which you can view on on Youtube.

An ideal conference website should have a homepage that showcases the conference theme, a message from the executive director, keynote speakers, and sponsors.

When it comes to showcasing sponsors, it is important to highlight their support and contributions to the conference. One way to do this is by creating a tiered sponsorship system, with levels such as platinum, gold, silver, etc. Each level would come with its own benefits, such as priority placement on the website or signage at the conference.

On the website, sponsors can be prominently featured on the home page and in the footer, as well as on dedicated sponsor pages. The sponsor list view can also be filtered by sponsorship level, making it easy for attendees to see the top sponsors.

Another way to highlight sponsors is by featuring them on sponsored sessions. For example, a session sponsored by a particular company can have the company's logo displayed on the session page and in the session description. This not only highlights the sponsor's support but also helps attendees identify sessions that may be of particular interest to them based on the sponsor's area of expertise.

The user experience should be straight forward for navigating the sessions list view. Often times, attendees may be viewing the session agenda on their phone or tablet. The agenda should be searchable and filterable, and break down the sessions by day and time slot, showing the location, time, and duration information.

When it comes to the sessions gallery on the conference website, there are various types of sessions to consider, and the website should be able to handle them all effectively. In addition to the regular sessions, some conferences may have special sessions such as keynote speakers, panel discussions, roundtable sessions, lightning talks, and workshops. Therefore, the website should be designed to display these sessions in a clear and organized manner.

For example, keynote speakers and panel discussions are usually high-profile events, and the website should highlight them accordingly. The website could have a separate section for keynote speakers or a dedicated page where attendees can easily find information about the speakers, their topics, and other details.

When it comes to regular sessions, the website should provide information about the session moderator or chair, if applicable. Furthermore, some conferences may have multiple presentations per session, and the website should be designed to display the content in the way it's supposed to depending on the session type. For instance, lightning talks or poster sessions could be displayed differently from keynote speeches or panel discussions.

Another section, which conference organizers sometimes prefer not to have is the speaker showcase, which lists all the speakers participating in the conference, along with their headshots, bios, and the sessions they will participate in.

Access restrictions are crucial to ensure that only authorized personnel can access the website's content. These restrictions can range from no login access for all visitors to requiring confirmation of registration to access certain pages. Different access levels can be granted based on what the attendee paid for, such as a single-day pass or specific sessions. Additionally, certain post-conference content, such as video recordings, may only be available to registered attendees or members.

Login requirements can be facilitated by uploading a CSV file of registrants or requiring single sign-on. Moreover, registration can be checked against popular association platforms, such as Fonteva, NimbleAMS, iMIS, Cvent, or Netforum.

In conclusion, the Raytha platform can help associations manage their conference websites effectively by providing customizable solutions for content management, access restriction, and registration validation. If you are interested in exploring Raytha as your conference website management platform, please reach out at [email protected] to see how we can assist with your event.

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