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Santa Fe International Literary Festival

An annual festival that brings world-renowned authors to Santa Fe. We've built and run its web presence since the first festival in 2022.

Client SFILF
Role Development and Administration
SquarespaceHTMLCSS
The festival's Authors and Moderators directory, three across, each entry with a portrait, a book cover, and a one-line bio

What we built

Development, content updates, hosting, and security, every year since the festival's inaugural run in 2022. The site handles the festival's full lifecycle: announcing the author lineup, selling tickets, taking donations, and publishing the multi-day event schedule.

Scaling Up

The festival has grown every year since, and each year the site has to do more: more authors, more events, and traffic that arrives all at once.

That meant building things Squarespace doesn't offer off the shelf: an automated sorting system for the Authors & Moderators page, a bespoke search system, and integrations with third-party ticketing platforms.

Our Approach

A festival site has an unusual rhythm: quiet most of the year, then everything at once. The build is shaped around that crunch, so a small team can push a deluge of time-sensitive updates (new authors, schedule changes, ticket links) without touching code or waiting on us.

The festival has run on this site every year since 2022. Organizers make their own updates, attendees buy tickets and donate directly through the site, and each new year's schedule goes up without a rebuild.

How it's built.

Squarespace

The platform underneath, chosen so festival staff can edit content themselves. Custom code covers what it can't do alone.

HTML

Custom blocks and embeds where the stock components stop.

CSS

Custom styling on top of the base template, so the site doesn't look like one.

JavaScript

The custom behavior: automated author sorting, search, and scheduling logic.

“I hired Alec at the glowing recommendation of a colleague to work on a Squarespace website for the Santa Fe Literary Festival. Alec not only knew Squarespace inside and out, he also did a great deal of custom coding for us— implementing things like online ticketing and donations, and a complex schedule of events for this huge multi-day event with world-renowned authors. On top of Alec’s wonderful skills and knowledge as a developer, he was incredibly easy to work with. The job involved a deluge of time-sensitive requests and feedback, and Alec handled it all and impressed our entire team with his professionalism and grace under pressure. We can’t wait to work with Alec again soon!”
Catherine C. Creative Team Lead, SFILF

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