Pet Shop Boys, actually
Pet Shop Boys, actually are a touring Pet Shop Boys tribute act with a growing gig calendar and a fanbase to match. Their old website was holding them back: it was a budget build from when the band started out, and every change – a new gig, a ticket link, a line-up photo – meant contacting the original developer and waiting. Details drifted out of date, the design looked dated, and upcoming shows were nothing more than a plain text list.
I designed and built them a new site they run entirely themselves – with a proper gig management system, a self-service gallery and video section, and a design that finally matches the show.
The problem: a website they couldn’t touch
The band’s biggest frustration wasn’t the design – it was the dependency. With no way to edit the site themselves, even small updates had to go through a developer. Gig listings were a static block of text with no ticket links, no venue details and no way to flag a show as sold out or rescheduled. For a band whose website exists mainly to sell tickets, that was costing them.
The brief was simple: make it look the part, and make sure they never have to ask anyone’s permission to update it again.
Gig management built for how bands actually work
At the heart of the new site is a custom events system designed around what the band actually needs on tour. Adding a gig takes a couple of minutes: date, venue, location, show time and a ticket link, with per-event options like a “Sold Out” toggle and status banners for things like Low Tickets, New Date or Rescheduled.
Upcoming gigs are ordered and filtered automatically, so the tour page always shows what’s next – no manual housekeeping, no stale dates.
Edit anything, see it instantly
The whole site is built from custom Gutenberg blocks, which means every section of every page is editable – headlines, buttons, images, the lot. Crucially, the editor is styled to look exactly like the live site, so the band sees precisely how a change will look as they type it. No guessing from a wall of plain text, no save-and-preview loop — what they see in the backend is what fans see on the front.
That’s the difference between a site the band can update and one they actually will.
Built to grow the fanbase
Beyond gigs, the band can upload photos straight to the gallery and embed YouTube videos with a paste of a link – keeping the site fresh between shows.
We also laid the groundwork for email marketing: a Mailchimp newsletter signup on the homepage, plus a mailing list opt-in built into the contact form. Every enquiry and every curious fan is now a chance to grow a contact base the band owns – so future tour announcements land directly in inboxes rather than relying on social algorithms.
- 100%
- Editable by the bandd
- 95
- Pagespeed Score
- 0
- developer requests to add a gig
I absolutely love it. I particularly like the gig list — I’d toyed for ages with how to make the dates and venues clear, and this is set out perfectly. The site’s a constantly moving thing, and now I can add new dates whenever I need to.
Stuck with a website you can’t update?
I build sites that look sharp and hand you the keys – so adding a gig, a product or a page never means waiting on a developer.