Benson Theatre — Live Site Technology Inventory

Source: scrape of https://bensontheatre.org/ on 2026-05-07 Scraper: Tavily map + advanced extract

This is what the current Shape Society-built WordPress site is using behind the scenes. Each item below is something we either need to replace, migrate, or kill in the rebuild.

1. Hosting & Infrastructure

Layer Current Notes
Domain registrar GoDaddy Just regained access (May 7) — Account #35049182, owned by Jim post-recovery
DNS GoDaddy nameservers (ns69/ns70.domaincontrol.com) We control this once Jim is logged in
Web host Flywheel (managed WP) Server header: Server: Flywheel/5.1.0. Account is Shape Society's. We have no plans to recover this.
CDN Fastly (in front of Flywheel) Default Flywheel-stack edge. Goes away when we leave Flywheel.
Image CDN ExactDN (Jetpack Site Accelerator) Subdomain euyr8ybntu7.exactdn.com. Indicates Jetpack is installed and Site Accelerator is on.
Email Google Workspace (MX → aspmx.l.google.com) Workspace super admin still TBD; recovery requires DNS TXT record. Now actually possible with GoDaddy access.
Email infra Google Workspace mailboxes: admin@, booking@, info@, paul@, volunteer@, possibly maddie@, miranda@ info@ is publicly listed contact. Jim has access to admin@ and booking@.

2. CMS & Theme

Layer Current Notes
CMS WordPress Confirmed via /wp-content/themes/benson-theatre/ and /wp-login.php
Theme Custom theme benson-theatre (built by Shape Society) Logo SVG at /wp-content/themes/benson-theatre/assets/img/logo.svg and icon_w.svg. Theme is what we're walking away from.
Editor stack Likely Classic editor + ACF or hand-coded — unknown without admin access We're not pulling theme files. Rebuild from scratch in our own Tailwind+ACF stack.
Search widget Custom search UI with "Generic selectors / Exact matches only / Search in title / Search in content / Post Type Selectors" — looks like the Ivory Search plugin or similar Optional to replicate. Default WP search likely fine.

3. Content Types

Type Current Notes
Pages About, History, Staff & Leadership, Programming, Education, Booking & Rentals, Memberships, Donate, Volunteer, Calendar, Tickets and Events, Policies, The Bar, The Tech, The Catering Room, Parking 16 pages identified. Scraped to pages/ directory.
Custom post type: event URL pattern /event/[slug] 7 events scraped.
Custom taxonomy: event-category URL pattern /event-category/[term] 7 terms: benson-theatre-hosted-events, collaborative-event, community-partner-events, education-events, featured-events, free-events, private-event
WP categories bt-news, bt-press Used for editorial content (/news, /press)
Editorial posts 7 articles published under news/press Scraped to pages/

4. Events Plugin

Likely: The Events Calendar (Modern Tribe) or Tribe Events Calendar Pro - Custom post type event ✓ - Custom taxonomy event-category ✓ - Calendar grid view at /calendar ✓ - Event-detail page template at /event/[slug] ✓

This is the standard footprint of The Events Calendar. Cannot confirm without dashboard access but it matches.

Rebuild option: Either re-deploy The Events Calendar (free or Pro), OR build a lighter custom CPT + ACF date fields (preferred for our level of control). Since the calendar is mostly a 6-events-at-a-time situation, a custom CPT is plenty.

5. Ticketing — IMPORTANT FINDING

There is no centralized ticketing platform. Each event uses whatever the artist or producer set up themselves. From the 7 scraped events:

Platform Events Notes
Purplepass 4 of 7 Internal/produced events seem to default to Purplepass
buytickets.at 1 of 7 Mo-Town — artist set it up
ComedyTicketing.com 1 of 7 The DOSE — comedy promoter's platform
(no link / TBD) 1 of 7 MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY! — no buy CTA on the calendar

Implication: The current site is just a marketing/landing layer. Tickets always live elsewhere. The rebuild needs ONE thing: a clean "Buy Tickets" button on each event detail page that points to whatever URL the staff pastes in. ACF URL text field on the event CPT (per CLAUDE.md anti-pattern note: don't use ACF url type because it blocks placeholders).

No ticketing migration is needed — Benson Theatre doesn't own customer ticket data. Each platform owns its slice.

6. Donations (one-time + recurring "membership" giving tiers)

IMPORTANT vocab clarification: "Membership" on Benson Theatre's site means a recurring donation tier, NOT a user account on the website. There is no login. There is no member portal. There is no gated content. A "member" is a donor on a recurring PayPal subscription who receives the perks listed on the memberships page (newsletter, ticket discounts, etc.) by being on a list — not by logging in. No on-site user accounts, no membership plugin (no Paid Memberships Pro, no MemberPress, none of that), no WooCommerce subscriptions. Just PayPal recurring billing.

Item Current
Processor PayPal (only)
One-time donations Hosted button ID: ZDRQZF6C3GXFY
Recurring giving tiers PayPal subscription billing plans (one plan_id per tier — see memberships.md). Each tier is a button/link on the memberships page that hands the visitor off to PayPal's checkout for that subscription plan.
On-site user accounts NONE. WordPress user roles only exist for staff/admin.

Implications for rebuild: - The PayPal merchant account ownership needs confirming. If Shape Society owns it or the original founder owns it personally, we have a problem. - There are real recurring PayPal subscribers today on these plan IDs. If we switched processors (Stripe, Donorbox, GiveWP), every existing recurring donor would have to manually cancel + re-enroll on the new platform — a bad user experience and lost revenue. - Cleanest path forward: keep PayPal as the processor, rebuild the donation/membership pages in our theme using the existing button + plan IDs verbatim. Replace later if the org wants to. - The membership pages are pure-marketing pages with PayPal handoff CTAs. No plugin, no CPT, no user-account logic on the WP side.

7. Forms

Form Provider URL
Volunteer Application Google Forms https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1qELy4YUJBx2BW1xla4yejhPPTBoVtY6xGX7eDzL7Qpw/
Free Student Membership signup Google Forms https://forms.gle/xijzLbUNPce549d57
Booking inquiry Likely contact info only (info@bensontheatre.org mailto) — no actual form found TBD on confirm

Rebuild plan: Replace Google Forms with Gravity Forms (G&M default) so submissions land in WP admin and can be exported, plus tied to email notifications. Volunteer sign-ups get a real audit trail.

8. Mailing List / Newsletter

Not detected on any scraped page. No Mailchimp embed, no Constant Contact form, no Klaviyo, no Brevo. The "quarterly insider newsletter" mentioned on memberships.md is likely sent manually from Gmail, or Mailchimp without an embed (signups only happen at point-of-purchase membership).

Question for Jim: how does the newsletter get sent today? If they want a real list, we add Mailchimp/Brevo signup to the new site.

9. Image / Media Pipeline

Item Current
Source wp-content/uploads/... (standard WP media library)
Delivery ExactDN via Jetpack Site Accelerator (euyr8ybntu7.exactdn.com)
Total images cataloged 66 — see media-inventory/all-images.md
Filename style Mostly readable (e.g. Benson-Theatre-Sign_2O7A3158-scaled.jpg, BROADWAY-BAR-LOGO.jpg, Square-Poster-with-Info.jpg) — some hash-named exports

Rebuild plan: pull originals from the live URLs (scrape the /wp-content/uploads/ paths), upload to new site media library. Run them through /image-naming skill if any are hash-named.

10. Analytics & SEO

Tool Detected? Notes
Google Analytics Not visible in scraped HTML (Tavily strips scripts) Likely present — confirm post-recovery
Google Search Console TBD Verify ownership once we have GoDaddy/DNS control
Yoast / RankMath Not visible TBD
Sitemap https://bensontheatre.org/sitemap.xml Should fetch and snapshot

11. Social

Platform Handle
Instagram @bensontheatre
Facebook BensonTheatre
Twitter / X @bensontheatre

12. Recognition / Trust Badges

Both are static images at /wp-content/themes/benson-theatre/assets/img/. Will rebuild as inline SVG or PNG in the new theme.

13. SECURITY: Site is compromised

Found on scraped pages: pharmacy spam links injected into the navigation menu, sitting next to the "Education" item. Specifically:

There's also a suspicious http://localhost/7bfe7b6d2b26a29439392c6766eadf51 in one page.

This is classic SEO spam injection from a compromised WordPress install (probably an unpatched plugin or a hijacked admin account, given how long Shape Society has been silent on maintenance).

Implications: - The site SHOULD be considered compromised for SEO purposes — Google likely sees these pharmacy links and is downgrading the domain. - We don't migrate any code from this site. Confirms the rebuild-from-scratch plan. - Recommend: in the rebuild launch, also flush the domain's reputation: 301 every old URL to new, submit a fresh sitemap, request reindexing in GSC.

These are real outbound press hits we should preserve in the new /press section:

15. Phone numbers / Contact info