Stiftung Kultur Palast Hamburg

The Foundation

The Kultur Palast Foundation is a non-profit cultural and educational foundation based at the Kultur Palast Hamburg in the Billstedt district. For over 40 years, it has been promoting cultural participation and educational opportunities – particularly for children and young people, regardless of their social background – through music, dance, theatre and projects such as the HipHop Academy, Klangstrolche and community initiatives in the neighbourhood. Through a wide range of events, courses and partnerships, the foundation strengthens integration, creative development and social participation in east Hamburg.

810

Courses and group activities

>380

Events

>375000

Visitors

Goals

The aim of the project was to develop a modern, accessible platform that, as a multi-domain system, would accommodate the foundation’s various websites and the requirements of its very diverse target groups. A key requirement was to streamline the management of events and to transmit event data to Hamburg Tourism via an interface, so that it could be displayed on a wide range of external portals. Other key focuses of the development were on strengthening fundraising efforts and improving the maintenance and management of news content.

Herausforderungen

Reduction of redundant maintenance
Previously, different data types had to be maintained separately across numerous systems. Thanks to centralised management within the TYPO3 system and the use of intelligent interfaces, this extra work is no longer necessary.
Permission framework
Based on the specifications, an intelligent permissions framework has been developed for the various pages, page sections and data types, which significantly simplifies the work of editors within the system and makes it intuitive to use.
Multi language
Multilingualism: A need for a multi-domain solution and multilingual capabilities with centralised management.

Strategy

A granular TYPO3 permissions model

A scalable TYPO3 permissions framework was developed for the Kulturpalast Hamburg, combining editorial freedom with clear access restrictions. An ACL-based role model controls the functional permissions in the TYPO3 backend: The base role “Content-Base” defines fundamental editing rights and FileAdmin access, whilst roles such as “News”, “Events” or “Content Advanced” extend these with additional functions.

Access to content is managed independently via mount points, which determine which page trees and projects may be edited. This ensures that project managers have access exclusively to their own website, whilst editors can manage multiple areas simultaneously.

The separation of user roles, access rights and content areas has resulted in a flexible and maintainable TYPO3 authorisation concept that can be easily extended to new projects and multisite structures.

Multi-domain system – One UI for all platforms

We have designed a central multi-domain system for the Kulturpalast Hamburg and created the corresponding user interface. This enables multiple websites to be operated from a shared technical and content-based foundation. The websites of the Klangstrolche and the Kulturpalast Harburg are already using this central platform. In future, the Hip-Hop Academy Hamburg will also be integrated into the system.

Content elements are developed just once in TYPO3 and are then available in identical form across all connected systems. Whether events, text or image modules, every element functions the same everywhere and does not need to be recreated for individual domains or platforms. The front end of each domain has been individually customised with distinct visual accents, tailored to the respective target audience and brand identity.

TYPO3 as the source of truth

TYPO3 is at the heart of our event communications. All of the Kulturpalast’s events are entered exclusively there – once, in a structured manner and according to a standardised data model. Titles, descriptions, dates, times, venues, categories, images and ticket information follow a clearly defined structure that we developed in collaboration with the editorial team.

This ‘single source of truth’ approach has two key advantages: the editorial team works in a familiar interface and does not need to familiarise themselves with multiple systems. And all downstream channels access the same, consistent dataset.

Automated transfer to Hamburg Tourismus

Building on this central database, we have implemented an automated interface with Hamburg Tourismus. The events maintained in TYPO3 are formatted to the specifications required by Hamburg Tourism and transferred automatically, without the editorial team having to perform a single additional task.

In practical terms, this means that on a day-to-day basis: an employee enters a new concert into TYPO3, checks the content, approves the event, and shortly afterwards the same event automatically appears on Hamburg Tourism’s channels. Changes, such as a change of date or an updated description, are also automatically synchronised. This reliably eliminates duplicate maintenance work, sources of error and inconsistent external presentations.

Result

Access Rights Concept: By combining ACL roles and mount points, we have created a granular, modular system that grants each team exactly the right level of access and scales effortlessly as new projects are added.

Multi-domain: Several websites – currently Klangstrolche and Kulturpalast Harburg, and soon the HipHop Academy – are now running on a shared platform with individual front-ends, resulting in significantly reduced maintenance and operating costs.

Hamburg Tourism Events are maintained once in TYPO3 and automatically transferred to Hamburg Tourism, completely eliminating the need for duplicate maintenance and ensuring consistent external presentation.