The public festival page

Every festival can have one public web page of its own — a page anyone can open, with or without an account, and that search engines may index while it is on. It says what the festival is, when it happens, what it takes submissions in and where it screens, and — while one of its seasons has an open judge call — what judging pays and how to apply. That last part is what the page is for: it is the link you send judges.

You build it on the page itself. Edit page turns the page into a form, in place, and Save changes publishes what you typed straight away.

The page lives at

https://filmscorecard.com/f/<organization>/<festival>

and is off until somebody turns it on. A festival's page is a different thing from a film's — for the page a filmmaker can publish for one film, see The public film page.

Turning the page on

The switch is the first row of the Festival profile card on Settings → Festival, and it saves with the rest of that tab.

1. Open Settings for the festival. The Festival tab opens first.
2. Turn on Public festival page. It reads Visible to anyone with the link, and a bar appears at the bottom of the screen: Unsaved changes on Festival.
3. Choose Save changes on that bar.

The page is up from that moment; there is nothing to wait for and no approval. The page's address is in the Page link box under the switch, with Copy and Open ↗. Open ↗ opens the page in a new tab, and it works whether the page is on or off, so you can look at it before you turn it on.

The Season overview carries the same switch, on its Your public page card, and there it acts the moment you press it, with no Save — see Your public page.

Turning it off is the same switch and the same Save changes. From the next request the address answers Page not found, the same screen a mistyped address gets.

Nothing is sent either way. No email, no notice to your judges, and no announcement on the judge portal.

While the page is off

Visitors, and anybody signed in who cannot edit the page, get "page not found" — your festival's existence is not revealed to them.

The people who can edit it still see it, with an amber Not public pill beside Edit page in the top bar. You can build the whole page, save it and read it back before anybody else can, then switch it on when it is ready. While it is off, search engines are told not to index what you are looking at.

The address

The address is your organization's part of every FilmScorecard address, then the festival's Public address from the same Festival profile card — the line under that field prints the page's address as you type:

filmscorecard.com/f/riverside-collective/riverside-shorts-festival

Changing the Public address moves the page, and nothing forwards from the old one — whether you change it in Settings or on the page itself, in edit mode. The old address answers "page not found" straight away, so a link you shared, a link in a judge's inbox and a link somebody posted all stop working. Send the new one to whoever has the old. See Changing the public address.

Who can edit it

The same people who can open Settings: organization owners, org admins, and festival admins of this festival — anybody who holds Edit festival settings and team with a role that can change the season. See Festival access.

Coordinators, programmers and viewers cannot. They get the visitor's page with no Edit page button while it is on, and "page not found" while it is off. Every save and every image upload is checked again on the server, so a refusal holds however it was attempted.

Two finer points:

• It is decided on the season the page is showing (see Which season the page shows). Somebody whose access is limited to one season can edit the page only while it shows that season.
• The same people turn the page on and off, because the switch is on the Settings screen they are the only ones to reach.

What visitors see

Everybody sees the same page, apart from the top bar and the Judging tab's apply card, which answer to who is looking. Top to bottom:

The top bar

The FilmScorecard mark, which opens the home page; the festival's name; and section links — About, one per tab the page has, and Contact while the Contact card shows. A link to a tab selects that tab. On a window narrower than about 1100 pixels the section links are not drawn.

On the right:

• Signed out, a Log in button. Logging in brings you back to this page.
• Signed in, your name, a line under it and your initials. The line reads Festival admin for anybody who can edit the page — owners included — Judge for an account with a judge profile, and nothing otherwise. On a phone only the initials are drawn. They are not a menu: there is no account menu or sign-out on this page.
• For the people who can edit it, Edit page beside the name, and the Not public pill while the page is off.

The hero

In this order, each one left out rather than drawn empty:

• The backdrop, a wide image behind the top of the page. Without one — with it switched off, or when its image will not load — the hero simply starts higher.
• The logo, square. The same logo as on Settings → Festival.
• The season pill — FALL 2026.
• The festival's name.
• The description — the season's Description in Settings, once called its tagline — in italics, cut to two lines. When it runs longer, More under it opens the rest in place, and Less folds it back. A description that fits in two lines has no More.
• One line of facts, joining whichever of these exist:
  • the next date as a chip — Final submission deadline Oct 12, 2026 — the first row on the Dates tab that has not started yet;
  • the edition — 12th edition;
  • the location;
  • the festival's own dates — Oct 30 to Nov 2, 2026.

Then the buttons:

About

The festival's About text, then Festival director and Programming partner with a name after each, either one left out when empty. With no About, director or partner at all, the section and its link in the top bar are not drawn.

The tabs

Judging

Headed Judge this season, with Applications close and the date beside the heading. Then one card:

• OPEN CALL FOR JUDGES and the call's name — Judge call on every call opened from Settings, which collects no name for it.

• The facts the call has, each row left out when it has none: Judges needed, Judging window, Apply by, Formats and Languages. A call opened from Settings carries Apply by and Formats; the rest are not collected there — see What this card cannot do. A pace the call posted is not shown.

• What it pays: a table of the call's categories, headed Categories and then Creative and/or Technical — one price column for each kind of judging the call hires for. The categories sit under a Film heading and then a Screenplay heading, and a heading with nothing under it is not drawn. A cell reads the figure per scorecard, Not priced when nothing is set — never $0.00 — or — when that category cannot be judged that way.

  • On a paying season whose organization has set payment terms, one line under the table says when judges are paid — "Paid 30 days after invoice".
  • On a volunteer season, a Volunteer panel box — "Judges on this season's panel are not paid per scorecard." — and the table has no price columns.

  The figures are the ones the open-calls board shows for the same call, worked out from the categories you opened on it. The table scrolls — sideways on a narrow window with the category column held in place, and down once it is long, with its headings held in place.

• The apply card at the foot, which depends on who is looking:

The accepted applicant's line about judging follows the season, not just its dates:

This changed. The line used to print the start date whatever had happened, so an accepted judge could read "Judging opens" with a date already behind it on a season the festival had not opened. See Opening judging.

A judge with an application also sees an Applied, Accepted or Not selected pill beside the call's name. Nobody is told how many people have applied, on this page or anywhere else.

Applying itself happens on the judge portal — see Applying to judge from the page.

Dates

Headed Dates and deadlines, with the season and its time zone beside it — Fall 2026, Los Angeles time. One row per date, earliest first:

• The dates you add on the page — submissions open, an early deadline, anything else you want listed.
• Festival — the festival's own start and end dates.
• The dates FilmScorecard acts on, each only when it is set: Final submission deadline, Notification date and Award winners announced from the Season tab; Judging, the season's judging window, as dates; and Judge applications close, while a judge call is open. The page and Settings call these dates by the same names — the ones FilmFreeway uses.

A date that has passed is greyed, and the first date that has not started yet carries a Next pill — the same one the hero's chip names. With every date behind you, nothing carries the pill and the hero has no chip. "Today" is always today in the season's own time zone. With no dates at all the tab reads No dates yet.

Categories

Headed Submission categories, with a count. One card per category on the season, in the season's own order, each with its kind — Film, Screenplay or Episode — and its length limit from your library. A category made for this season alone, with no library record, shows its name and nothing else. With none attached, the tab reads No categories yet.

When Settings → Festival has a FilmFreeway submission link, a box under the cards reads Submissions are taken on FilmFreeway — "Entry fees, rules and the entry form are on the festival's FilmFreeway page." — with its own Submit on FilmFreeway ↗ button.

Venues

One card per venue: its photo — left out when it has none; edit mode shows a striped placeholder there to upload one — its name, its address and what happens there. There are no screening times and no tickets.

Reviews

Headed Reviews, with one line: No reviews yet. There is no count and no way to write a review yet; the tab is there for when there is.

The three cards beside the tabs

On a wide window they sit in a column to the right; on a narrower one they follow the tabs.

Organizer, while the Organizer card switch is on. Your organization's initials in a round plate, its name, Festivals run and Seasons run, and one row per festival — This festival under this one's name, and every other row a link to that festival's page. Only festivals whose page is on are counted or listed, so a festival you have not announced never appears on another one's page. Seasons count once they have left draft.

Details, each row left out when it has nothing: Edition, Founded, Location, Festival (its dates), Formats (the kinds of category on the season), Categories (how many) and Submissions — FilmFreeway, a link, when Settings → Festival has a FilmFreeway submission link.

Contact, while the Contact switch is on:

• Festival office — the office email, as a link, and the phone number.
• Judging coordinator — the Where applicants send questions address from the Open judge call card on Settings → Judging, shown only while a judge call is open and that address is set. Left blank, no address is shown for judge questions — the office email does not stand in. See Where applicants send questions.
• Email the festival, a button that writes to the office email. No office email, no button.
• The website and the social profile, printed without their https://.

Every link a festival typed in — the website, the social profile and the FilmFreeway page — opens in a new tab.

The footer

© 2026 and the festival's name on the left; on the right, Hosted on FilmScorecard · and the page's address.

Which season the page shows

A festival has many seasons and the page shows one. It picks, in order:

1. The season with an open judge call. If more than one season has one, the season whose call opened most recently.
2. Otherwise, the season the festival opens on — the starred season, unless it is archived — or else its newest. See The season a festival opens on.

The description, the location, the edition, the director and programming partner, the office email and phone, the dates and the venues all belong to a season. So the page changes when the season it shows changes: open a judge call on next season and the page moves to next season, with next season's description, dates and venues. Edit mode edits the season the page is showing.

The festival's name, logo, backdrop, About, founded year, website, social profile, FilmFreeway page and the six Show on page switches belong to the festival and are the same whichever season shows.

A festival whose every season is archived shows no season at all: the festival's own parts only, with no season pill and no season dates, categories or venues.

Editing the page

Entering edit mode

Press Edit page in the top bar. The page stays where it is and its editable parts become fields, at the same place and size as they will read.

• The top bar becomes an Editing bar: the Editing pill, the line "Festival name public page. Changes go live when you save." — not drawn on a phone — and Cancel and Save changes.
• A Show on page panel docks on the left. On a window narrower than about 1024 pixels it sits above the page instead.
• The festival's name becomes a field, at the size it reads, and under the hero two more appear: Public address and FilmFreeway submission link.

Edit mode lasts until you save or cancel. Reloading the page leaves it, and so does any link you follow — without asking, and your unsaved changes are lost. That includes the Festival settings links in the notes. Save first.

What you edit on the page

The hero line, the next-date chip, the festival's dates and the Details card follow your typing, so you see the page as it will read. Dates are put in order when you save, not while you type, so a row you add stays where you added it until then.

The Festival row cannot be removed. Add a date greys out at 20 dates, and the Add a venue card goes at 12 venues. While the Venues switch is on, the Venues tab is there in edit mode even with no venues, so you can add the first one.

Some of these are the same values Settings edits

Several fields on the page are not copies: they are the Settings field, and a change on either side is a change on both.

So changing the office email on the page changes where your submitters' replies go, replacing the logo here replaces it on every scorecard, and changing a price here changes it for the whole season. See Festival settings.

Judging in place

While a judge call is open, edit mode turns the Judging tab's facts into fields:

• Judging opens and Judging closes — a date field each, with a Time field beside it, read in the season's own time zone. They replace the Judging window and Apply by rows while you edit. The date alone is enough: picking it fills the time with 12:00 am for Judging opens and 11:59 pm for Judging closes, and clearing a time puts that default back rather than losing the date — the same as Settings.
• Apply by — the call's applications close date.
• Judging coordinator — the address judges' questions go to.
• Every price in the categories table that prints a figure or Not priced becomes a box in dollars. A — stays a —: that category has no scorecard for that kind of judging, so there is nothing to price.

They save through the same actions Settings uses, with the same rules and the same refusals — judging dates Settings would refuse, an apply-by date that has passed, an address that is not an email, a price it would not take. A refusal appears under the field it is about, in the words Settings uses, or on the Editing bar when it names no field. Both judging times stay editable while judging is open, here as in Settings. See Opening a judge call.

A changed price is the season's price, not a figure for this page: every judge quoted from then on reads it, as if you had changed it on Settings → Categories. Judges already on your panel keep the rates they agreed.

What is read-only, and where it is edited

Each of these shows as it does to visitors, with one grey line saying where it is changed:

In the full-sentence notes, Festival settings is a link to the Settings screen of the season the page is showing. The short line under each date is plain text.

The season itself — its label and year — and the call's switch, roles and categories are not on the page at all, in edit mode or out of it. They are changed in Settings.

Show on page

Six switches, each hiding one part of the page:

The line under them reads: "About, Dates, Categories, Details and Reviews always show. Judging shows while the season has an open call."

A switched-off part disappears from your edit view too, the way it will for visitors, so you cannot change it while it is hidden: switch it back on to edit it. Its content is kept, and comes back when you switch it on. And hidden is hidden for real: the page sends a visitor's browser nothing of a part you switched off, not just nothing on screen.

The switches are saved with Save changes, like everything else.

Saving

Press Save changes. The whole page is checked first, in your browser and again on the server.

What a save needs, whatever you changed:

• About, not empty.
• Location, not empty.
• Founded, a four-digit year.
• The Festival row's start date. A season carried over from another one has no dates of its own — see Season and festival actions — so this is the one most often missing.
• The office email, while Contact shows.
• The edition, while Edition count shows.
• A name and a start for every date you list, and a name for every venue while Venues shows.

If anything is wrong, nothing is saved. Each problem appears in red under its field and clears as you edit it, and the Editing bar counts them — "1 field needs fixing", "3 fields need fixing". On a phone that line sits under the bar. A part you switched off is not checked as long as you have not changed it, so an old value nobody can see never blocks a save.

When the save goes through you leave edit mode and a note reads "Saved. The public page is updated." There is no draft and no publish step: visitors see your changes from their next visit.

One Save, several writes, in a fixed order. The page's own fields go first, then the judging dates, then the apply-by date and coordinator address, then each price you changed, and the name, public address and FilmFreeway link last. If one of them is refused, the save stops there with that refusal: what was already written stays written, you stay in edit mode, and pressing Save changes again sends only what is left.

A changed public address moves the page. Once it saves, you land on the page's new /f/ address, and the old one answers "page not found" — see The address. An address another festival of yours already uses is refused under the field — "That public address is already used by another festival in this organization." — and the page stays where it was.

Two people editing at once. A save writes only what you changed. A date or a venue somebody else added while you were editing is kept; one you removed is removed; and if you both changed the same field, the later save wins. Nothing warns either of you.

If a save is refused

You stay in edit mode with everything you typed, and one line appears in the Editing bar:

The field messages:

Cancel and discard

Cancel with nothing changed simply leaves edit mode. With changes — and picking an image counts — it asks "Discard your changes?":

• Keep editing, or Escape, closes the question and leaves you where you were.
• Discard changes, in amber, throws away everything since Edit page, including the images you uploaded in that sitting, and leaves edit mode.

Images

Three places take an image: Replace image on the backdrop, Replace logo on the logo (Add logo when there is none yet), and Replace photo on each venue.

• JPG, PNG or WebP. Anything else is refused with a note reading "Use a JPG, PNG or WebP image." and the image stays as it was.

• Your browser prepares it before it is sent: it is turned the right way up and shrunk — never enlarged — to at most these sizes, and stored in these formats:

  Image	Longest side	Stored as
  Logo	512 pixels	PNG, keeping a transparent background
  Backdrop	2400 pixels	JPEG
  Venue photo	1200 pixels	JPEG

  Nothing is stored as WebP; a WebP you pick is converted. If the browser cannot prepare the image, it is refused with the same note rather than stored as it came.

• It uploads the moment you pick it — the button reads Uploading… — and you see it in place straight away. Visitors do not, until you save.

• An upload that fails says "The image could not be uploaded. Try again." and changes nothing.

There is no Remove button for the logo or the backdrop, only Replace. To take the backdrop off the page, switch Backdrop image off. A venue's photo goes with the venue.

What is cleaned up. When you save, the images you replaced, and the photos of venues you removed, are deleted — unless the same image is still in use elsewhere, such as a venue another season was copied with. When you discard, the images you uploaded in that sitting are deleted. Closing the tab or reloading in the middle of an edit deletes nothing, so the images uploaded in that sitting stay in storage, unused.

Images are stored at public addresses. Turning the page off takes the page down, not an image address somebody already copied.

Sharing the page

Share

Share, in the hero, copies the page's address and confirms with "Link copied." If the browser will not let the page copy, it says "The link could not be copied. Copy it from the address bar." — and the address bar holds the same address. There is no card to build and no choices: it is the address and nothing else.

The page link in Settings

The Page link box on Settings → Festival, under the Public festival page switch, holds the same address with two buttons. Copy copies it and reads Copied — or Copy failed if the browser refused. Open ↗ opens the page in a new tab. Both are there whether the page is on or off; while it is off, the line under the box reads "The link keeps working once you turn the page back on."

The Open judge call card no longer has a Copy link button. Copy the address from the Festival tab instead — see Sending judges your public page.

The link preview

Pasting the address into a message or a social post shows a preview that FilmScorecard builds for the page:

• Its title is the festival's name and the season — Riverside Shorts Festival · Fall 2026.
• Its description is the first 160 characters of the season's description, or with none showing, of the About text. Search engines are given the same 160 characters.
• Its image is a card with the logo, the season, the festival's name and — while a judge call is open — "Judges wanted · Apply by Oct 12, 2026", or "Judges wanted" when the call has no date. With no logo, the festival's initials take its place in a round plate — and so they do when the logo is a WebP image, which a logo uploaded in Settings before logos were converted to PNG may be. Nothing you can switch off is on the card.

The card follows the page: when the call opens or closes, or the festival or season changes, the page points at a fresh card. The preview exists only while the page is on. Two things to know about turning it off:

• The card image may keep being served for up to a day to somebody holding its exact address. The page itself is gone at once.
• Sites that already showed the preview keep their own copy. FilmScorecard cannot reach into a message thread or a social post and change it.

Applying to judge from the page

The page's Apply to judge button opens the call's application on the judge portal. What happens next depends on who presses it.

A judge who is signed in with a finished profile goes straight to the application. See Applying to an open call.

Somebody without an account can create one from here, even though sign-up is otherwise in a private beta:

1. Press Apply to judge. You are taken to the log-in screen, and its First time here? note offers Create an account.
2. Choose Create an account. The sign-up screen has no role cards — the account is a judge account — and a note reading "Already have an account? Log in with that email instead."
3. Fill in your name and email address, tick the agreement box, and choose Create account. The beta list is not consulted.
4. Enter the 6-digit code from your email.
5. You land on the application — the profile screens of Setting up your judge profile do not come first. Sending the application counts as Skip for now; once the festival takes you on, a Complete your profile card on its judging home links to those screens.

This works only while the call is open, the page is on and the organization is not suspended. If the call closes or the page is turned off between the click and the code request, the sign-up is treated as an ordinary one and meets the beta refusal — see Log-in problems.

Somebody who already has an account logs in on that same screen with their own address, and comes back to the application — straight to it, even if their judge profile is not finished.

Whatever the account, applying is the ordinary application: the same three steps, the same box agreeing to the Judge Code of Conduct, the same rules about who may apply, and the festival decides it on its Requests tab.

When the page shows "page not found"

The address answers Page not found when:

• the page is off, for everybody who cannot edit it;
• the address is wrong — mistyped, or the festival's Public address has changed since the link was made;
• the organization is suspended — for everybody, your own staff included. See When your organization is suspended.

All of them read the same, and the same as an address that never existed.

What the page does not do yet

• No reviews. The tab is there and always reads No reviews yet.
• No programme. The Venues tab has no screenings, times or tickets.
• No organization logo. The Organizer card shows your organization's initials.
• One social link. One profile address, whatever the platform.
• No forwarding from an old address after the Public address changes.
• No warning when you leave edit mode without saving, by reloading or following a link.
• No choosing the season. The page shows the one described in Which season the page shows, and edits that one.
• No different name, logo, backdrop, About or switches per season. They belong to the festival.
• No page-view or apply counts.

Related guides

• Festival settings — the Festival tab's Public festival page switch, Page link and FilmFreeway submission link; the Season tab's description, location and contact email, and its festival and judging dates.
• Opening a judge call — the call the Judging tab shows, and its Where applicants send questions address.
• Opening judging — what "opened" means for a season, and why an accepted judge can read that judging has not opened yet.
• Season and festival actions — which of the page's season parts a new season carries over.
• Applying to an open call — what an applicant does after Apply to judge.
• Creating an account — the beta, and the two ways around it.
• The public film page — the page a filmmaker can publish for one film, which is a different thing.
• Festival access — the roles and the Edit festival settings and team capability that decide who edits the page.