Making your own website

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dave Cook
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Dave Cook

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I am looking for opinions on creating your own website. I was thinking of making one with bandzoogle or one of those. I suppose I could post links to it on my FB page.

FYI, I'm just a amateur musician, and would post my music up on it, not looking to generate sales.

What do you all think?
 
It costs money - do it if you have the money. Why not?
 
Bandzoogle seems to be the easiest and most features for the price. I use it.
 
As a part-time web designer and full-time amateur musician ;)... you have 3 viable choices:

1) The cheap/complex way: if you know your basics in HTML, you can make yourself a decent site. I pay $2.50 a month for my website (25GB of storage). Not too shabby. Although building/updating the site can be a bear.

2) The more expensive/simple way: use sites like wix.com or bandzoogle.com that make building the site really easy and user friendly, BUT keep in mind these companies up the hosting cost and lower the storage size. The good thing is you'll have a sweet looking site, but you're gonna spend over $100 a year on it.

3) The free/stock way: use sites like wordpress.com or blogspot.com and host your site for free. These are user-friendly sites, BUT they take away from the "personal domain" look and feel -- with their logo and ads on your site, it makes it look a little less professional, BUT IT'S FREE. And something is better than nothing. I started gaining traffic to my site by using Wordpress while I built my website using HTML. Sites like Wordpress are great to see user-generated traffic and create a "subscription"-powered fan base.


You don't have to pick just one choice. For instance, I use a hybrid of both 1 and 3. With the power of Wordpress I can easily update my fan-base without having to do any coding (I call it my Blog). But having my own domain name makes it easy for people to find my site, since it's just MYNAME.com. For awhile I just had my domain-name redirect to my Wordpress blog and used Wordpress as my primary website.

Sounds a little confusing, but I think once you outline your budget and gauge your technical skills you'll find some well-off way to host your music.

Good luck!
 
My day job is actually working for a company that designs and hosts band sites, so obviously there's some conflict of interest here:

I think having your own domain is pretty important. Everybody and their dog has a Facebook fan page and a MySpace these days. That's not to say those aren't important, but having your own MYBAND.com domain looks way better and gives you a unified place to send your fans. ("Check us out on MYBAND.com" sounds way better than "Check us out on myspace.com/myband" or even worse "facebook.com/pages/myband/1235219871")

As dadubwa outlined, you can either build it yourself (with or without stock tools) or get someone else to do it for you. The first is a lot of work and requires steady maintenance. The second costs money.

If you want to try the host that I work for (and use), it's bombplates.com You can use the coupon code HomeRecording to get your first two months free. (And if you decide it's not for you and cancel before that, you won't be charged at all.)
 
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VomitHatSteve said:
My day job is actually working for a company that designs and hosts band sites, so obviously there's some conflict of interest here:

I think having your own domain is pretty important. Everybody and their dog has a Facebook fan page and a MySpace these days. That's not to say those aren't important, but having your own MYBAND.com domain looks way better and gives you a unified place to send your fans. ("Check us out on MYBAND.com" sounds way better than "Check us out on myspace.com/myband" or even worse "facebook.com/pages/myband/1235219871")
Click to expand...

+1 for VomitHatSteve's company.
I use it, and it works great for your internet home and your confidence :p
 
Hey! Thanks, Kidkage! Site looks good, by the way! :D
 
You can also use blogger and your own .com (myband.com)

I point http://www.GraphicDesignJobsandLeads.com to a blogger site - now it is ugly as sin, but that site is just a job feed, not trying to impress anyone. And you can find tons of free Blogger skins to make it look how you want. Blogger is free. Don't think you can upload mp3's there, though.
 
If you can afford simple hosting and domain and able to install wordpress on your host its great. check ours out at the link in my sig.
 
nowadays, a lot of indie artists in the circles I traverse get more positive response from their fans if their main site is a Blog. the fans feel a personal connection, the Blog can link to all social networking promotion sites for the artist (youtube, twitter, facebook, reverbnation, etc.), and it's a great way for the artist to promote everything they're doing without making the site feel like a "brochure" of sorts.

I used Wordpress to create mine (.... :::: |||| Carter Anderson |||| :::: ....) and my wife showed me how to install Wordpress on my host and create the Blog... what you see was created by me, 100% (with a little help & inspiration from a Wordpress template site called CSSZengarden).
 
Check out wordpress and joomla. Those are very easy technologies that aren't hard to learn. You could literally have a wordpress site sup and running in 5 minutes and have it look very good.
 
creating the site by your own will cost you more in the form of time. can not get professional look by your own. better to hire someone for quick and easy solution like Web Crest etc.
 
TheSlag said:
You can use godaddy to make wordpress less 'stock'
Click to expand...

Although GoDaddy's admin interface is awful, and their CEO makes videos bragging about hunting elephants, so maybe shop around for hosts if you're going the DIY route.
 
I have an account at Webs - Make a free website, get free hosting. You can start with a free account there. If you get sick of the ads, just subscribe ($50 ???) for a year and they disappear. The site is modular so you can build your site in around an hour or so as long as you know what you want on there. Here's mine: Home - Philter Pretty basic eh? Does the job though, all the links work. Audio and video works. All I wanted really.
If you're not happy with what you got, tweak it. Really easy to do :cool:

Good luck :cool:
 
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