This is a loaded topic with many sub layers of information. The band website is one of the most key components of representing yourself as a real band, especially if you don't have a million dollars behind you.
The easiest part, and first step, is getting a URL (Uniform Resource Locator), better known as your web address. In most cases your band name, if it isn't a funny spelling of something, is occupied or being used by some spammer/fake search engine hack, don't despair, just means you will have to put on the creativity cap. Go to register.com or godaddy.com and search for the url of your choice (ie ournameband.com, ournameband.info, ournameband.biz) once you find your URL reserve it. This does not commit you to a webhost, but at least you have now gotten one step of a long journey out of the way. godaddy is way cheaper and they provide cheap hosting if you are going to build the site yourself. I like Register from a usability point of view(silly I know).
As a web/software programmer I have gone many routes over the last several years, building very simple band sites to fully loaded sites where I even built my own windows based content tool, which never go used in real time because I decided on the template site by then. What drove me nuts, and this is a personal issue, was how much time I was committing to maintaining websites, versus creating music.
In the end, for Mystic Nation, I found an awesome template driven hosting company that focuses primarily on band websites. Unreal was that once I configured this tool, I have freed up so many extra hours of work now, I actually have free time. Currently we are using Rock-n-Roll Design as our template provider right now and there is so much stuff to cover on this topic it will be a post all by itself...great tool though if your time comes in short order and don't want to rely on a web developer. The end result for us is mysticnation.info
If you want to learn how to actually build your own website, take the first step at W3 Schools and see if it is for you. I recommend going through the HTML tutorial, which is free like all the other tutorials on that site.
A couple of tips for creating your own website that I find helpful
1. Keep the site clean and easy to navigate. Too much can be too much, too little if done right can be intriguing.
2. Make sure your website matches any offline marketing scheme you may have, nothing beats consistency when trying to enforce a message.
3. Create calls to action like signing up for a newsletter, joining the myspace, downloading a song, viewing a picture, posting to a blog...this adds to the experience far more than if you just throw the band bio up with a picture adn say here we are. Constantly involving content is far more effective in bringing people back.
Resources
Books - a list of some books for the HTML beginner
1. HTML for Dummies
2. HTML, XML, CSS
Internet
1. Do it yourself start at W3 Schools
2. Template Driven Sites
A. Rock-n-Roll Design
B. BandZoogle
3. Hosting
A. godaddy.com
B. Reinvent Inc (Great .NET hosting provider)
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1 comment:
Good post.
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