Building band websites - what do you use?

[OldGit]

[quote name='Cantdosleepy' post='258074' date='Aug 8 2008, 01:39 PM']The inestimable Jeff made the website of our last project - [url="http://www.goodoldneon.com/"]http://www.goodoldneon.com/[/url] - but that one's a different matter, as we don't do gigs or owt - it's just a funky repository of our (free!) album.[/quote]

That's fun ..

[BigRedX]

If you are prepared to hunt around and for info and then get you're head round the terrible coding for MySpace it is possible to do something half-way decent.

[url="http://www.myspace.com/sugarboxmusicbox"]This[/url] I did for my previous band to keep the interest ticking over and also to figure out what was possible within the site constraints without it being too critical if I messed everything up.

[stingrayfan]

[quote name='OldGit' post='258186' date='Aug 8 2008, 02:53 PM']As the party band market is largely geographical (and that's reflected in your search terms) , I'd recommend making it clear from your header graphic where you are in the world.

Your site also seems be built with Frames. If that's so Google won't read anything ...
I tried searching for your text (from the long list of places at the bottom of the home page) and found your myspace page but not this site...
It may improve if it's that new but you need to look out for any google friendly fixes that iWeb may offer.[/quote]
Thanks - it's still on a masked URL at the mo until I can get it uploaded next week. Will put location in top of page. Need to do more "Google" work on it.

[mewsie]

[quote name='Cantdosleepy' post='258074' date='Aug 8 2008, 01:39 PM']If you're looking for a free, fairly-easy-to-set-up, loads-of-possibilities site, I'd advise something like Joomla.[/quote]

+1

we use Joomla for a lot of our web stuff, its really simple if you want to simply plonk stuff into a template, but you can tinker with it quite a lot if you want to customise it.

x

[OldGit]

[quote name='stingrayfan' post='258233' date='Aug 8 2008, 03:54 PM']Thanks - it's still on a masked URL at the mo until I can get it uploaded next week. Will put location in top of page. Need to do more "Google" work on it.[/quote]


Cool It does look pretty good though ..
Add some real testimonials and quotes from people with names though as you saying you are great is not half as good as other peopel saying you are great ..
and "30th birthday party croydon" smacks of bu11sh1t where as "Judy, brithday girl, croydon" rings a little more true.
collect a page full from yuor past glories ..

[OldGit]

[quote name='mewsie' post='258249' date='Aug 8 2008, 04:01 PM']+1

we use Joomla for a lot of our web stuff, its really simple if you want to simply plonk stuff into a template, but you can tinker with it quite a lot if you want to customise it.

x[/quote]


Any joomla examples?

[mewsie]

aye, a few basic sites we've done recently:

[url="http://www.satsuma-nlp.co.uk"]satsuma nlp[/url]
[url="http://www.jevonsandsiddall.co.uk"]jevons and siddall[/url]
[url="http://www.x-ma.co.uk"]xander[/url]
[url="http://www.specialbreeds.co.uk"]brambles special breeds[/url]

due to the low costs of these sites, its very much a case of client gets what client wants (sometimes works out beautifully, sometimes not so much!!)

satsuma is our own site til we get a custom site up, v much a WIP, and has been more twiddled with than the others.

x

[spinynorman]

[quote name='OldGit' post='257670' date='Aug 7 2008, 11:06 PM']Spinynorman _ What is your market? That will decide if you should have a real website plus myspace or just a Myspace.[/quote]

I should have anticipated that one.

So, we're one of those despicable cover bands that devalue music by playing in pubs for next to no money. Most pubs that support live music seem to have a queue of bands wanting to play, so I can't imagine landlords trawling the net looking for talent. The most the site has to do is be somewhere they can go and look for more information after we've approached them with CD.

Second function is for someone looking up what's on in their area and finding us listed at their local pub, or finding their pub listed in our gig list, can get enough from our site to decide if we're worth coming out for.

We don't do weddings, don't go looking for parties or corporate events, but do charity gigs if we're asked and are available.

That's telling me we don't need to worry that much about Google, so long as a search on the band name brings us to the top. Which it does (we used to be called Still Crazy - that really sucks as a band name for Google purposes). Myspace actually isn't doing a bad job, but some band egos may still require a "proper" web site. So, Wordpress looks interesting. I downloaded the Joomla manual and frightened myself to death, so probably not going there.

This is the first time I've thought about what we need a website for and come up with a coherent answer, so thanks for that. Also some interesting ideas here and some good discussions, several things to go and look at. More ideas welcome and also comments if you think I'm reaching the wrong conclusion.

[OldGit]

[quote name='mewsie' post='258271' date='Aug 8 2008, 04:13 PM']aye, a few basic sites we've done recently:

[url="http://www.satsuma-nlp.co.uk"]satsuma nlp[/url]
[url="http://www.jevonsandsiddall.co.uk"]jevons and siddall[/url]
[url="http://www.x-ma.co.uk"]xander[/url]
[url="http://www.specialbreeds.co.uk"]brambles special breeds[/url]

due to the low costs of these sites, its very much a case of client gets what client wants (sometimes works out beautifully, sometimes not so much!!)

satsuma is our own site til we get a custom site up, v much a WIP, and has been more twiddled with than the others.

x[/quote]

Cool, Nice looking sites.
PM me if you'd like to chat about how they could be changed a bit to work better (or trawl through the thread linked from my footer) most of the stuff that applies to band sites applies to those too - (like making it clear what part of the world you operate in ...)

[OldGit]

[quote name='spinynorman' post='258274' date='Aug 8 2008, 04:15 PM']I should have anticipated that one.

So, we're one of those despicable cover bands that devalue music by playing in pubs for next to no money. Most pubs that support live music seem to have a queue of bands wanting to play, so I can't imagine landlords trawling the net looking for talent. The most the site has to do is be somewhere they can go and look for more information after we've approached them with CD.

Second function is for someone looking up what's on in their area and finding us listed at their local pub, or finding their pub listed in our gig list, can get enough from our site to decide if we're worth coming out for.

We don't do weddings, don't go looking for parties or corporate events, but do charity gigs if we're asked and are available.

That's telling me we don't need to worry that much about Google, so long as a search on the band name brings us to the top. Which it does (we used to be called Still Crazy - that really sucks as a band name for Google purposes). Myspace actually isn't doing a bad job, but some band egos may still require a "proper" web site. So, Wordpress looks interesting. I downloaded the Joomla manual and frightened myself to death, so probably not going there.

This is the first time I've thought about what we need a website for and come up with a coherent answer, so thanks for that. Also some interesting ideas here and some good discussions, several things to go and look at. More ideas welcome and also comments if you think I'm reaching the wrong conclusion.[/quote]

Oh that's simple then, Myspace has it all for you.

Get the egomaniacs to make their own myspaces and link in as friends,

You can show off your bands music pictures and youtubes and promote it to your following.

Bookers will need the normal assurances that you'll take in 500 people but no website, real or myspace, will convince them til it happens.

So I'd say stick with Myspace.

Use a cool theme and make it as good as it can be .. That's it.

No need for a real website til you are stars ...

[spinynorman]

[quote name='BigRedX' post='258224' date='Aug 8 2008, 03:42 PM']If you are prepared to hunt around and for info and then get you're head round the terrible coding for MySpace it is possible to do something half-way decent.

[url="http://www.myspace.com/sugarboxmusicbox"]This[/url] I did for my previous band to keep the interest ticking over and also to figure out what was possible within the site constraints without it being too critical if I messed everything up.[/quote]

That looks amazing, but how hard is it to get something that good? I understand customising Myspace is all about CSS, so I wondered if a style sheet editor like Cascade would help?

[bnt]

[quote name='OldGit' post='258164' date='Aug 8 2008, 02:35 PM']Keyword stuffing is a rather pejorative term.
Careful use of key words and phrases to ensure people searching for those things on google are presented with an attractive link to your site in the google search results page is just sensible.

Google uses the title and description meta tag content on its results pages. That's what I'm talking about. If you can't edit the description tag what does google present in the results? Normally it substuitutes the first 20 or so words it can read from your page -and that may be a menu or something else unsuitable.[/quote]
Maybe I should have been clearer: by [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyword_stuffing"]keyword stuffing[/url]. I was referring to the way some sites blatantly try to manipulate Google by overloading [i]meta keyword[/i] tags with anything they think might grab results. Google is on to that now, of course, and ignores [i]meta keyword[/i] tags altogether, because they are open to abuse in this way.

So, yes, "keyword stuffing" is a pejorative, but you're referring to sensible use of [i]meta description[/i] tags, which Google [url="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35264"]does use[/url], as you say.

According to the Wordpress [url="http://faq.wordpress.com/2006/05/07/why-isnt-my-blog-in-google/"]FAQ[/url]:
[quote][b]Can I upload meta tags / sitemap for the search engines?[/b]
That is not possible. Google and most other search engines ignore meta tags.[/quote]
Which is not quite correct, since Google does use [i]meta description[/i] and others as noted. It just won't improve your page rank, which is what I thought you were after.

I've had a look at various wordpress.com forum questions, and the answer in every case is "we don't like meta tags". It's still under discussion, and I'll look into it further and might ask again, about description tags specifically.

wordpress.com (the hosted service, as opposed to using their software on your own site) does let you enter a blog "tagline" field, which would serve as a description, if the makers of the site templates actually included it in the HTML. It's possible that some templates are doing this already. I'll look in to that and see what I can find.

If you were to use the wordpress.org software on a site you host yourself (requires PHP and MySQL), that's different: you'd have full control over all tags, by editing templates. These restrictions I'm referring to are specific to wordpress.com, the free hosting service, which is very wary of spam blogs and other abuses.

I think we're talking at cross purposes a little here - I would call a [i]meta description[/i] tag a normal thing to have, not the aggressive SEO that some try to use to boost their sites artificially, which Google is [url="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769"]at war with[/url]. I do understand your position, and I was thinking in business terms e.g. if you were to go to a bank and ask for a business development loan, they would ask you about your unique selling points, or market differentiators. That's all I meant: how does your band stand out from the others in your market? If pointing that out on the website is what you mean by SEO, then of course I have no argument with that .

Edited August 8, 2008 by bnt

[BigRedX]

[quote name='spinynorman' post='258294' date='Aug 8 2008, 04:28 PM']That looks amazing, but how hard is it to get something that good? I understand customising Myspace is all about CSS, so I wondered if a style sheet editor like Cascade would help?[/quote]

Thanks, when I first decided that a MySpace site might be a good idea, I went for looking for some that didn't make my eyes bleed...

In the end I Googled for customisation tutorials and found one that pretty much wiped out all the MySpace formatting and used that as a starting point.

I don't have any CSS knowledge, the last time I did any HTML it was all tables and Javascript rollovers were the latest thing...

As far as I can tell the code I used works by taking all the MySpace style sheets and asigning now values to the styles lower on the page. The it's just a case of going into the code and fiddling with it until you have something you like the look of. Changing the colours, typefaces and font sizes is relatively easy. There are certain things that it doesn't seem possible to change like the basic 2-column layout or re-skin the music player, but with a bit of thought you can make that work for you (I must remember to alter the width of the YouTube clip to match the player).

Be prepared for the page to completely broken while you are tinkering. I saved my custom code into a text editing app each time I had something I liked the look of before fiddling any further, so I could easily go back to something that worked.

[thepurpleblob]

[quote name='stingrayfan' post='257865' date='Aug 8 2008, 10:22 AM']Looks really good.

I've just redesigned ours using iWeb on the Mac. See what you think: [url="http://wagthedogband.co.uk"]www.wagthedogband.co.uk[/url] It's my first attempt attempt at a proper site.

It's currently on the .Mac server which is painfully slow, so will be swapping it out to a proper host soon. Anyone got a good FTP app for Mac to get it from iWeb-->server please?[/quote]

It looks nice but one thing to watch. All your text is graphics. This is a *really* bad idea. It means the Google will never see it and cuts down the chances of it turning up in a search. As a rule of thumb, everything that can be text should be text for the benefit of search engines. If you must use graphics, for example for the band name/logo, always make sure you include an 'alt=' which provides the text version.

The very best application for FTP and SFTP (better!) is FileZilla. A Mac version is available. You can also use Terminal and use the command line ftp if you are feeling adventurous.

[thepurpleblob]

[quote name='mewsie' post='258249' date='Aug 8 2008, 04:01 PM']+1

we use Joomla for a lot of our web stuff, its really simple if you want to simply plonk stuff into a template, but you can tinker with it quite a lot if you want to customise it.

x[/quote]

I'm a big Joomla fan and use it for a lot of commercial sites. I not completely convinced that the learning curve warrants it's use for a simple, two or three page band site though.

[OldGit]

[quote name='bnt' post='258347' date='Aug 8 2008, 05:37 PM']Maybe I should have been clearer: by [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyword_stuffing"]keyword stuffing[/url]. I was referring to the way some sites blatantly try to manipulate Google by overloading [i]meta keyword[/i] tags with anything they think might grab results. Google is on to that now, of course, and ignores [i]meta keyword[/i] tags altogether, because they are open to abuse in this way.

So, yes, "keyword stuffing" is a pejorative, but you're referring to sensible use of [i]meta description[/i] tags, which Google [url="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35264"]does use[/url], as you say.

According to the Wordpress [url="http://faq.wordpress.com/2006/05/07/why-isnt-my-blog-in-google/"]FAQ[/url]:

Which is not quite correct, since Google does use [i]meta description[/i] and others as noted. It just won't improve your page rank, which is what I thought you were after.

I've had a look at various wordpress.com forum questions, and the answer in every case is "we don't like meta tags". It's still under discussion, and I'll look into it further and might ask again, about description tags specifically.

wordpress.com (the hosted service, as opposed to using their software on your own site) does let you enter a blog "tagline" field, which would serve as a description, if the makers of the site templates actually included it in the HTML. It's possible that some templates are doing this already. I'll look in to that and see what I can find.

If you were to use the wordpress.org software on a site you host yourself (requires PHP and MySQL), that's different: you'd have full control over all tags, by editing templates. These restrictions I'm referring to are specific to wordpress.com, the free hosting service, which is very wary of spam blogs and other abuses.

I think we're talking at cross purposes a little here - I would call a [i]meta description[/i] tag a normal thing to have, not the aggressive SEO that some try to use to boost their sites artificially, which Google is [url="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769"]at war with[/url]. I do understand your position, and I was thinking in business terms e.g. if you were to go to a bank and ask for a business development loan, they would ask you about your unique selling points, or market differentiators. That's all I meant: how does your band stand out from the others in your market? If pointing that out on the website is what you mean by SEO, then of course I have no argument with that .[/quote]


We are agreeing That all sounds pretty good.
Back to the Op, is it easy to do, with good SEO?


A band's USP's are another thing.
There's a million shoegazing indi guitar bands and a million wedding bands and a million pub covers bands, and that just in Hammersmith.

Fortunately the things people looking to book a band are interesting in are fairly predictable and are determined by the venue and audience.
So as long as you know what your market wants and can present it in your content on the site then things should be OK.
Photos, Youube clips and sound clips all make this a lot easier these days, and Myspace makes presenting though things easy for a novice website builder.

You still have to do all the off line marketing ad slogging, of course, (and draw an audience by being entertaining) but having a good site or myspace helps a lot.

[alexmoore10]

I design a few sites (eg alex-moore.com , samwedgwood.com) and I always use Microsoft Frontpage. I can use Dreamweaver but found Frontpage much more idiot proof.

You can also pick up cheap older versions of it on Amazon (or ebay if you want to get a copy)

Have fun!!

[thepurpleblob]

[quote name='drgrew' post='268739' date='Aug 24 2008, 09:19 AM']I design a few sites (eg alex-moore.com , samwedgwood.com) and I always use Microsoft Frontpage. I can use Dreamweaver but found Frontpage much more idiot proof.

You can also pick up cheap older versions of it on Amazon (or ebay if you want to get a copy)

Have fun!![/quote]

I'm being really cheeky, but both those sites where done with Dreamweaver Just need to look at the Javascript Dreamweaver inserts.

Having said that, nice simple informative sites - what more do you need or want?

[alexmoore10]

[quote name='thepurpleblob' post='269131' date='Aug 24 2008, 09:28 PM']I'm being really cheeky, but both those sites where done with Dreamweaver Just need to look at the Javascript Dreamweaver inserts.

Having said that, nice simple informative sites - what more do you need or want?[/quote]

I started on Dreamweaver on one (hence the inserts) but got fed up too quickly as I have always preferred Frontpage. The second one was a rehash of the first as was www.littletardis.com

Thanks for looking though and I'm glad you liked them!!

A

[paul h]

[quote][url="http://www.goodoldneon.com/"]http://www.goodoldneon.com/[/url] -[/quote]

That is a cool site.

I still code mine, using Dreamweaver for it's autocomplete function. I don't really do them if I can at all help it, because I hate web design now!

I did just do this one for a mate of mine...

[url="http://www.cambridgeguitar.co.uk"]http://www.cambridgeguitar.co.uk[/url]

He's pretty pleased with it and has got a couple of clients out of it already. And yes Si....I know it needs some SEO attention but I am lazy and I did it for free!

P.

Edited August 30, 2008 by paul h

[stingrayfan]

For anyone using iWeb, and frustrated by the lack of meta and alt tags, I've now found an add-on that allows you to add all the information before you upload to a third party server.

Google: Rage iWeb SEO tool.

[Russ]

[quote name='drgrew' post='273013' date='Aug 30 2008, 09:26 AM']I started on Dreamweaver on one (hence the inserts) but got fed up too quickly as I have always preferred Frontpage. The second one was a rehash of the first as was www.littletardis.com

Thanks for looking though and I'm glad you liked them!!

A[/quote]

As a web development pro, Frontpage is the tool of the devil. No self-respecting webbie who considers themselves professional in any way will have anything whatsoever to do with it. Not to have a go or anything, but nothing screams "unprofessional" like seeing something that was blatantly done in FP, and you can spot them a mile off.

Firstly, FP inserts non-standards-compliant CSS and Javascript into the HTML document, which is also optimised for Internet Explorer, and hence is extremely dodgy from a cross-browser perspective. The extensions are, for the most part, IIS-only (ie, only work properly on Windows-based servers), the feature set is extremely limited, the general support for Web standards is atrocious and the resulting HTML code is extremely hard to read due to over-use of inline styles, bad formatting and no provision for the separation of design and content.

Do yourself a favour. Ditch FP. Even Notepad is better. Dreamweaver is in a different league and actually qualifies as "professional" software (although, as a former Homesite user, I use it primarily for the excellent code editor). If you want a piece of M$ software that will do the job far, far better, download [url="http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/"]Visual Web Developer[/url] - it's free too.