A website is an absolute necessity for the modern musician. With a website you can reach out to an audience of people throughout the world and let them know just how great you are. If you are willing to put in a little effort and persevere with your time a website can offer you a ton of possibilities. Even with a very simple website you will be able to play your music worldwide, tell everyone about yourself, display photos, list concert dates and perhaps most importantly for the professional musician, you will be easily found through Google so that your adoring fans can get in contact and concert promoters can offer you performances.
In many ways a musician’s website is like an electronic business card. But WHAT a business card! You can tell someone all about yourself with a website and the more professional it looks the better the impression you make. Remember that the impression you are creating with your site is being viewed by hundreds, perhaps thousands of people so you don’t want to do a scrappy job with your website.
How to make your own website
Making your own website isn’t as daunting as you think. People usually jump straight to thinking of the final product when what they should be doing first of all is collecting all the bits and pieces that will make the content of your site. In the end it is the content that will have people taking notice of your website. Even if you have a very simple free page and your content is good people will come back for more. Having said that, I do believe that you have to make the site appear as good as it possibly can!
Building Blocks – Mapping out what you want
Your first point of call is a pad and paper. Write down what things you want to have up on the web. For instance, do you want:
A very simple site
* Biography
* Contact details
* Some photos
* Some music examples
Or something with all the frills
* Photo Gallery
* Guest book
* CD and merchandise sales
* Concert Calendar
* Videos
* Full music tracks to buy and download
* Publicity reviews
* Mailing lists
* Newsletters
You get the idea, there are many different components that could make up a website and you need to decide first of all what you are going to have. If you skip this step and go straight to the computer you might change your mind at a stage where undoing your work is going to take a lot of effort.
At the same time you should start some research. Have a good close look at websites that you admire and would like to emulate. Notice color schemes, layouts, page topics and even the types of photos used and how they meld into the overall scheme of the page. The clearer the idea you can form in your head about exactly what you want the better.
Making Your Website – Don’t know HTML? No problem!
There are website design programs out there that run the whole gamut of complexity with Dreamweaver being on the high end of it all. Dreamweaver is the industry standard for web design and there is not much it can’t do. For us mere mortals, however, that weren’t raised with HTML as a second language there are plenty of WYSIWYG programs about. WYSIWYG stands for What You See Is What You Get and it refers to web page editors that have a very practical visual format that displays the final product right there infront of you as it would appear on the web.
Personally I would recommend Microsoft Expression Web. If you have ever used Microsoft Word then the format of the program is wonderfully familiar and it is the best intermediate editor around (this very page was made inside Expression Web). Its cheap and easy, just the way I like it.
Now here is the part where we get to cheat a little…
If you wanted to make a beautiful and functional site within a web design page then you will still have to spend time learning the ropes and doing a bit of research on how to get your site going. BUT! there is an easier way… Website templates are fully functioning and ready to go and many of them are absolutely free! All you have to do is download the template, open it with your editor and start replacing the text and images with your own. Make sure your read the licencing agreements attached because a lot of designers who give their templates out for free ask that you retain a link to their site in the footer. A small price to pay I say!
Getting a Domain Name – What’s in a name?
For a musician it is important to get a domain name that people will remember. Its no good if you meet a concert promoter after a concert and you start spelling out your site www.jerry_thebest_plukker.com with hopes that it will ever be remembered. Go for something short and easy. Your full name is the obvious choice and its probably the best one, if its available… Because of the boom in web sites and pages in the last decades many of the logical .com names have been taken up. There are many alternatives such as .net .biz .info .us etc. however, just as the long site name won’t be remembered neither will an unusual ending. Most people assume .com for the ending of a site address and if it is .bz they might never end up getting in contact with you. . net addresses are a fairly good substitute but I have to say, if yourname.com is already taken aim for something close and easy to remember with a .com ending rather than using something else.
Finding a Host
You need a host to store your site files so that they can be accessed 24/7 around the world. There are literally hundreds of hosts available and you will need only to search for “internet provider” to get a listing of them all. They all have different deals and rates so I encourage you to undertake a bit of research.
I have always used Hostmonster and I have been very pleased with their service. I have never had any technical problems and the few queries I did have were answered by phone and email very very quickly.
Get your page on Google – Search engine submission
Once you have your page up and running you can submit the URL (your domain name ie. http://www.yourname.com ) to search engines. This is a very simple process and within a few days the search engine will have indexed your site and you can be found out in cyberspace.
Track your Visitors – Web statistics
Once your site is up and running it is a lot of fun to watch how many people are visiting your site each day and where they are coming from. I remember being amazed at all the countries that popped up when I released my homepage. Web statistics can also be very useful on a marketing level in that you can see what pages are being accessed and how often. You can see where people have come from, how long they stay and if they return.
I will only recommend only one site for this, because they are the best (no they are not paying me to say this) www.statcounter.com
Tips for Writing
Make sure that you take time and consider what you write in your website text. I recommend being polite, positive, welcoming and above all honest! Sarcasm and potentially offensive humor are examples of things to stay away from. With people from all over the world reading what you have written you will want to bear in mind that what is funny to you might not me funny to someone else.
Be sure to check all your spulling throughout the entire site because nothing says ‘un-professional’ like bad spelling.
Tips for Photos
Photos can really make or break the appearance of a site. The layout and background really serve as a skeleton and your pictures will speak volumes about you and your music. Invest the extra dollars to get some professional photos that show your best side.
When you are having the photo shoot be sure to get a wide variety of shot types. Close ups, distant, mid range, light, dark, quirky, serious, action, posed etc. a wide variety of photos will be really useful not only to diversify your site but it will be very, very, useful for your career development… trust me.
Useful Resources for the Webmaster
Getting Someone Else to Build your Website
If you have made it down this far and you think that its all too much work then you can always hire someone to do it all for you. Once again there are many web designers who would love your business so shop around. I recommend that you find someone who knows at least a little about the music world because you don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on a site that looks like a paper sales business.
Musician Designs created this site and many others. If you like what you see then drop them a line!
