making a band website

Teetonetal

So I'm rejoining my old band as the new one is dead on the water and not going anywhere. Realised that I was far happier before and playing out a lot more often.

One of the things that always bugged me though was how awful the website is. So I told them that if I rejoin I want to get some thing simple but good put together. Surely can't be that hard? I'm prepared to do it but:

It's been a long time since I've done something like that. Last time I used wordpress, which was ok. anything better out there now? Ideally super easy to use but will create something functional.

roundthebend

Just be careful you're not wasting your time - does your band rely on its website for bookings etc? If not, maybe just create a Facebook page and be done with it.
Wordpress is as good as anything - complete overkill in terms of features but at least you can fiddle about and trim it down to just what you need. And there's plenty of tutorials and a strong community.

ThePrettyDamned

I'm currently making a website with squarespace - it's excellent. Costs money, yes, but there are discount codes everywhere and you can purchase your own domain for an extra fee. 

The main reason it's so good is because every template is very well optimised - whether it's viewed on a 5k imac, a 2k pc or a mobile phone it'll look good and work well. 

The layout I've picked I'm not 100 percent happy with, but I only worked on it for a couple of hours - it's easy to pick a new template and start over. Mine really just needs a simple portfolio page, a page with work/customer projects that are password protected for customers to download images from and a contact page. In an ideal world, I'll also have a fourth page with personal projects on too. 

You can add a feature to prevent right clicking, too, which makes it harder for people to steal your work. To be honest, I'm of the mindset that if someone wants to steal, there will be a way but if you wanted that, it's there. 

There are templates designed for bands. 

paulnb57

A Facebook page would make more sense IMHO, easy to edit, easy for others to share......

Teetonetal

Biggest reason for not using Facebook is that it's not so popular here. They do have a page but the old site got a lot more traffic by all accounts. 

Website is used generally as a media pack and is certainaly looked at for bookings etc. 

Will have a look at squarespace. 

The band already has hosting and domain name, so really is a case of just updating what they have to something better.

MrSwanson

My dad uses Wix for his art page, I think it has plenty of templates and layouts etc..

If him and my mum can put one together on there it must be fairly idiot proof...

TheBlueWolf

I use WordPress for my horror fiction blog and it's been great so far. I currently use the free version but I might upgrade to paid at some point.

PVO_Dave

Wordpress and a pre-made theme from Themeforest would be my suggestion  

p90fool

I haven't clicked on any band's website for years, do they still have them?

Teetonetal

p90fool said:

I haven't clicked on any band's website for years, do they still have them?

It's more designed as a place to show booking agents with videos, tracks and press in one place rather than generating public interest. 

RocknRollDave

My two cents:
Don't put lots of words on it. Get some nice photos and videos, audio clips, but keep the text concise and snappy.

TimmyO

p90fool said:

I haven't clicked on any band's website for years, do they still have them?

how many bands have you booked? 

EricTheWeary

Teetonetal said:

p90fool said:

I haven't clicked on any band's website for years, do they still have them?

It's more designed as a place to show booking agents with videos, tracks and press in one place rather than generating public interest. 

I think if you are hoping people will find you in a search ( polka band in Halifax)then website, if you think people will only search by band name ( ( The Fat Tomatoes, best polka band in Halifax) then I suspect Facebook would do. I've certainly seen websites for reasonably well known bands that are pretty much placeholders to direct you to their social media.

The other @RocknRollDave gem is that an out of date website is worse than no website. If you can't commit to regularly updating the information again Facebook does this better. 

Teetonetal

Website will be presented by us to agents.  Not hoping people stumble across it. Simply a media resource.  Which is why I think it needs to be simple but good and up to date.

p90fool

TimmyO said:

p90fool said:

I haven't clicked on any band's website for years, do they still have them?

how many bands have you booked? 

Not a single one, but I'm in one which gets booked about 80 times a year.

We only do fairly local stuff though to be fair, so it's largely word of mouth/Facebook.

I actually have no idea what proper bands do these days tbh, I haven't really gone chasing up any bands for work since the MySpace days.

Fretwired

WordPress sounds overkill .. it needs regularly updating to fix bugs and security issues.

If you're after a system well optimised website that works on all devices just get a Bootstrap template.

Or there are tools that use the Bootstrap framework with drag and drop blocks. This code can be turned into a WordPress site later if the need arises. This tool is free:

https://mobirise.com/

Teetonetal

@Fretwired that looks a good shout! Thanks.