I’m not a web designer, I don’t know anything about coding. I’m just a musician who wants to build a website for my band so I can put my music, lyrics and related stuffs. Ok, I can do it all on MySpace, Project Opus, iSound and many other music networking services but I hate those limitations. How do I do that?
Well, this is your lucky day. You can even demonstrate your MySpace pimping-things experience later on. Except the web hosting service, they’re all free. Here we go.
1. Use WordPress
By using WordPress, we’ll get a huge support from its community worldwide. Everything you can imagine to personalize the look and the function, there are always good people who have created themes and plugins for those deepest needs. Just googling, do a few clicks and there you are, you will experience the edge of Heaven or at least a long dejavu.
Yes, there are few limitations in WordPress but you can always see the bright side of it. Say the pages are not searchable. So, why don’t you just write them all in post/blog format? This is a Web 2.0 era, everybody wants to get involved. Writing everything in a blog format allows your visitors to leave their comments everywhere, and that’s the simplest form of interaction. But if you really want to enable the page search for your own specific reason, let the Search Everything Plugin do that job for you.
2. Get the Lovely Theme
I love fourWPTP for its beautiful and professional look. It allows us to edit the logo, it has a navigation bar on the header, and even a clickable banner! They’re all come in free, no cost at all! If you plan to use another theme it’s up to you but I strongly recommend this theme.
3. Software for Offline Editing
Why do I need a software for offline editing? I have a dedicated connection, 24 hours, ultra fast satellite access.. well, it’s on my girlfriend’s place but we’re not gonna break up. I think she really loves me..
You do need an offline editing feature, even if you have an eternal relationship with her. You’re not gonna let your visitors lost in your site because at the same time you’re editing the links placement, the global look of your site, or renaming the posts. Your dependency to this feature will be gone when your site has become stable and all you need to do is updating the content, but now, you just need XAMPP. It’s also free, easy and reliable.
4. Choose the 24/7 Web Hosting
If your market target is people from your own country, I recommend the nearest possible local web hosting service. It means faster speed access for them and reachable technical support for you.
Here’s the tip; make a contact on the weekend, pick a weird time when most people tends to sleep. You can contact them by YM, phone or email. If they respond you instantly, then they don’t lie about the 24/7 service. Do make several contacts to several hosting services so you’ll have more option.
IDwebhost meets those criteria around my neighborhood, plus cheap and (almost all of) their Costumer Care staffs are helpful.
5. Copyrights Stuff
The above comic says it all. You’ll will lose some of your exclusive rights but you’ll open the possibility to gain more exposure for your songs. In my opinion, using songs as promo material is making more sense than to sell them directly now. We’ll find other ways to make money; live performance, selling merchs, licensing to other parties and things we just don’t realize yet.
Creative Commons is a place to let the world know what they can and can not do with your works, legally. I choose Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported. It means you are free to share, copy, distribute, remix my songs for non-commercial use. All you have to do is just mention me as a copyrights owner.
6. Audio Files Hosting
Unless your girlfriend runs a dedicated server just for you - which means a PC who’s up 24/7 just to store your files so it’s accessible by anybody, anywhere, anytime - you will need to host them somewhere. What about the web hosting service we talked about on step 4? Unfortunately they won’t let you store your mp3 there. If it’s cheap, most likely it’s a share hosting, the same PC for your files also stores other client’s files. If you get too much traffic when people stream/download your songs, you’re screwing the other client’s life.
I host my song files at Internet Archive for several good reasons; it has deep linking feature so we can place a direct download link anywhere on the net, we can address our online mp3 player to this link, and it has a built in service to choose the appropriate license using Creative Commons. If that’s not enough, they also convert our songs into different formats once they’re uploaded, automagically, instantly. Plus, the downloaded mp3 don’t lose their names and ID tags, it also means they will show the artworks when being played.
7. The Audio Player
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
1 Pixel Out has a cool tiny audio player for your songs. You can even change its color to match the color of your site.
And that’s it. As simple as that. Stop reading and start creating your own site and please let me know when it’s done. I recommend Firefox for both online and offline browsing. Have fun!