Want to start my first music webpage....school me, please

[Nowarezman]

Finally retiring and will have time to get musically productive at last.  

 

I'm envisioning a pretty little website where I can post videos and/or audio, with some room for captions, a few musings, some links to various and sundry.  Sure there's Bandcamp - I will definitely link to that.  But I'd like a storefront of my own, also.  

 

I've fiddled with Wordpress - yeah I know, "no one" uses Wordpress (but actually lots of people do).  It's the arty vibe and enabling that Wordpress offers that attracts me.  But perhaps there are other no-brainer better options - I am ignorant with a capital IG.  

 

Any advice appreciated...

 

nat

 

[Anderton]

I'm no authority, for sure. I use Wordpress, with some plug-ins that make life easier.

 

An issue you might run into is host storage space, and how much you want to pay for it. I host all my videos on YouTube so they're stuck with the storage bill . I put audio examples on YouTube as much as possible, too. For example, I posted all the audio examples for my Pro Tools book on YouTube, as an unlisted video. 

[Nowarezman]

So I assume it costs to have your own YouTube channel, right?  

 

The YouTube channels all look similar which I think is a plus - people are used to navigating them.  Just a few choices for creating playlists, etc.

 

Do you have to pay more to have HD audio available?

 

Is your dot.org site a Wordpress?  Looks kinda like one...

 

Thx much helping out - 

 

nat

 

 

 

[Anderton]

3 hours ago, Nowarezman said:

So I assume it costs to have your own YouTube channel, right?  

 

No, it's free. They plaster ads over it to make their money, unless you choose to monetize your channel. At that point, you can choose not to monetize it, and not have ads. Counter-intuitive, yeah, I know. I could monetize my site (I pass the threshold for subscribers and time spent on site) but it's hardly worth it unless I had millions of views.

 

As to having HD audio, I don't know what's up with that. All my music goes through the free YouTube Official Data-Smashing Shredder.

 

3 hours ago, Nowarezman said:

Is your dot.org site a Wordpress?  Looks kinda like one...

 

Yes, craiganderton.org is Wordpress-based. However, I use the Beaver Builder plug-in to make it easier to do the layout. I did put some coding effort into the site to make it look the way I wanted. Having never done that before, I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into...but I figured out how to customize colors, typefaces, etc. 

[Notes_Norton]

Years ago, I bought a book "HTML in plain English", which is probably out of print by now, but I'm sure there are others.

 

HTML code is actually quite easy. Then for anything else more complicated, I borrowed code from other websites, and customized it for my needs.

 

They are fairly basic websites:

https://www.nortonmusic.com

http://www.s-cats.com

 

Learning basic HTML was interesting.

 

I wanted a simple look. Easy to navigate and not cluttered with distractions. A bit like the Google search page, come here to get what you want, not to be distracted.

 

I would make them more complicated and entertaining if there was a need to do so, but for these purposes, simple is better.

 

I registered my domain name myself, so no one else has control of it but me.

 

I found a webhost and the one I'm using now is probably about the 4th or 5th. I've been happy with all of them but one, and that was in the early days.

 

Also, I use a shopping cart service that is not connected with my web host. That gives me the freedom to change either webhost or shopping cart without changing both.

 

I find it better knowing what I'm doing than plugging in info to a pre-arranged template. But that's just me.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

 

[Nowarezman]

Thanks a ton, Craig, Notes, for the info.  My son was into HTML and small app-building a while back - I'll hit him up for some help.  I think I have enough to go on now to just pick a place in the pool and dive in and flounder for a bit 'till I can doggypaddle. 

 

I've heard over and over that it's a waste of time to start up your own webpage unless you're determined to get it linked all over the place, keep it up with fresh posts, blow on the coals regularly, etc.   SSS by CA will be the first place I'll set a link when I've got something suitable for viewing...

 

Thx again,

nat

 

[RABid]

My biggest advice, avoid popups. Nothing turns me off faster than a popup wanting me to sigh up for a newsletter appearing 5 seconds after I reach a web site. Even worse is having one pop up on multiple pages.

 

My question, is this site for generating income, or attention?

[Notes_Norton]

4 hours ago, RABid said:

My biggest advice, avoid popups. Nothing turns me off faster than a popup wanting me to sigh up for a newsletter appearing 5 seconds after I reach a web site. Even worse is having one pop up on multiple pages.

 

My question, is this site for generating income, or attention?

And autoplay anything.

 

If I click on a site, and either a popup happens or a video starts playing automatically, I can't click out of there quickly enough.+

 

Notes ♫

[KuruPrionz]

^^^What RABid and Notes said!!!! ^^^

[KenElevenShadows]

A Wordpress-based site seems easier to adapt to whether people view from a desktop or laptop-based browser or phones.

 

Hostgator seems like a good host.

 

I hate pop-ups to the point of where there's a good chance that I might leave a site if it has one. Ditto auto-play anything.

 

My Eleven Shadows site is a Wordpress-based site. Well, except for the "legacy" part. I also am an author for Photofocus, a photography education website, and that too is Wordpress-based.

[Nowarezman]

Quote

On 11/21/2022 at 2:14 PM, RABid said:

My biggest advice, avoid popups. Nothing turns me off faster than a popup wanting me to sigh up for a newsletter appearing 5 seconds after I reach a web site. Even worse is having one pop up on multiple pages.

 

My question, is this site for generating income, or attention?

Basically it's just to have a presence with my music available.  I want the presentation to have a little class, some nice design, eye-candy.  Something that looks good at first blush, then makes it easy to listen to a thing or two (videos probably) and then easy ways to drill down if I've actually got someone that interested.   Income?  I'll have a link to Bandcamp, so that will probably be the way any possible income could be generated, but money is not a motivation here, at least in this white-boarding stage.   

 

[W.H.Auden0]

 I want to start off with an analogy. Imagine if you decided that you wanted to make a movie, so you hired a cinematographer, you hired a lighting specialist, you hired some actors, and everyone gathered on day one of your shoot and they said, “Okay, where’s the script? What’s the movie about?” and you said, “Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about that. I just wanted to make a movie.” And they would say to you, “Well, we need a script,” then you frantically started writing a script.

[Joe Muscara]

On 11/25/2022 at 5:27 AM, W.H.Auden0 said:

 I want to start off with an analogy. Imagine if you decided that you wanted to make a movie, so you hired a cinematographer, you hired a lighting specialist, you hired some actors, and everyone gathered on day one of your shoot and they said, “Okay, where’s the script? What’s the movie about?” and you said, “Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about that. I just wanted to make a movie.” And they would say to you, “Well, we need a script,” then you frantically started writing a script.

Nice one.

 

In my early days of starting to do web development on my own, I had a few clients where I said, "great, I can create a site for you, it could like something like this, but I'll need content from you." Most of those sites went nowhere because they had no idea what they wanted to say. (While I consider myself a good writer and editor, I can't tell you what you should write for your site because a) I don't know your field and 2. I don't know your audience. The site owner needs to be able to do both to have the site be effective.)

[Nowarezman]

Good points, all.  I think it was Blake that said something like "everything that exists was once an idea."  Not sure exactly what Blake himself meant but his statement reminds me that art is not "creation from nothing", rather it's a set of skills that allow you to say something in a particularly interesting or creative manner.  So you have to have something to say, first of all.  The art part starts after that first non-artistic square one.

 

Artists have sometimes rebelled against the above formulation - saying in effect that art is not something you make that references something else.  Rather it's just what it is, alone.  I think that's great nonsense, to not put too fine a point on it.   Nothing exists without context and is in it's own way, a door to endless points of view from other points of view.  Context makes it all - the web of endless reference and cross-reference is where meaning and creativity exist. 

 

nat

 

[bill5]

Check wix.com. You can have a basic site for free with lots of built-in templates, graphics etc so you don't need to become some webmaster stud to have a nice-looking site. And there are inexpensive options to upgrade if you want (like for a better customized URL etc). 

[Mighty Motif Max]

Wordpress sites make up approx. 42.3% of websites on the current web, so it's hardly a situation of "no one" using it. I used Wix in the past - they are good. I wanted more features and flexibility, especially with search-engine optimization, so I moved to Wordpress. But if you're wanting to do things with a click-and-drag type of interface, Wix is excellent.

 

For a host, I recommend Dreamhost. That said, for your needs, you could probably just pay Wix or Wordpress.com (different than the self-hosted Wordpress.org, has less features) and use their own hosting service.

 

My website (built with Wordpress) is https://www.maxthompsonmusic.com if you'd like to take a look.

 

Neither of these are music-related at all, but this site was also built with Wordpress: https://www.peteyspalace.com/.

 

This is the one older Wix site that I've kept on their platform: https://www.petseamstress.com/