Friend's band looking for website, need help!

[apeZ]

Right well, as I'm the self-proclaimed computer geek, my friends have asked me about creating or finding someone to create a website for their band. They have been around for 3 or 4 years and have played all over the country, and have an upcoming European tour, although they are still quite unknown.

Their budget is also not massive, so approaching a web design company is not really the best approach, so I was wondering if OCUK had any ideas? I am not familar with flash or HTML so I can't do an awful lot, but then again I don't want them to have a generic 'free' design - it needs to be unique. They have been using Facebook/Myspace and it works very well for them, but not everyone uses it... and they want a site to refer people to.

I'm quite a big fan, so ideally I want to help them out, but I'm not sure how. Are there any genuinely good 'website builders' out there, or could I pick up HTML quickly enough to download some sort of design and customise it a bit? The only problem with this is I'd prefer a sort of portal where they can easily login and post news, gigs, etc.

Any ideas?

 

[AHarvey]

ok, get yourself a free 000webhost site and install Wordpress.

Lots of custom templates out there, free and paid for. Plus, you can edit them yourself quite easily, lots of guides for that.

The 000webhost is a small bit of webspace you can play with. You can select the name but it'll end up like www.bandname.somethingrandom.co.uk.

Wordpress is great for people who have no idea, they can simply log in to the admin panel and update pages, upload photos and also has 1000's of plugins for things like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace etc meaning you can update the blog and the news feeds on those sites update too.

 

[apeZ]

Wordpress isn't a bad idea, but I think they are after a fully fledged website rather than something that mainly deals with blogs.

 

[simisker]

Wordpress isn't just about blogging these days - it can be set up as a more fully-featured website, for want of a better term

Given that it sounds like something they'd like, rather than something they're approaching responsibly and budgeting for, WP with a template seems like your best bet. There are loads of templates out there, I can't imagine there are no templates with band use in mind.

It won't be utterly unique, but hey - uniquely designed websites should really be looked at as a luxury, and if they're like 99.9999999% of bands I've known, they don't have luxury pockets!

I have to admit, I don't see what's so lacking with a MySpace page. It's a multimedia internet presence for free, right there. Don't see the problem with using that until they do have the budget for something unique, personally.

 

[Shoseki]

Well, instead of Wordpress, how about a CMS like Joomla / Drupal ? Same idea, download and install it, get a custom template and install it... find modules that you like and install them... add content and voila! Fast website.

 

[orderoftheflame]

Wordpress isn't a bad idea, but I think they are after a fully fledged website rather than something that mainly deals with blogs.

What are they looking for in a website?

Wordpress can be used for more than just blogs. It would be perfect for posting news and event info to, plus have static pages for about/pictures etc.

 

[apeZ]

Just been looking a bit more into Wordpress, and it is actually quite a good idea after seeing a few example pages... for example this template (although not free) is fantastic:

http://www.bandthemer.com/features-rugged/

I'm not 100% sure what they are after yet, but definitely a news page, static pages with band info, and a sidebar with links to Facebook, upcoming gigs, and stuff like that. Perhaps even somewhere to store their pictures and such, I'm seeing them later today so I'll have a chat.

 

[Edward01]

Don't be fooled into thinking wordpress can only be used for blogs, I and many others use it as a full CMS these days. You can make it do anything you want yet the backend can be simply enough that any computer illiterate client can log in and use it.

 

[DrupalX]

Hey apez, Wordpress is excellent blog with the coming release WP will be more CMS than blog system, the templates are very good, go for it

If you need forum, blog (news post) and CMS under one template I can arrange you one nice deal