Starting A Website

[Bluebird]

Hi folks,

 

I'm thinking of starting my own music site for reviews/interviews/articles and the like. I have a few decent contacts 'in the industry' and have been writing for other sites ad magazines for long enough that I should be fine with that side of things. The problem is, I'm not really sure when it comes to the actualy website part. I looked at Tumblr but it looks like it's over run with kids nowadays, might be hard to tailor it to a wider audience. And I'm not well versed enough in this kind of thing to jump into something like Wordpress.

 

Should I try something like http://website.1and1.co.uk as they seem to do the heavy lifting? Leaving me free to ramble about old obscure Irish punk bands or whatever else I'm on at the time.

 

Any help in this area would be massively appreciated.

 

Thanks.

[KenB]

Hi Bluebird,

 

Nobody here, as far as I know, is into web design.

 

I have used packages before for websites and most help forums are "pre-designed".

The layout for the site ( this one for instance ) is pre-determined.

We can add more forums but we are limited to what we can do.

 

Take a look here:

click here

 

This is my own site ( not very busy :) )

 

It is totally free. No hosting fees - no site fees.

I get a band of advertisements - that's it.

 

I know the guy who started this site - it is free too ( I think )

click here

 

What I am suggesting is that £5 per month adds up over a year.

 

I was paying something like £80 for hosting on my first site ( for 2 years ) I didn't think that this was economic for the numbers that I got.

 

This is something else that you need to consider.

Getting the site up is a lot of work.

If not may people find it you have to wonder ..... is it worth the expense as well as the time ?

 

My suggestion - find a suitable ( free ) package and get going with that.

Make your mistakes there - then if you want to later .........transfer to a .com .net or other address with paid for hosting.

 

Others may have differing opinions :)

[Bluebird]

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly Ken.

 

Costs are a concern, especially when looking to take on other writers for the site (I hate the idea of asking people to work for the experience, if I can offer something it feels less like I'm taking advantage). So you make a very good point there.

 

You've given me plenty to think about sir, Thanks for the help.

[KenB]

(I hate the idea of asking people to work for the experience, if I can offer something it feels less like I'm taking advantage)

Could you have a word with the site owner here ?? :) :)

 

Seriously - we all contribute our time here for nothing.

All help sites are the same.

 

I was offered some time back - to take on the Admin of a site ( paid ) which I refused.

I didn't want to feel that the owner could pressure me in any way - I did it for nothing. I didn't feel bad when I left.

 

It may be that there are people interested enough to offer their time freely.

We do it because we enjoy it .........

[Bluebird]

Seems to be similar to the music industry. Lots of places are very eager to give you experience (i.e no help + free work for them). But you can only get so much experience before you need to you know...feed yourself.

 

Plus I think you'll get better work as people are thankful you aren't just using them.

 

Taking time to give people advice for nothing is pretty comendable!

[KenB]

If you are paying people then you need to consider how the site itself is going to finance this.

 

Are you going to have paid for downloads ?

Goods for sale ?

Advertisements?

registration fees ?

 

Getting a site up and running is a slow process ( I can vouch for this :) )

If there are lots of other similar sites then your site will not show up on a Google search.

If this is the case ( as was with mine ) then people don't find you. Frustrating !!

 

You need lots of links to your site from other sites.

 

I don't really understand how Google works and how sites are rated - but it is a slow business building up visitors / members.

[Bluebird]

I'm keeping staff fairly small for now, just the three of us (for now at least), which should get us a couple of posts a day. And I'm happy enough to work at it for very little to get things off the ground. We're all freelancers so have other income coming in.

 

So I'll be sorting out ads only for now. Paid downloads on a music site tends to be ineffective, but a free download of the day usually helps bring in the punters.

 

Word of mouth in this area is pretty valuable, so if I can get a couple of tweets from people I know who are doing well for themselves I'll be able to attract a decent crowd. And hopefully the content of the blog will strong enough to keep them coming back.

 

I know it's going to be a slog to get there, but having a space where I can work on something a bit more expansive than the usual nonsense will be worth it.

[KenB]

Post a link to the site when you get it up and running.

 

If we can help further just shout.

[Bluebird]

Will do, thank you very much!

[john_27]

I refresh this topic (it is not visited for a long time). I also want to create a website, but in my case it will be a company website. I have my own new company, so now I need a good website. Recently, I live in Norway, so I'm looking for companies from this country, where I could order up a website and hosting. I thought about this - ideosolutions.no/. Do you know this company? And if not, then maybe you could recommend me another company, also working in Norway???