Webmastering
 

So you want to put up a web site for your band. Here are a few question with some answers that will help you to get your web site on-line weather you use Sweet Nanny Goat or do it your self.

Q: How do I create a web site?

A: To create you need the following (not necessarily in this order):

  • domain name (optional)
  • web site host
  • content
  • A way to get your content onto your host computer

Q: What is a domain name?

A: The domain name is basically the name a user of your web will type in to the address line of there browser to access your web page. The Sweet Nanny Goat domain name is "sweetnannygoat.com". The "www." is not part of the domain name, it is just for the host to use to distinguish the a service associated with your domain name (most often www. Is for your web page and it stands for world wide web).

Q: What is a web site host?

A: Once you have created the killer content for you web page and someone wants to see it, it has to come from somewhere (or rather from some computer). A host is company that has a set of computers that are on 24 hours a day that can send the content of your web page to anyone that may request it (by typing in www.yourdomainname.com in to there web browser)

Q: What is content?

A: Good question, any to leave you with a vague answer, any type of information you can think of that can be sent down a wire. Yes, the content is what some one sees, hears, smells?, tastes?, feels? (yes the technology is coming) when they access your web page.

Q: How do I get a domain name?

A: Hands down: enom.com. There are other domain name registrars out there but I don't recommend them.

Q: How much does a domain name cost?

A: About $30 per year.

Q: How do I get a web site host?

A: There are many hosting options available, the question of who do go to is dependent on your needs. I'm going to mention a lot of options now, but I'm only going to talk about a few, because if your in a band and your cash flow is like that of any band I've ever been in then I'm going to leave out the more costly options. So here they go:

  • Self hosted (your computers, your Internet connection)
  • Co-location (your computer, someone elses connection)
  • Managed (leased computer, someone elses connection)
  • Typical (rented space on someone elses computer, someone elses connection)
  • Shared (rented space on someone elses web site)
  • Free (you get what you pay for, advertisement on your page)

I'm only going to talk about Typical and Shared hosting, I would mention free, but it's too cheesy for me. When I say typical hosting, I am talking about $20 per month, my favorite so far is earthlink.net and is what I use to host Sweet Nanny Goat. The next is Shared, shared is what I'm offering, you share space on my web site and lower your monthly out pour of ca$h.

Q: What is the advantage/disadvantage of typical hosting?

A: When someone types in www.yourdomainname.com into there web browser they will see www.yourdomainname.com in there web browser. The disadvantage is the higher per month cost.

Q: What is the advantage/disadvantage of shared hosting?

A: When someone type in www.yourdomainname.com into there web browser, when the page loads the address will change to read www.mydomainname.com/yourdomainnam.com. This is main disadvantage of shared hosting. The advantage is lower per month costs.

Q: How do I get content?

A: You create it, your are artists aren't you? I imagine that if you have read this far that you have some idea of what you want your web site to look like don't know how to realize that vision. Here again Sweet Nanny Goat can help. I hate hearing stories about the amount people are paying for web sites. If you know what you want and your paying a lot of money your probably getting ripped off. Creating content is easy, for the most part is consists of some information (bio, show dates, ect) some pictures, some music and maybe a video. This content is then nicely formatted and some pretty colors are chosen and the site content has been created. There is one thing though, this content all has to be held together in a computer file format know as HTML which stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. Now, it use to be important to know HTML, but nowadays quite a few computer programs will save your file in HTML format. Anyway, I'm assuming you don't want to mess with this, if you did then you wouldn't still be reading. Well, it just so happens that I'm an expert at gluing together your content and putting it into HTML format. We can help, yes we can.

Q: How do I get my content onto the host computer I choose?

A: FTP. It stands for (File Transfer Protocol). Basically you want to transfer the HTML files on your computer to the web site host computer. FTP programs can be found for free all over the Internet (hint: go to google.com search for "Free FTP") and are not terribly difficult to use, but there again is where we come in. We hope by now that we have not cleared up any mysteries for you and your ready to use our service.

The pitch:

If your creating your own content and are are having trouble putting every thing together and uploading it to your host, this is where we can help. No beating around the bush, we charge $60 per hour, but we are very fast so your money can go a long way. We set up the initial southpaw site in five minutes (it has grown a lot since that point) and probably now represents 10 hours worth of work. The first site had a picture of the EP, three MP3's and an e-mail link for info, we already had the picture and the MP3's, we also had full artistic control (meaning no one was nit picking about how it looked or saying change this and change that) so it was really quick..

How long will it take? This, of course, depends on how much we have to do and what we do depends on the deference between what you give us and what you want. If you simply say, hey set us up with a an awesome web page and leave it at that you could employee us full time for the rest of our lives and we probably not finish. If you instead sent us a document that looked exactly how you wanted the site to look it would probably take us about a half an hour per page. If you have songs in MP3 format on a CD and want them put up it would take minutes, if you need us to record the songs then days.

We will add shows to the your web page at no charge unless you start playing three a day (or something ridiculous). Just drop us an e-mail and we'll put it up in a day or two.

Break Down:

Okay your ready, you have a couple of picture and an mp3 or two you want on your site, here is probably the most you should have to pay for the first year of your site being online.

  • $30 per year for your domain name
  • $60 per year for shared hosting
  • $90 for three hours of my time, maybe less.

Grand total, $180.

Sample Site:

What, your not taking my word for it, fine, check out these fine sites that I have created and maintain:

Stuff I know how to do:

Graphic Titles
Event Copy
MP3's
Video
Pictures

If your interested in becoming a Sweet Nanny Goat Band and want more information e-mail us by clicking here or sending an e-mail to webmastering@sweetnannygoat.com.

Jacob "Papa J" Christ