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website suggestions

Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2011 2:01 pm
by john lamb
Hey - I'm about to build a website for lessons / performance. Any suggestions, in general?

My first choice will be the URL name. (I might go with 2 URLs linked to each other)

Re: website suggestions

Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2011 2:43 pm
by Juan Expósito
Then your website name should be www.YOURNAME.com

Avoid drumlesson.com or this_site_will_change_the_drumming_world.com names or anything like that.

Something about the visual aspect:

Keep it simple, easy to navigate and read.
That doesn´t mean that it has to be "boring".
Colours combination, fonts and visual "purity" are more important than people think.
Give unity to all the pages of your site, using the same one-two fonts/colours, aspects...
This principles apply to any type of site (proffesional or not)
Of course, this is my opinion...and of course there are others styles...

And I would avoid "useless" intros to the main page, or something too flashy.

Good luck...

Re: website suggestions

Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2011 3:13 pm
by Sam
Be yourself. I'll sooner watch videos by guys like Joe Crabtree and Max Sansalone than guys who act like they're trying to sell you Creatine.
And, if you are planning on having a few free videos on there, try to make them more than 30 seconds long if possible.....i can only speak for myself, but i think the few extra minutes spent demonstrating that you can comprehensively deconstruct a concept, in a personable tone, is a much better route than the "teaser trailer" one......which, invariably, will always give it the air of being a moneymaking pet-project.

Best of luck dude, keep us posted ;)

Re: website suggestions

Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2011 6:14 pm
by Clint Hopkins
I agree with the suggestions from Juan and Sam wholeheartedly. Ease of navigation is key. I always enjoy a short bio and gear list. Good transcriptions of the lessons, if possible, add a ton of "production value".

Names to avoid:

CellBlockOfDrumming.com

FlatOfDrumming.com

CastleOfDrumming.com

AdobeHutOfDrumming.com

ApartmentOfDrumming.com

TeepeeOfDrumming.com

Squatter'sShackOfDrumming.com

Re: website suggestions

Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2011 8:04 pm
by chris perra
Ha ha .. I own Howtoplaydrumsinanhour.com..

Haven't really done anything with it yet... one day...

Re: website suggestions

Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2011 9:39 pm
by john lamb
howtoplaydrumsinanhour.com .... thats good. I wish I had thought of that one... How about howtoplaydrumsinahalfhour.com ?

I was thinking of doing something like drumlessonsportland.com ... pretty inane name, but it helps with the search traffic. I could do 2 names and link them.

Johnlamb.com is taken. I could also do JohnLambDrums.com, but its also pretty bland. I was also thinking about dontpractice.com as a gimmick. (The idea being that when people say the word 'practice' it conjures up the idea of smply repeating something thousands and thousands of times. Instead, I advocate a question/answer mode - figure out what you need to be able to do, and then figure out how to learn to do it. Often this is not done most efficiently through simple repetition, though there is a lot of that.)

Re: website suggestions

Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2011 8:18 am
by YamahaPlayer
Is this like a pay for lessons site, or just a general lessons site, or to advertise your own personal teaching..?

Re: website suggestions

Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2011 8:38 am
by sejuba
for web design, have a look at some cheap templates....

http://templates.entheosweb.com/Music.asp

far from being the ideal solution, this is still a good option for those who don´t know a thing about design

Re: website suggestions

Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2011 2:13 pm
by john lamb
Its for my private teaching. I will also use it to market some music education materials some friends and I are creating.




Nice templates! btw - I also found ohmyflash.com which has a thousands of flash templates.

Re: website suggestions

Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2011 2:10 pm
by john lamb
so I registered http://www.johnlambdrums.com and http://www.drumlessonsportland.com

Someone grabbed up dontpractice.com after I posted it here... seems someone thought it was a good idea afterall :o :(

I'm now looking around for some good templates... anyone have any suggestions for drummer/lesson pages that think are particularly well done?