BandCamp: How to Set Up Your Band Website with Wordpress

I gave a presentation at last weeks’ Bandcamp about how to set up your own band website with Wordpress. I put together this document for the bands in attendance; maybe it will be useful to you too, whoever you are.

Installing Wordpress

Automatic: Godaddy

(this presumes you already have a domain name and hosting account through godaddy.com)

Login to your account.
Hosting on the left.
Your account shows up in the middle: click “Manage Account” — opens new window
Your Applications
Blogs on the left.
Wordpress
Install Now
Choose Domain, Continue
Invent database passwords.  You’ll probably never need them.
Fill out configuration form.  You will need these passwords.

Wait a 15-30 minutes.

Go to yourdomain.com/wordpressdirectory/wp-admin/
and login using your username (probably admin) and the password you invented (in the configuration form)

Automatic: Other

Other hosting providers offer a similar solution.

By Hand: Not as Hard as it Looks

(this presumes you already have a domain and hosting account, and know how to FTP to your site to upload and download files)

(adapted from wordpress.org)
   1.  Download and unzip the WordPress package from wordpress.org.
   2. Create a database for WordPress on your web server, as well as a MySQL user who has all privileges for accessing and modifying it (usually available through your hosting provider’s control panel.  Often the database and user are identical, and setting it up is a single step.)
   3. Back in the wordpress database, rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php.
   4. Open wp-config.php in your favorite text editor and fill in your database details (the db name / username / password you just created in (2), as well as the db host address, which you should be able to find in your hosting provider’s control panel).
        *   Replace the sentences “put your unique sentence here” with different random strings of letters.

   5. Place the WordPress files in the desired location on your web server:
          * If you want to integrate WordPress into the root of your domain (e.g. http://example.com/), move or upload all contents of the unzipped WordPress directory (but excluding the directory itself) into the root directory of your web server.
          * If you want to have your WordPress installation in its own subdirectory on your web site (e.g. http://example.com/blog/), rename the directory wordpress to the name you’d like the subdirectory to have and move or upload it to your web server. For example if you want the WordPress installation in a subdirectory called “blog”, you should rename the directory called “wordpress” to “blog” and upload it to the root directory of your web server.

   6. Run the WordPress installation script by accessing wp-admin/install.php in your favorite web browser.
          * If you installed WordPress in the root directory, you should visit: http://example.com/wp-admin/install.php
          * If you installed WordPress in its own subdirectory called blog, for example, you should visit: http://example.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php 

Setting Up Your Site

The wordpress back-end control panel (your-site.com/wordpress-directory/wp-admin/) is straightforward and easy to use.  Poke around; you’ll learn fast.

A band site might be structured something like this:

Post Categories
Shows
News
Music
Pictures
Recommendations

Links
to friend’s bands
label
band members’ individual websites
etc

Pages
One with general info about the band
One for each member of the band

Settings: Reading
Front page displays: a static page (you might choose your General Info Page)

Appearance

Custom styling your wordpress site requires some knowledge of XHTML, CSS, and PHP.
Luckily there are hundreds of templates available at wordpress.org/extend/themes/

To install:
Download and unzip the template.
Upload the template directory to your-site/your-wordpress-directory/wp-content/themes/
Login to the back-end of your site.
Go to Appearance
Choose the theme you uploaded.  A sample will open up; choose Activate on the top right corner.

Plugins for Bands:

Bands might find these plugins useful.
Get plugins from wordpress.org/extend/plugins

Installing plugins:
Download and unzip the plugin package.
Using your FTP client, upload the unzipped directory to yoursite/your-wordpress-directory/wp-content/plugins

Go into the back-end (/wp-admin/), go the Plugins on the LH side.  Find the plugin you uploaded, and choose Activate.

GigPress
Manage all of your upcoming and past performances or events right from within WordPress, and display them using simple shortcodes or template tags on your WordPress-powered website.

Last.fm for Artists
Integrates your Last.fm account into your website.

Twitter Tools
Integrates your Twitter account into your website.

Podcasting
Gives you an inline music player and turns your whole page into a podcast (fans can subscribe via iTunes and whenever you post a new mp3, they’ll get it).

NextGen Gallery
Easy maintenance of photo galleries with some sleek browsing options.

ShareThis
Lets your readers easily share your posts via email, AIM, text message, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Twitter, Blogger, Reddit and many more social sites.

Social Homes
Adds a sidebar widget containing a subtle list of all of your social homes including delicious, digg, facebook, flickr, last.fm, myspace, twitter, youtube, friendfeet etc.

Google Friend Connect Integration
Lets your fans join and create profiles and interact socially.  
See an example here: http://www.socialarrow.com/

FeedBurner Feedsmith
Use FeedBurner.com to publish a subscribe-able feed of your site.

Flickr Thumbnails Photostream
Use flicker?  This plug-in will let you show your flickr photos on your blog.

What do I write about?

Don’t know what to post on your blog?  Let your fans work for you.  Every bit of text, photo, video, audio that your fans generate is good press and good website content.  Harnessing that content into your website will keep it fresh, and give visitors a sense of the enthusiasm you inspire.

1. Drop.io

Drop.io is a crazy-useful tool that can help you pool the media generated by your fanbase.  With it, you can:

• Have your fans take pictures / shoot movies at shows and send them via email or upload through a drop box widget on your website.
• Have your fans call a phone number and leave a voicemail — their message (or live recording of your show) will be turned into a streaming mp3.
• Leave voicemail messages for your fans via podcast.
• Distribute mp3s and videos.
• Sell mp3s with the Paywall feature.

And as people pool their pictures / movies / audio / comments through your drop, you can distribute it to your fans via the web, sms, Twitter, iTunes and more.

How to integrate into your website:
In your drop, under Add –> More, there is code that lets you put an uploader widget on your website, making it easy for your fans to contribute.

There is not yet a very easy way to embed the contents of your drop into your wordpress site.  If you wanted to patch together a solution yourself, Feedburner’s BuzzBoost would a good place to start.

There IS, however, a drop.io app on Facebook that pumps your drop into a tab in your profile.

2.  Flickr / Photobucket / etc.

Do your fans use these social photo sharing tools?  If so, have them tag pictures of your shows with your band name.  When you look at pictures with that tag on Flickr/etc., click the RSS feed button.  This gives you a URL that you can use (in combination with an RSS WP plugin like Flickr Thumbnails Photostream) to share those pictures through your site.

3.  Listening

A tool like FriendFeed can be used to search across many social-media sites for talk about your band.  Find fans and good comments, and write about them on your website.

4.  Promoting Others

You want people to talk about you?  Be in the habit of talking about them.

Where to go for help

You’re going to have questions and run into problems as you build your own website.  Luckily, any problem you have has probably been someone else’s problem before you — and somebody out there has probably blogged about it.

You can also contact me (Elliot Cole) for help with any of this.