Log In
Members
Home
Add Reply
Add Topic
Topic RSS
3:47 am
June 10, 2011
Offline
QuoteOk, this is cool, My new website is really coming together......it better be, after all this work!
In all the research I have been doing learning about how to do this, I came across an article that may be of benefit for anyone with a website. It's a really good article on Favicons. Here's the link:
http://perishablepress.com/pre.....-favicons/
I haven't taken the time to add one to my site yet, but after reading the article, I think I will.
Also, I have been experimenting with three WordPress plugins for my calendar page , and I really don't like the looks of any of them. So far I have tried GigPress, Ajax Event Calendar, and Events Manager. Does anyone have any other calendar type plugins that they are happy with?
What would a jam session with Gordon Lightfoot, Collective Soul, and Damien Rice sound like?
Check out Greg Parke and you’ll have a pretty good idea!
6:26 pm
June 10, 2011
Offline
Yeah,it does!! But I am up against the wall here, and I have to get this done!
The best plugin I have found so far for my calendar page is GigPress, but with my black background format some of the print is GigPress is unreadable. I need to go into the CSS so I can alter font size and color. Uh.....yeah, sure. Ok!
I did some research on CSS, and it looks pretty easy, but I have no idea how to find and/or get into the CSS area for GigPress. I went to the Gigpress support site and the guy that is answering questions there seems like his head is up his ass, very sarcastic and unhelpful.
If anyone could steer me in the right direction, I would gladly let you borrow my Lear jet for the week end!
What would a jam session with Gordon Lightfoot, Collective Soul, and Damien Rice sound like?
Check out Greg Parke and you’ll have a pretty good idea!
3:30 pm
June 7, 2011
Offline
Hey Greg,
Wow, I had to actually take notes on this thread before I could reply. That's a first 🙂
I sincerely love how dedicated you are to learning and getting this all right.
Unfortunately I couldn't comment on that plugin as I don't sue it. When I'm touring I just create a "live shows" page and post show dates in chronological order and then update it accordingly. But a calender plugin sounds cool if you can get it to work. maybe start simple with the page and then come back to it when you get everything else the way you want it.
As far as my blog at http://johnoszajca.com goes, when the theme was stock it just had the blog post appear right under the nav bar like yours does. My designer inserted a bit of code that told the theme to put that picture you see on the home page only. It does not appear if you go directly to a blog post. It's hard wired into the theme and is not a result of a plugin or setting or anything like that. My theme is Thesis and does not use standard html so the process is different. But in most themes you would go to "appearances", and then click on "editor", and then look for home.php. Then you would insert the image code near the top. This is what the first few lines of code look like in one of my old standard themes where I did the same thing...
?php get_header(); ?>
<div id="content">
<?php include(TEMPLATEPATH."/l_sidebar.php");?>
<div id="contentleft"><br>
<img src="https://www.yourdomain.com/wp-content/themes/unleashed3c-10/images/theimageyouwanttoappear.jpg" width="496">
<br>
If you mess with anything be sure you back up the file first. You don't want to permanently break anything.
...Back to my notes 🙂
If I understood you correctly you were wondering how you could make a particular post always stay at the top and avoid getting pushed down when you add new content. When you create a new post you can set it to be "sticky". It's an option in the right hand side bar. If you tick that option it will pin that post so that it remains the first thing people read on your home page regardless of the fact that more recent posts have been published. This can be useful if you have some pressing news that you want to be sure everyone reads or if you want to have a welcome message.
I wouldn't really use the sticky feature for an image if you were trying to do what I did. My guess is that it won't frame the image as nicely because you'll have all the padding that is allotted for the headline, etc.
And personally I think welcome messages are pointless. I think you're better off actually using the blog as it was intended and creating regular content for your readers. Truthfully, the new content is all the readers actually want anyway.
Hope that helps.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
1:48 pm
June 10, 2011
Offline
Thanks for the detailed reply John, and sorry about you having to take notes!
My website is done, at least for now. It still needs a lot of tweaking, and as soon as my former host releases their grip on the DNS name servers my new site will get published. That is another reason I am unhappy with my former host. Even though it's my domain name that I pay for, and I am listed as the Admin, they somehow got themselves set up as the technical contact so any changes regarding my domain name have to be done through them. Do they really think that is going to help them keep customers?
The biggest tweak that I need to do once my site is published is to work on the plugin for my calendar page. I want my entire background to be black, with primarily white font, but every calendar plugin I could find had white, blue, black, and some had red and gray font colors. Not a problem if the plugin would have had a background that all of those colors would be visible on, but they all have a transparent background! That meant that I had to change the set up for my entire website so each page had to have a background that all those colors would be visible on. There is probably a way to change this on a page by page basis, I just haven't discovered it yet.
BTW, I wound up using "Suffusion" for my theme, as Steve suggested. I have no idea how many other themes I tried (many!!!) but Suffusion seems to have a very open and detailed platform that really does make it easier to work with than any other theme I tried. Other themes had some very strong points that I really liked, and would have prefered, but overall Suffusion won out. I dunno...maybe after 5 days I was just getting exhausted and gave up? Nice to away from the whole process for a few days!
Thanks again for all your help guys. It really makes a HUGE difference!
What would a jam session with Gordon Lightfoot, Collective Soul, and Damien Rice sound like?
Check out Greg Parke and you’ll have a pretty good idea!
3:55 pm
June 10, 2011
Offline
OK, It's official! My new Wordpress website is now published for the whole world to see, and my old website with Hostbaby is gone. I still have a lot of tweaking to do, and a few more pages to add, but overall, I am fairly happy with the results. I followed a lot of advise I got from this forum and I can't thank you guys enough! I might have given up without your help.
The site is built on Wordpress.org, and the theme I used is "Suffusion"
I still want to find a better MP3 player that is a bit more visible and will continue to play when a viewer goes to another page. I also want to get rid of the gray background in the blog area and go with solid black, but right now I can't because the gig calendar has a transparent background and the different colors for the fonts don't show up on a black background. I think I can change the transparent background into a solid color for the gig calendar using css, but I'm not really sure how to go about it yet. Once I get that worked out, I will go back to the black background/white font format for the rest of the site pages.
I also plan to add a photo page, and come up with something a bit fancier for the main header.
If any of you have any comments, suggestions, lavish praise, ridicule, whatever, I'd be happy to hear it. Here's the link to my new site: http://www.gregparke.com
What would a jam session with Gordon Lightfoot, Collective Soul, and Damien Rice sound like?
Check out Greg Parke and you’ll have a pretty good idea!
5:50 pm
June 9, 2011
Offline
Greg. Looks great, bro.
Was snooping around to see if we can straighten out the calender. So using firebug I was able to find the styles for the text to see if I could turn it white. It was pretty simple, but it might be tricky for you to locate.
In your html for the calendar page, there is a div called gigs-calendar
Inside that div there is a table that holds all of the shows/events. Find the < table > tag and add style="color:#FFFFFF;" inside of the table tag
That should give you white text inside the table, so that you can remove the grey background that you'd prefer to be black.
If that does not work, just undo the style element from the table and get back to me.
-Steve
1:01 am
June 7, 2011
Offline
Looks good Greg,
It's nothing crucial, but you might consider making the header a bit thinner at some point down the road. It pushes the content a bit low on the page. I'd ask around until you find a friend who's good with design and see if you can't get a header designed by a pro. A good header makes the world of difference. But I'm just splitt'n hairs. Good job.
You might go to plugins, from within the admin area and "search for new plugins' for the word "audio player". There are quite a few. Just look at the reviews. I believe the one I use is simply called "audio player".
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
1:26 am
June 10, 2011
Offline
Thanks Guys! Just the kind of info I was hoping for. I owe you both dinner and a few cocktails for all your help!
What would a jam session with Gordon Lightfoot, Collective Soul, and Damien Rice sound like?
Check out Greg Parke and you’ll have a pretty good idea!
4:21 am
June 9, 2011
Offline
I also use audio player. I really like it, but it by no means is a "cool" audio player aesthetically. In fact if you go to the coaching section for MMM you see it there.
They do have a plugin for it. However, the plug in won't work for static pages that are outside of the wordpress platform... you'll actually have to do an install on your server of some files for that.
No worries, Greg. We'll all catch up for Boilermakers one of these days.
9:47 pm
June 7, 2011
Offline
You're right. It's a pretty boring player. Super easy though. There are some good static players I've seen out there that cost $40 or so, but anything that requires an install makes my head hurt 🙂
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
2:18 pm
August 27, 2011
Offline
Greg Parke said:
OK, It's official! My new Wordpress website is now published for the whole world to see, and my old website with Hostbaby is gone. I still have a lot of tweaking to do, and a few more pages to add, but overall, I am fairly happy with the results. I followed a lot of advise I got from this forum and I can't thank you guys enough! I might have given up without your help.
The site is built on Wordpress.org, and the theme I used is "Suffusion"
I still want to find a better MP3 player that is a bit more visible and will continue to play when a viewer goes to another page. I also want to get rid of the gray background in the blog area and go with solid black, but right now I can't because the gig calendar has a transparent background and the different colors for the fonts don't show up on a black background. I think I can change the transparent background into a solid color for the gig calendar using css, but I'm not really sure how to go about it yet. Once I get that worked out, I will go back to the black background/white font format for the rest of the site pages.
I also plan to add a photo page, and come up with something a bit fancier for the main header.
If any of you have any comments, suggestions, lavish praise, ridicule, whatever, I'd be happy to hear it. Here's the link to my new site: http://www.gregparke.com
Hey Greg,
Somehow I missed this thread, but am getting caught up now.
I took a look at your site and think you did a great job considering all the headaches you had switching hosts, and wading through all the themes and plugins out there. My experience is that you can buy a theme with elements that you want rather than 'hacking' an existing theme to do something it wasn't originally meant to do and save yourself hours or days of time in the process. Having said that, you can't put a price on the education that you just received!
I echo John's comments on possibly optimizing your header at some point so it's not quite as 'tall'. Aside from that there were a few nit-picky things I noticed.
- The past events page plus past gigs on the calendar appears to be somewhat redundant?
- The CDbaby code on your CD page took a long time to load up - at least for my computer - not that there's much you can probably do about that.
- Your contact page mentions a "Links" page that doesn't exist (I think you changed it to the "Press Kit" page.
As for your calendar issues, it seems to be working fine at the moment. If calendar plugins aren't working for you, you could look into using Google Calendar itself. You can customize the look of it - but I think it'll still look like an actual 'calendar' with dates on it as opposed to what you currently have.
As for audio players - I've been using Blubrry Powerpress plugin because of the added flexibility of creating a podcast that you can add to iTunes. Not quite the same thing as you're looking for strictly for playing your music but another potential traffic source for people to find you. Having said that, I haven't hooked mine up with iTunes yet so I can't comment on how helpful it is in that regard (so much to do so little time).
4:54 pm
June 10, 2011
Offline
Hi Mike, Thanks for the reply!
Just to answer some of your comments.......
1. I totaly agree on the header. Too tall, and kinda boring, I think. I'm just to busy right now to go back and fix it. (I'm actually making music right now in the studio!) It is definetly on my to do list.
2. You're right, I did recieve one hell of an education! Looking back, and recalling some lessons from John and other members of this forum, sometimes it might be more productive to pay someone to do something for you, so you can devote more time to what you do best. (Re: my statement in item 1 about making music!) Just for future reference, do you have the names of any paid themes that are geared for muscians? If I need another website in the future, I don't think I want to go through this again!!!!
3. As far as the past gigs on the calendar page, and another page showing past dates: At first look, I would tend to agree with you, and as time goes by I will drop the "past dates" page. The reason I have the page devoted to past dates is because they don't show up on my new calendar. (I copied these from my old website calendar) I can probably import them to the new calendar when I get time, but for now it is easier just to have them on a separate page. I get quite a few gigs after I direct potential clients to my website. When they see an extensive list of past dates, with many repeat bookings, it gives me a lot more credibility than just trying to tell someone that I have been doing this most of my life. It's the proof on my resume'!
4. I've noticed that the CD baby page is a bit slower to load than the other pages, but not a lot, at least on my computer. Was it long enough on your computer that it might cause someone to skip the page? If it was, then I will contact CD baby and see what can be done to fix it. Thanks for the heads up!
5. Your right, I did change the "links" page to my "Press Kit" page. Not sure why a "Links" tab is showing up, but I will check it out. Thanks again!
6. Calendar issues.....I was able to get the font colors and the background issue resolved after I sent an email to the calendar developer, but I notice on some computers the body background is not completly black, but a dark gray. I just used a "click and drag" method to change the color, instead of actually entering the code for black. I will fix that. See, I did get an education! A few weeks ago, if somebody had told me I just needed to change the code to the proper one for black, my response would have been, Huh...do what?
7. Thanks for the heads up on the audio player you are using, I will check it out. The main problems I am having with the one I use now are that it is rather plain looking and easy to miss, and when you navigate to another page, it stops playing. It is available on each page, but I want one that sort of floats through the website and continues to play the song(s) as you navigate from page to page. I know they exsist! (Or maybe the one I have now just isn't set up right?)
Anyway, thanks again to all you forum members for your help with all of this. I would have given up, ripped out all of my hair, beaten my dog, and been extremely hungover if it wasn't for all of your help. Fortunately I was able to get a new website that only included the extremely hungover option!
What would a jam session with Gordon Lightfoot, Collective Soul, and Damien Rice sound like?
Check out Greg Parke and you’ll have a pretty good idea!
3:52 am
August 27, 2011
Offline
Greg Parke said:
Hi Mike, Thanks for the reply!
Just to answer some of your comments…….
Just for future reference, do you have the names of any paid themes that are geared for muscians? If I need another website in the future, I don't think I want to go through this again!!!!
Greg, Thanks for taking my comments with an open mind. I think your website is great and didn't want it to seem like I was shooting it down. I just wanted to give you the 'objective outside perspective' because I know how hard it is to 'see the forest for the trees' when you bury yourself into a demanding project like launching a website.
As for themes for musicians – yeah, I'm sure I can come up with a few. The thing is, if you limit it to a theme that is 'geared' for musicians, you're usually limited by what the designer 'thinks' musicians want.
In the end, I think having a theme that is flexible is probably best because I'm sure if you get 10 musicians in a room they're probably all going to want something a little different with their website…?
A free theme that I've been playing with and is easy to customize is called "Weaver". It's based off the twentyten theme that comes preloaded with Wordpress, but has a lot of easy to configure options that seriously cut down on headaches like removing dates or names from posts without having to 'mess with' the code. You can also easily adjust whether you want your sidebar on the right or left which sounds simple but you'd be amazed at home many themes don't seem to offer this feature…or is it just me?
iThemes has some nice looking themes – depending on what you're after. The prices seem to be reasonable as well: here are two examples of themes they used to make demo band sites.
http://ithemes.com/purchase/life-series/
As for the audio player - I understand why you want that functionality – when I check out a band I often want to listen to the tunes while I check out their site. This is 99% impossible with whatever player they have loaded on the site (unless there's the option to load in another window – which incidentally the player I use lets you do). But yeah – it's plain looking and it's labelled as 'podcast' which I'm not sure if you can change that to 'music' or something perhaps more relevant to your needs. It could work as a stop gap as long as you educate your visitors to make sure they open your player in a separate window to enjoy the music sans interruptions.
3:45 am
June 10, 2011
Offline
Hey Mike,
I never felt like you were shooting down my website...just the opposite! And I really appreciated your comments and suggestions. That's what is so cool about this forum. Ask honest questions, and get honest, helpful answers. Doesn't get much better than that!
What would a jam session with Gordon Lightfoot, Collective Soul, and Damien Rice sound like?
Check out Greg Parke and you’ll have a pretty good idea!
6:44 pm
June 10, 2011
Offline
Plus, having a "second set" of eyes to look over things and point things out
is always helpful 
7:24 pm
June 10, 2011
Offline
I did some checking on my website, and now the slow loading page from CD Baby that Mike mentioned doesn't load at all! I'll be getting right on that!
I guess this shows that you really need to be on top of all of this stuff. Who knows how long it would have taken me to discover this glitch without that "second set' of eyes!
What would a jam session with Gordon Lightfoot, Collective Soul, and Damien Rice sound like?
Check out Greg Parke and you’ll have a pretty good idea!
8:23 pm
June 9, 2011
Offline
Yeah, you totally cannot count on your fans writing you to say, "Dude, I think something's broken" LOL
2:25 am
June 10, 2011
Offline
Do any of you know of a good Wordpress plugin to use for a website photo page? I've tried a few, but they seem a bit cheesy so far! I don't want anything too flashy, just a simple page with photo's, maybe a slide show.
My slow loading CD page from CD Baby seemed to have fixed itself. Oh Boy. I'm going to have to watch that! I don't trust things that don't work, then they do, then they don't.........
And Mike, I fixed that reference to "links" on my press kit page. I don't think I would have caught that one for a long time if you hadn't pointed it out! Thanks again.
BTW, My wife was pouring over my new website last night. Her comment was, "I liked the old one better". Gee, thanks Dear! But after thinking about it, I am going to consider some of her comments. A lot of my fans are women, so I need to make sure my website appeals to them too. Hmmmmmm. Sigh...........
What would a jam session with Gordon Lightfoot, Collective Soul, and Damien Rice sound like?
Check out Greg Parke and you’ll have a pretty good idea!
2:41 am
June 7, 2011
Offline
Greg Parke said:
Do any of you know of a good Wordpress plugin to use for a website photo page? I've tried a few, but they seem a bit cheesy so far! I don't want anything too flashy, just a simple page with photo's, maybe a slide show.
My slow loading CD page from CD Baby seemed to have fixed itself. Oh Boy. I'm going to have to watch that! I don't trust things that don't work, then they do, then they don't.........
And Mike, I fixed that reference to "links" on my press kit page. I don't think I would have caught that one for a long time if you hadn't pointed it out! Thanks again.
BTW, My wife was pouring over my new website last night. Her comment was, "I liked the old one better". Gee, thanks Dear! But after thinking about it, I am going to consider some of her comments. A lot of my fans are women, so I need to make sure my website appeals to them too. Hmmmmmm. Sigh...........
Hey Greg,
I use NextGEN Gallery in combo with Lightbox 2.
As far as your site goes, I would stay focused on functionality for a while. Get this doing WHAT they need to do. When you get your sales process working consistently, I would still hire a designer. For $100 - $200 someone can totally pimp out your site. No more headaches, just an awesome looking site that you'll be really happy with. I LOVE how hard you're working at learning this stuff, but it's kind of like watching Richard Branson put his airline on hold while he learns how to fix a jet engine. Let someone else do it for you while you stay focused on flying 🙂
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
1 Guest(s)
