Tools for building your artist site
The other day I had a great email exchange with a friend and former colleague of mine, Thomas Grogan of Grogan Social Scene. Then I added a bunch of posts to the Topspin Green Room about Wordpress for artist websites.
So I thought this week’s post could cover some basic tools that you may want to get a hold of. These are nice and FREE! tools as well.
Start with Wordpress. It’s free and it does make a nice way to create a way to manage content on your site without having to go into the HTML all the time. A Wordpress powered site doesn’t need to be a blog. Check out my latest project:
http://www.subswara.com
to see what I mean. I’ll dive into some Wordpress tutorials in the future…RSS the blog to hear about it or demand it in the comments! Or request another post if tools for building websites bores the hell out of you!!
OK! So to have Wordpress, you also need a server (and a domain name of course). Bluehost, Mediatemple and GoDaddy offer various hosting, domain registering packages as well as “one click” wordpress install.
Once you have a website ready for wordpress, you’ll need a theme. Or you may want to build your own theme from the ground up. I recommend starting with a simple theme that uses the Grid 960 CSS framework.
Quick diversion: What is HTML and CSS?
HTML is like the inside of your house. CSS is like the dressing on the outside. Not really…but if you don’t know what these two things are that’s a good place to start.
Sites are built out of blocks — eithter divs or tables, along with smaller components like headers, paragraphs and so on. Each one can have it’s own “style.” For example, on this website – the subject line of each blog post has the same style. They are all the same font, color height etc.
It would be a waste of time to have to put in the code to define that each and every time. That’s where CSS comes in. The HTML says “This is the headline of the Blog Post” then the CSS fills in – ok make it this tall, this color this font etc.
If I want to have other places use the same type of headline, I just create a headline “class.” For example, the titles of Pages or sections can all have the same style. I’ll just use the same class and assign it in the CSS.
If this is starting to make sense…then I highly recommend using the tool I use most.
The Best FREE Tool EVER!
Type “How do I _______” into google. Where the blank is “Use CSS” or “Make a static page my home page for Wordpress” or … or….
Bring out the GIMP!
Another FREE Tool you will want for building your website is GIMP. If you already own or “own” Photoshop then you’re all set. But if not then GIMP is an open source version that will let you make GIFs and PNGs with transparent backgrounds. KEY for making nice looking logos and graphics and getting some things into Fonts that are non web readable.
I’ve just found the open source version of Illustrator as well…it’s called Inkscape. If you are on a Mac, you’ll need an extra piece of free software called X-11. This let’s you save the hassle of booting into Windows to use these apps.
One word of caution though…the version I’m on of X-11, you use the PC CTRL key where you’d normally use the Mac Apple/Command key. Like CTL + C for Copy instead of Command + C.
The other tool that you’ll want that’s free is Google Analytics. Make sure you install that and get down with all the fresh data there.
So there you go. Do some digging on CSS and Floating Divs (trust me just search how do I float a DIV) and you’ll learn fast. Then check out http://960.gs…you can then stop worrying about floating divs…just make your divs add to 12 or 16 (depending on your big container). It’s still good to know what DIVS are and how to float them though!
Wordpress How-to’s
And for Wordpress magick…the codex is pretty amazing as is. Want to just pull up a custom field to place a buy button on your site?
Check out WP Recipes.
Want to create surveys, polls or even auto respond with a link to download your free song (if you’re not running Topspin) I like this plugin: MM-Forms.
Ok ! That’s the basic tools set. Go get em. Google search how to use em and have fun! Or tune in again as I will do some screen casts or similar with some how-to’s specific to Topspin and or artist sites.
Things got busy…hence the less than organized post. Thanks for reading/ understanding!
