Hi everyone!

I would like to redesign my website.
The issue I have is that it was designed from a friend who lives in a different state. He doesn't have much time to change it and I can only do minor updates from where I am.
It was designed in Dream Weaver.
I recently bought a Macbook Pro and was playing a little with Iweb. It's easy, but doesn't give me that much possibilities.
Also, even if easy, I don't ant to spend hours and hours working on this. I'd rather focus on more important things like music.

Do you guys have any suggestions for me? I need a simple solution for a pro looking website. I need to be able to sell my products, have sound samples, pictures and maybe a few videos...

I recently was looking at this website. The sample websites look great!
The downside is that it costs about $150 a year...

Any thoughts?

I do web design for living but I do sites from scratch and I write the code manualy. For you (if you don't want to pay a designer/developer) there are tools that are simple to use and you can integrate pretty much anything. Try Wordpress or Joomla. You have to spend a couple of days to learn it but I am sure it will help.

A friend of mine is a web designer. I can ask him if he has some time to make a professional website for you, if you like! He´s pretty good at it. Here´s a little sample:
(His own website is currently under construction, so this pic is the only I can find...)

That would be brilliant it you got somebody to do it for you! *lets cross our fingers for Toleks talented friend*
I used to be a webdesigner and know that it is much work behind the contruction phase, but if you give him your key points and the 'look you want to portray' I'm sure he'll set it up so it will be easy for you to maintain.

If Toleks friend lays it up in css tables or frames ? (which I find is underrated these days..) and builds a logic hierarchy for you I'm sure this will help a lot to maintain it with little effort..
The possibilities are endless...

Joomla is a very good site building tool!! You can easily customize everything and there are many cool templates available.

I'm a website developer as well.

I'd strongly suggest looking at WordPress. You can find lots of themes freely available on the Internet for it, and then lots of plugins to extend the functionality of the system to incorporate what you'd like to be able to do. It's pretty easy to use as well. Plus I'm happy to be your WordPress guru

Thanks a lot for your suggestions my friends.
I'm still overwhelmed...
I'll give these a try!
Thanks a lot!

I don't think you are going to find a cheaper way to get what you are looking for. If that $150 per year includes hosting fees and does all that you need, it is really a good deal. Now if I lived in your area I would work out a trade for lessons and you would have the bestest website ever. ;-)

I'm starting to build my own site now as well, and I definitely recommend Joomla. It has various templates and it is easily customizable. Lot easier and cheaper to maintain and customize. All you need to pay is server storage, joomla is free. You can adapt the template later to your liking (for example change the banners, and insert your own design).

Just let me know if you´d like me to ask him.

I'm gonna give Joomla a try.
But could you ask him for a quote and what he uses to create them please? :-)

Maybe some of you guys could answer this.
I love the websites created here: http://www.dynamod.com/featured_portals.php?lid=mm

They are all flash I guess, the only thing missing is the ability to sell downloads and products.

Do you guys know of any software I could use to create the same kind of site?
I need something easy as in "drag and drop"
:-)

The easiest is Joomla and WordPress. For payment I suggest paypal. You can integrate paypal in your website in 5 min. If you want to have a shoping chart then you need something like this http://www.foxycart.com/

David if you like that 150$ websites, I really recommend you go for it !
Think about it, if your goal is to sell albums, lessons and what not, then you will make that money within 2 months or so, so investment will be fully payed off !

I have a feeling you dont want to get on Word Press train and start learning about all the templates tools and such - its time demanding (rewarding for sure as you can update things on your own), so best advice is take out 150 $ if that system is proven to have great marketing skills to market your lessons and albums - and you will be all set

I could probably help you a bit, too, if you want just let me know. Me and a friend of mine ( who is doing it pretty much more than me ) created websites for different companies:

http://www.exor.de

http://www.hm-businesstravel.de

These are two examples. Have to go to work now. I´ll look after the answer later today

Otherwise joomla +1

Thanks a lot!
These look very good!
Joomla sure looks convenient, but I am lacking time unfortunately...
The $150 option although interesting is still a little scary...
My albums really don't sell well and I'm not sure if a new website will help. That's what I'm hoping at least!
I only sold 50 copies in 2 years...

Hmm you need more traffic to the site, and i think that one for $150 is good I think when site looks more professional people will buy your albums more

I agree with Alex here !

There is plenty of ways to get traffic to your website David. From SEO (search engine optimization) all the way to paid advertising (google ad words and such).


How about some free advertising ?

I am sorry to hear that you sold only 50 albums in 2 years. You would be surprised how quickly things can turn around for you in that department.

What should I do step by step?
I think one of the problems is my album... The spoken texts with strong Christian message is not something that sells I think...

Are you talking about Christian church music ?
If you are I might have a solution for you... Couple of years ago I was giving customized video lessons to a guy from Thailand who is into Christian church music. He took all possible courses on internet and wasn't satisfied with quality of instruction. I taught him how to create his practice plans, what to work on, harmony theory improvising rhythm etc.
By accident, yesterday I run into some Jazz video on youtube. It was him presenting it, I got interested went to his channel and saw pretty great results. Thousands of subscribers, lots of messages and link to his website.
Website that sells for 25 $ or so unlimited access to lessons that teach Christian church music.

Here is my idea

Imagine having your album(s) somewhere on his website, or even youtube? Or just as a reference in his newsletters !?
How many people do you think would buy it ?

Its a very powerful community, people who are into religion and church music, by default I assume they are very supporting so even if your CD is not masterpiece I assume they would buy it just to check it out.


Anyways, for starters just let me know if you are doing church music or not , it will be much easier from then on

Well, it's not church music as in "hymns" and stuff like that.
The album is instrumental metal music with spoken texts.
The message is Christian, but you wouldn't hear that music in church...

You can hear some samples here...

I'd love to check out that guy's stuff you have. Do you have a link?

Wow, this is something very unique, first time i hear something like that! Didn`t see a reason why people shouldn`t like this. Really cool leads, and riffs You should do more metal lessons, David!

And your album don`t sell well because of traffic you get, for example if your site visited like 2000 people for those 2 years, and 50 buyed, it will be like 2.5% sales, and with good traffic you can get thousand people a day for sure! And keep in mind that usually people don`t buy on first time when they see a product, they need to saw links\reviews at least few times to get really interested. Samples also helps

Try to find someone from your friends who know how to deal with internet marketing. If people buying toasts with Jesus faces, they surely will buy good music!

First about the techy stuff, get somebody to set up a content management system for you. Once set up you should be able to change things yourself with very little effort.

With regards to selling music, you might actually be better of if you publish your music for free and just ask for donations. You could then publish it to sites like jamendo where your music and your website would probably get far more attention.

You could also choose to just release a subset of the album for free. You could upload some videos to youtube if you haven't done so already and so on.

Jonas

I don't know anything about this buy my brother works doing websites... this is his contact if you want to ask him: [email protected]

Thanks a lot Gabe!

I've had a lot of cool advices and offers for web design, thank you everyone!
I am pretty set on going this route: http://bandzoogle.com/

They offer online cart, downloads, and updating can be done very easily.. Just what I need!

Now before I sign-up, I was wondering if any of you know of a software that could do the same thing.
That would allow me to host the website from anywhere I want since Bandzoogle doesn't offer that.
I would still need to have a shopping cart and paid download option in that software.
Any recommendation? Keep in mind that I need something very simple. :-)

Thanks!

How about Drupal, have you heard of that?
Any thoughts?

Drupal is also a Content Management System. It's probably the 2nd most popular CMS after Joomla.

It does not look simple, which is one of your requirements. I think you would get frustrated, but maybe not.

Here is something that I am very familiar with but did not bring it up before. It is not exactly simple either but I bet more so than Drupal. There is free version buried in that link under downloads. If you are reading up on your options check out the demos there which are also buried in there somewhere.

Drupal is great. It has more functionality than most other of the opensource CMS systems. It is quite complicated to use though. I've developed drupal management systems (Drupal in the bottom, my own and my associates functionality on top) and for that drupal is great since it already has so much.

BUT, it is complicated for someone who may not be used to it, and it is for sites with a lot of functionality. You should be looking for something that is aimed for design rather than function in my opinion.

Weebly.com is also an alternative David

Thanks guys, I'm checking these out!

I don't know much about web design as i'm more of a developer myself. But looks like you've had some good suggestions and stuff. Perhaps you can get some people to collaborate a project for you

Yeah, I've had great suggestions!
I had a talk with my friend who did my current website and he said that he would take care of all the updates, so problem solved! :-)