Using the web as a "band organizer"

[scrotimusprime]

K, two posts today, bear with me. I'm a software engineer who does a little web design on the side. I've made my bands website (http://www.level12band.com) but i've been milling over some ideas for a new site for us. As part of that I've been thinking of creating our new site on top of a customized "portal" framework.

I wanted to describe what I was thinking of and see waht some other people thought of it. If it all works out I was considering wrapping the whole thing up and making it available for other bands to use freely (kinda like linux).

The idea is this - for your main website (www.mybandpwnz.com) it acts as an information repository as it always has - that is, for your fans it offers bios, photos, music and so on. But often times there are issues with this, such as making it easy for band members to post info on the main website (thus adding more work for the primary maintainer of the site).

In addition, if you want a site that's all inclusive then its a lot of work - think of how many people have websites but use flickr, myspace, or facebook to deal with photos, blogs and all of that other crap. You have multiple sites to maintain or you end up having something half assed on your site (or paying out the ass for someone to write something custom for you).

Finally, what about management, schedules and so on. How often does a show come up where you find yourself calling all six guys to see what they are doing? What if the guys could login to your website and keep their schedules updated of when they can/can't play shows.

The idea is a basic framework that meets all of these needs and a few more. Then you can take the framework and basically just work on the look and feel. Sorry if this is already confusing as hell, i'm left handed (half the time) so things get wonky when i think too much.

Here's a list of some features I was thinking about:

* *Secure* Portal for band members to add new content - music, photos, videos, blogs, shows.
* Feeds available for other sites to pull from (MySpace and facebook can accept RSS feeds such that you only maintain your blog on ONE site instead of 30)
* Pluggable modules for management features - forums, blogs, calendering system, tracking of your other sites
* Basic site running out of box
* Site adapts to the user's environment automagically (so if they run in really low resolution your menu's resize themselves and so on)

Just some ideas. I'm probably going to set this up for the hell of it, but I'd love some feedback and possible testers for later.

[Chickencha]

Greetings from a fellow software engineer/bass player.

This seems like it could be a pretty cool idea. As I understand it, you'd like to basically glue together a bunch of already-available things (MySpace, Flickr, etc.) into one coherent website. Maybe then add a few other features that aren't readily (or freely) available.

It seems like something like this should already exist, but maybe it doesn't. You've probably looked into it a lot more than I have.

I think the biggest hurdle -- at least for me -- would be getting all my band mates to use the site. I've got one who won't check his email more than once every two weeks (which is its own problem), so there's no way he'd ever use this.

[deggial]

Your ideas are quite solid and feasible. One further idea that may be important for bands is making sure the administration part of the website is easily accessible and user-friendly even from mobile devices, to make it easier to update things while on the road.

Unless you are keen on starting from scratch, there's quite a few open source Content Management Systems out there that already cover most of the functions you'd want for a band website. One good suggestion is Drupal, which is almost a web-framework of its own and easily extensible. It also includes its own forum, although it only covers basic features. What I don't know is if there's a module to take advantage of the Myspace API.

[David Wilson]

one band web site framework out there now is http://www.bandzoogle.com
We use it for our web site: http://www.pumpingethyl.net
It's not perfect by any means, but it's simple enough that our singer can use it to update gigs/pics.

If you have another framework, I'd certainly take a look at it

[scrotimusprime]

Actually funny that you mention CMS systems, that was kind of the inspiration. I was looking through one of the Zope derivatives (Python programmer here) and noticed that it had a lot of great features and plugins. I thought - "hell, i could put this together without killing myself, could be useful to a lot of people"

and to the comment about getting people to actually use it - yea, I feel you guys there too. For omni-management you need absolute participation but having a portal could remove tons of work on the principle maintainer of the site (i.e. me, see the motivation? )

[Joel S.]

Originally Posted by scrotimusprime

Actually funny that you mention CMS systems, that was kind of the inspiration. I was looking through one of the Zope derivatives (Python programmer here) and noticed that it had a lot of great features and plugins. I thought - "hell, i could put this together without killing myself, could be useful to a lot of people"

and to the comment about getting people to actually use it - yea, I feel you guys there too. For omni-management you need absolute participation but having a portal could remove tons of work on the principle maintainer of the site (i.e. me, see the motivation? )

I personally use Wordpress and Gallery for my site. God knows what my band uses, never bothered to figure it out but it seems difficult to maintain.

The problem I've seen when it comes to band sites is the design, some are just horrible. A clean interface that's super simple to setup, arrange and customize, with a straight forward editor and login for band members would be pretty slick.

Wordpress is pretty good for what it does, but it takes a little work to customize it if you don't know much about computers.

[mrpackerguy]

I'm a self taught computerist. A real novice. But I did our band's website with a basic $50 website building program. I get compliments on it from people who book us. It has taken literally 100 hours to get close to how I want it.

Yes, all those thoughts you mentioned crossed my mind, especially the part about guys keeping their schedules updated, because I'm also the bandleader and I'm contantly emailing or calling to verify availability for gigs. There are other things to communicate, to though.

But in the end, I figured realistically the guys just wouldn't keep it updated, that I'd end up doing it anyway.

So I did figure a way to post pending gigs, songs to learn, mp3s, lyrics for the lead singer, sheet music for the keyboard player, and details about gigs such as set up time, special songs, and event details (we do a lot of weddings) is simply by creating a "secret" web page in the website the guys have the address to. Sure, 95% of it's on me to get it there, but that works best for us.

[Joel S.]

Originally Posted by mrpackerguy

So I did figure a way to post pending gigs, songs to learn, mp3s, lyrics for the lead singer, sheet music for the keyboard player, and details about gigs such as set up time, special songs, and event details (we do a lot of weddings) is simply by creating a "secret" web page in the website the guys have the address to. Sure, 95% of it's on me to get it there, but that works best for us.

Yea, that is the easiest way. A good CMS should allow you to create a "band member" section that's password protected where they can go to access the admin panel or check schedules and what not.

[Joel S.]

Ok, I was poking around the level 12 site, and I must say, I have no idea what your profile means. The grammar is pretty horrible, might wanna fix that.

[scrotimusprime]

Originally Posted by Joel S.

Ok, I was poking around the level 12 site, and I must say, I have no idea what your profile means. The grammar is pretty horrible, might wanna fix that.

I don't know what you mean by "profile" but i'd be happy to hear your comments, just send them to my email here on talkbass.

Btw - are you from the states or elsewhere?

[IanStephenson]

As an initial spec for a homebrew project, it sounds like it's going to get out of hand if you're not carefull.

I run a basic version of some of the things you're talking about, which generates our front end website (www.pvrocks.co.uk) automatically. Down at the bottom there's a link into a password protected area where there are more gig listings (including private parties which don't make the front list) in list and year planner form, autogenerated flyers and posters, band member contact numbers and a message board.

The public stuff is invaluable and more polished, but the private stuff gets used less, and is more basic. I _could_ add a lot of the stuff you're talking about (particularly being able to block out band member holidays on the year planner), but I'm not sure it's worth it.

I've seen no end of "great projects" build ever bigger lists of "it would be nice", with great architectures to support them, but they never pan out. My advice would be to work out what it MUST do. Forget the fancy features, and build the MUST's, then do the SHOULD's before digging out more COULD's.

Ian

[scrotimusprime]

Originally Posted by Joel S.

I personally use Wordpress and Gallery for my site. God knows what my band uses, never bothered to figure it out but it seems difficult to maintain.

The problem I've seen when it comes to band sites is the design, some are just horrible. A clean interface that's super simple to setup, arrange and customize, with a straight forward editor and login for band members would be pretty slick.

Wordpress is pretty good for what it does, but it takes a little work to customize it if you don't know much about computers.

Yea, i'll probably use a solution that's 100% integrated with whatever CMS I go for. I'll probably pick one that's in python (probably zope based) and use MySQL for a database. Other things I'll be looking for are the momentum in the CMS' community. Ideally i'll work it out such that no one would care what's under the hood. I'm a big fan of mass abstraction.

[Joel S.]

Originally Posted by scrotimusprime

I don't know what you mean by "profile" but i'd be happy to hear your comments, just send them to my email here on talkbass.

Btw - are you from the states or elsewhere?

Born and raised in the US.

[Spinal Tapper]

Our band uses Gmail to chat about stuff

[psycholalia]

I too have built up my band's Web site only to have it set aside in favor of the more immediately accessible Myspace. Accessiblity to users and band members alike make Myspace much more of a viable option, but I can't get over just how much every Myspace page looks like the last. Super-yawn.

I really like the idea of a portal-type band site. Or at least the administration aspect of it. It would need a blog, a calendar feature, an alerts section as well as directories for mp3s and sheet music, maybe the ability to stream those mp3s.

And it must be really easy to use. Like stupid easy. No HTML or coding or FTP from band members who need to post something.

[mrpackerguy]

Originally Posted by Joel S.

Yea, that is the easiest way. A good CMS should allow you to create a "band member" section that's password protected where they can go to access the admin panel or check schedules and what not.

I guess I don't have a good one, because I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to password a webpage, only to figure out I couldn't.

[MHensleyJr]

Sounds like a good idea, but i don't think anyone would actually bother to use it...

[OliverH]

Why not use Google calendar, it's actually a REALLY good calendaring application compared to most of the ones out there aside from say Microsoft Exchange + Outlook (but as if you are going to fork out for that).

Me and my band members use it very successfully.

[GreggBummer]

Originally Posted by OliverH

Why not use Google calendar, it's actually a REALLY good calendaring application compared to most of the ones out there ...

I agree. With all of Google free apps and stuff like Picasa, google pages, blog, and so on... it seems like google might be the way to go.

Perhaps building an app for use with google might be the way to go.

Just as an aside... I think that the functionality that has been discussed here would best be intergrated into myspace. If you are a band, you have a myspace. If you want to check out a band you probably use myspace. What myspace needs is band accounts that allow more than one person to accesss (maybe one guy as admin).

Good ideas in this thread. Hope something comes of it.

[IanStephenson]

Originally Posted by mrpackerguy

I guess I don't have a good one, because I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to password a webpage, only to figure out I couldn't.

I don't know about the software you're using but passwording an area of a website is done the webserver.

Put the pages you want to protect in a directory, and add a file called ".htaccess". In that file you put:
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Band Private Area"
AuthUserFile /home/ian/htpasswds
Require user ian mrpackerguy

This tells the server that ian and mypackerguy can access this folder, and they need to provide the passwords in /home/ian/htpasswds.

Use the program htpasswd to make the password file and add the users. You can have one passwd file for lots of areas (and you shouldn't store the password file where it can be downloaded) so different users can access different areas but admins can access all files with one password.

After that it doesn't matter what web pages you put in the folder, so yu can use any system to make them.

Of course this all assumes you're using Apache, and it's easier to do if you can actually log into your webserver, rather than just ftp (and strictly it's not very secure, but you'd need to be really paranoid to worry about people hacking your band site).

Ian