The Song Fight Bulletin Board

I don't have time to check if this is on here yet, but I'm planning on making a new site. I know that there are some talented people here that could probably help me out on this ... anyone have tricks or code to make a decent, not too lame website?

There are three things you need to do it right:

1. A domain name
2. Hosting
3. A content-management system

For 1 and 2, I recommend Dreamhost. They have some pretty cheap yet reliable packages which can also scale to ungodly levels (Song Fight runs on Dreamhost now) and I've heard nothing but good about them. (Personally I use Dotster for 1 and for 2 I self-host on my "pro-grade" home DSL connection but that's definitely not a viable solution for someone who doesn't know what they're doing.)

For 3, I had a nice long essay that I was writing but then I realized it'd be confusing, and I personally use (and can help with) <a href="http://movabletype.org/">Movable Type</a>, and another popular alternative is <a href="http://wordpress.org/">WordPress</a>. Different CMSes do different levels of hand-holding; MT out of the box does a lot of hand-holding (to the point that you don't even need to know HTML to get started if you're willing to use other peoples' layouts) but it's easy to turn that stuff off. I believe WP is pretty similar in capabilities (it started out as an MT clone), and both have a huge community of modders who add new optional functionality all the time. (Also, don't let all their talk about enterprise blah and support licenses scare you; MT is free for personal use, and band websites count as personal.)

If you want to go even further with simplifying things, you could check out <a href="http://hostbaby.com/">Hostbaby</a> (which handles all 3 parts for you), though it's oriented more towards career-oriented independent artists and is (IMO) overpriced for what they offer.

It all basically boils down to how much work you want to do and how much you can expect others to help you with.

I use moveable type, I can recommend it for the webtards like me.

Oh, duh, you already have a domain and hosting (fusionkid.com) so you only care about point #3.

So yeah. Movable Type, totally.

The way I do both sockpuppet.us and the "fluffy's stuff" portion of beesbuzz.biz is every section is a category, and there's no date-based archives. On beesbuzz.biz I also use a bit of PHP for style sheet selection so that I can style the different areas differently.

I run four sites with MovableType. It's great.

So I'm having some problems with setup, but I'll probably figure it out ... if you want to see my awesome under construction page that I made with flash, go to http://www.fusionkid.com or http://www.radnoise.com (the new name I got) ... you can move the little guy around and make him breathe fire! It's glitchy, but kind of fun anyways.

Okay ... I can't seem to install moveable type. My computer doesn't seem to know what .cgi files are, and it's starting to frustrate me. Did this happen to anyone else? When I click on the index thing, it's all good, but if I click on the links, it just brings up a bunch of useless text codes. Help!

Did you follow the instructions? You need to upload this stuff to your webserver, and your webserver needs to allow you to run CGI scripts (which are dynamic web apps).

Advice.

Use the appropriate technology for your needs.
Only use as much technology as you need.
Never do anything with Flash that you can do without it.

I can't believe these guys are recommending a solution when you have so poorly stated the problem.

SPUD

Spud wrote:I can't believe these guys are recommending a solution when you have so poorly stated the problem.

I believe a couple of guys stated their solutions (and fluffy pretty much laid out his perspective) in the spirit of "you didn't give us much to go with, but here's something to start considering". Anyone who begins to install DOS programs on their TIVO had better think about at least visiting a Read Me file or perusing the message boards around hacking TIVO.

That said, Spud's well stated advice is well timed. At least no one suggested Flash, eh?

But first:

1. Define what it is you want to do
2. Visit sites using various tools to see if there are people with similar needs doing what you want to do
3. Read up on the tools and their capabilities, and this may include simply a text editor and an FTP client
4. Align the tools to your needs (not the other way around)
5. Filter all this through Spud's wisdom machine
6. Take it slow and procede deliberately
7. Avoid "consumer" authoring tools like MS Frontpage, Word's "web export" or a stolen copy of Dreamweaver (editorial: they create god-awful code that often makes your site difficult to access by people using sane browsers)
8. Rethink #1

OK, here's something more to chew on. Many hosts offer website tools built-in, or as "one click" installs directly on the host servers. This is the case with Dreamhost. For instance, you can install WordPress on your site for free and get right to work.

Why I like MovableType:
- I can update my site from any web browser on any machine
- It's super fast and easy to add a new page/entry
- Even though it's a blogging tool (most are, unfortunately - god I hate personal blogs) you can use it to manage a "normal" (i.e. useful) website (each song is its own "journal entry", so instead of "my mood is cranky, I'm currently listening to..." and forcing people to poke themselves in the eyes with sharp objects, you can have your songs inspire this reaction -- at least that's my approach).
- The blogging features come in handy where they're appropriate, like keeping a log during the time you're recording a song or an AAD.

Why any particular tool can be challenging:
- It wasn't created with you in mind
- It still requires a certain level of committment and dedication to configure
- Server-side systems (like MovableType) may be difficult to migrate to another host's server if this becomes a necessity (although thousands of people do this all the time and it's pretty well documented)

roymond wrote:At least no one suggested Flash, eh?

Maybe no one suggested it, but if you clicked on the links he provided, that's what was there, a Flash-driven "under construction" page.

Sorry, roymond, I was being a bit flip there. Especially considering the "under construction" situation, I was a bit worried about the tail wagging the dog. I can't agree with your comments more. Especially about consumer solutions like Frontpage.