IndieMat Notes
By: IndieMat's Birthday
At least online, it's been in various forms offline for quite awhile. The goal of this site stems from three loves in my life: music, php and philosophy. I've been working on musicians' sites for many years and have been fascinated watching the impact of these sites increase over time. It's pretty much a given now that an artist or band needs a web presence. This presence can take many forms on one of the many music platforms to add your music and name to the masses.
At some point, however, it becomes time to move to your very own domain. The catch there, I think, is knowing how to define that domain. It's very easy to spend thousands for little more than a flashy design. Musicians, like all other businesses, need to ask the first very important question about their very first web site: What do I expect to gain from it?
Build the greatest site ever, and spend a ton of dough to make it just like you want and who cares? It ain't going bring the masses knocking on your door. A site is only one avenue of many, and is not in itself the key to exposure. So only give enough to start seeing if it is going to give back. And only focus on those parts that may give back.
The most popular pages on musician web sites are: Home, Tour, Tickets, Music. Assuming there is not free stuff somewhere.
This will vary depending on your level of popularity. If you already a hot shot, just sit back and watch exclusive ticket packages get gobbled up. But if you are but a budding Rock Star, it's time to put on your business hat. Ask yourself exactly what any business web site would ask itself: "What do I want to project to my customers?"
Answering that question is the first step to any good web site. The rest, I'll offer up my advice and code along the way.
IndieMat Development Log
Navigation and Modules Add update
The manage navigation was acting mighty funky, so got it all cleared up and re-organized the display a bit. Still thinking about how, in the admin view, to show pages not in the main navigation more easily - currently they can only be seen from the "edit navigation" page.
Also made it easier to track module and add the same module to many pages, rather than just one. Will be adding an options to include header and footer on new pages at creation, rather than having to tack on later.
The "to do" list before next version release stands at about 15, assuming it doesn't grow as go.
It's almost harder to work when I don't have a deadline to get a version live since I let myself dabble more.
Updates are in this site only, not demo version. I think I'll try to update that every other week or so.
A Very Beta Launch
The launch of IndieMat includes three sites - this one, the demo site and an example site (thanks to Marc Ribler for allowing the re-use of this artwork and content for this project). There is also a download available, though for checking out purposes only. Unless you are comfortable in PHP and MySql, I'd advise not using it yet. At this point it's a wonder if the DOESN'T break.
But I need to use it, so wanted to get stuff online to weed out bugs and alter functionality as I use it. Just in setting up these beta sites, I changed many things and discovered many new fixes I need to do. These are all listed on the Development Issues page.
This project is turning out to be much bigger than I first suspected, as I continue to run into snares. As I am but a student of PHP, I'm learning as I go, so sometimes awe at my own stupidity when the "ohhhhh" moment finally arrives.
I'm open to feedback and assistance always. I look forward to sharing this artist geared CMS with more people.
Sidebar Homepage
IndieMat Beta
IndieMat is a site to go. There is a demo online. You can play with all the buttons and mess it up all you want. To see and play with the site out of the box, click on the image below (The user sign in is "demo admin" and leave the password field blank):
That's the quick version. For more, click here.
IndieMat Podcast
Developer's Stone
Oprah's Webinar
Tuned into the event, as the sheer numbers and coordination involved awed this webgeek. I wanted to see how it would do technically as well as content-wise given the amazing price tag of free. I got in early and things went well, but after a half hour or so, Safari crashed.
(click here for more...)- early
adopters 
