UPDATE: April/2011 The video that was on this page (along with 8 or so others) has been lost. I’m in the process of recording and doing a re-release of the videos. I’ll add a link once it’s ready…
Okay, so how do you possibly follow up the ultimate indie band website solution? How about by showing how everyone can setup their very own ubercheap website as well?
So right about now you might be asking – what exactly is an ubercheap website?
An Ubercheap website will only cost you between $10 – $15 a year and isn’t a Myspace page or something like that. I show you a little trick that will allow you to use a domain name while not having to pay for web hosting or bandwidth. This solution may not be the most fancy solution, but it allows you to get a site up in less than an hour for next to nothing and no worries if your band folds inside of six months.
Now, that’s not to say that there aren’t a few trade offs to make this happen – a typical Ubercheap website is only going to have 50mbs of storage, but I explain how you can get around that for free. However, I forgot to mention that you can actually upgrade this storage amount as well – but I don’t recommend it because it costs too much for what you get, trust me on this. We’ll be talking turkey about web hosting fees and recommendations in my next video – again, just hang in there.
This video kicks off by showing you an ubercheap website that I set up for my old band Omega A.D (currently on hiatus). The domain that I registered is www.omegaad.ca – you can go ahead and paste that in your browser if you want to see it up close. Again, please keep in mind that this site was put up in a few minutes to test out the concept and that I haven’t fully fleshed it out at this point in time (since the band is on hiatus after all!). I briefly explain the concept of URL forwarding and URL cloaking. I attempted to illustrate this using a notepad document, but I now realize that the window is pretty small so you may not have seen what I’m trying to get at. Basically, if you also try typing in www.omegaad.wordpress.com you’ll discover the true ‘home’ of the web page, it’s just set up (through the URL forwarding and URL cloaking options provided by my domain registrar Sibername.ca) so that it appears that the site is www.omegaad.ca and not a subdomain of a popular blogging service.
You can also use this method to point your domain to a Reverbnation, Last FM or your Myspace band page. It won’t fool anyone, but you’ll be reserving your domain name until such a time as you can set up a real website for your band.
Anyway, I’m going to leave it at that for now. I also apologize for the sound being on the quiet side – put on some headphones and crank it. Towards the end of the recording you’ll here my little guy coughing in the background…sorry about that as well, but I at least didn’t yawn too much during this recording!
As always, I look forward to any comments you may have – without further ado, here’s the video!