What is the platform? raymondbruce.com is the platform. My center (“centre” for the Americans) of operations, my place of communications, my home on the internet, and your entrance to my world I have a lot of plans for the future, which I will reveal here on this blog on an ongoing basis. For now, I’m building the foundations to raymondbruce.com
The objective is to connect with the various social and music platforms in a seamless way. The modern independent recording artist is more than an artist in 2020 and beyond. An artist is a marketer, social influencer, YouTuber, and all of what those identity’s entails, researcher, business owner, and more. This post serves two purposes: to get my ideas and thoughts on “paper” and to help anyone wishing to build a website.
Content Management System (CMS) Options
When it comes to building a website, my options were CMS (content management systems) like Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, and Expression Engine, which is used(?) by Apple. Another option I could have chosen was to use site builders like Wix and Squarespace.
Since I am essentially building an artist website, I should mention Bandzoogle the all-in-one site builder built by musicians for musicians. While all are good at what they do in their own right. I felt WordPress was my best option for my five-year plan.
WordPress is not the easiest to use by any means, but I’ll give that win to Wix.com. I wouldn’t have been able to say this a few years ago, but Wix has made a lot of progress over the years, in my books. However, WordPress gives me the most flexibility for future growth and site features going forward.
Best WordPress Hosting
When it comes to hosting for my WordPress site, it’s not the usual suspects, SiteGround, Bluehost, or Godaddy. Both SiteGround and Bluehost come highly recommended if you visit top web development sites. Their feature sets match one another, so choosing between the two is, I believe, there is no wrong choice. GoDaddy has the best domain DNS management system I have ever used from a domain registrar. Features that you would require to have a hosting package from GoDaddy included with the purchase of a domain.
Subdomain redirection is one of the features I am talking about that can be useful to artists or marketers. I will go into the significance of domain redirects in a later post. Since acquiring mediatemple.net, GoDaddy has learned a lot from Media Temple, the customer service and the website have developed over the years. GoDaddy also has a selection of hosting packages comparable to those offered by SiteGround and Bluehost, which are also domain registrars.
Needless to say, there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to building an artist website or any other type of website. In order to choose the right option, you need to know what your needs are now and in the future. This will save you from having to move or rebuild your website if you find that the hosting provider lacks the ability to help you as your audience grows and there is increasing demand for your website.
At present, I use Tsohost for my hosting needs. I have a package that allows me to build six websites. (Legacy package) I have hosted with Tsohost for many years and have no complaints. Tsohost has a fast, reliable cloud website hosting platform. Cloud hosting is when websites are hosted on multiple servers for redundancy and the ability to scale to the demands of website traffic.
Website load times are good, and over the years, I can’t say I have had any major problems. If I did have any problems, they were all solved within a reasonable amount of time via Tsohost support.
My hosting needs put 20i has my best option right now. 20i is a relative newcomer to the website hosting space, having launched only in 2016. However, the founders are veterans of the web hosting industry.
They are the founders of Webfusion (brought to you by Tsohost), 123Reg, and Heart Internet, all now indirectly owned by Godaddy. The founder’s history is what led me to use 20i. I have plans outside the music industry, and my website will reflect that in the future. So I’m choosing a hosting partner that can cater to my needs now and in the future.
I know the £8.99 per month (2 websites) package, or £110 per year with tax, will give me everything I need for the next few years. 20i does offer a lower package priced at £4.99 excluding tax, but the package doesn’t have all the features I need. Even at this price, it seems expensive when you consider Bluehost is offering £144 per website for 3 years of hosting.
Both have their pros and cons in terms of features. It is my needs that tell me that 20i is the way I should go. If 20i doesn’t work out for me, I can always go back to Toshost or move to Bluehost. As the saying goes, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
The FYI
With regard to my blog The FYI this being my first post, it means setting up the distribution of the blog to targeted platforms, which are Apple News, Flipboard, Tumblr, and Medium. Apple News and Flipboard are already in place, and Tumblr and Medium will follow in the coming months.
Over time, I will look to add more platforms to The FYI blog distribution list. For now, this will be it, as my main focus for the rest of the year is the release of my debut EP, Musicpedia Vol.1
When I started this post, I intended it to be a singular post; however, I now feel turning it into a series of posts would give it better value. This way I can better detail the development of raymondbruce.com while also bringing educational value to you, the reader. Doing a singular post would require leaving out what I consider to be useful information.
In part 2, I will talk about building my website.
