The Pain And The Progress With BandWPThemes

Damn.

Thank you guys! I wanted to start this by thanking everyone for hanging out and being a part of the BandWPThemes launch. It has been a crazy week for me and my team and I am so appreciative of your patience, your input and your action. There are at least 10 sites now live collecting fans made on the BandWPThemes platform and another 20 or so that will be ready to go any day now.

So let’s talk about some of the pain and the progress and the future of BandWPThemes.

First, the ease of use. Personally I take for granted how easy and user-friendly WordPress is. I have been using it for 2+ years and would really not use another platform to build any type of site for really any kind of business I would find myself creating. With that said, if you have never created a website outside of your Myspace profile and a few other inside the box social networking pages – WordPress can be confusing as shit.

First you need a domain and hosting. And you need to make sure the domain talks to the hosting company. Then you need to install WordPress. Then you need to install the theme. Then customize it.

Those are a few more steps than you might have thought you were getting into (don’t worry though, we got you – video walk throughs).

Customization

The customization of BandWPThemes is hopefully quite easy. The custom dash makes it easy to insert your music player and Twitter code, Google Analytics to track site statistics and insert a header image.

Some people have said you can do this stuff by customizing some free themes. Totally true. You can. But for musicians that have never used WordPress and don’t want to customize the CSS or add some plugins to their site, we made it easy and 1-click.

Others have said that all the sites will kinda look the same with the gray background and yellow titles. Well if we sold like a million of these (which I would love to do) that may be the case. But to ensure that we give you some options, we are working on version 1.2 right now that will have some other color combos for you to use. All in all, there should be 5 or 6 in the next release (hopefully will be released soon).

Anyone who grabs the theme will get free updates for life.

Aweber vs. FanBridge vs. Reverbnation

Many people who were thinking of grabbing the theme and some that got it were worried that they would have to switch to Aweber. While it is true that we both endorse Aweber and are affiliates for Aweber, you can use whatever email program you want.

The built it “newsletter widget” however will only work with Aweber at this point in time. To use Reverb or FanBridge, simply grab an HTML widget, drag it into the sidebar and insert the code they give you to embed a form (we got you covered on this as well, loading those videos up today).

There is one live example of this up now, which I will show you in a second.

Who The Theme Is For (And Not For)

While we want to say “everybody” we all know that is not true. The theme is dope. I like it and stand by it as a great way to get started with WordPress and learning this content management system and engaging with your fans. But…

The theme is NOT for musicians that are OCD about their designs. The theme is just a shell and if you are expecting it to look like something its not, well it won’t. Look for a designer or another premium theme that has more flexibility.

The theme perfect for the musician that wants to take control of their band’s online presence and needs a place to start. The best and most overlooked part of BandWPThemes is that we offer insane support, training videos and a forum that is really amped about the speed in which we answer questions and issues.

In fact, Roaming Royalty wrote a post on their new site that said BandWPThemes Rules! In it he goes on to explain:

I made this blog look the way it does by downloading a theme from BandWPthemes.com. Performing the install and getting everything done was not quite as easy as I had hoped, although the issues seemed to stem from WordPress and Go Daddy, there were no problems with the theme itself.

Even though I struggled a bit getting the page the way I wanted, Greg and Andrew from BandWPthemes got back to me right away and were so very helpful and, above all, they actually seemed to care a lot that I got my site going fast and was happy with my purchase. The computer world is complicated and there are many variables that can make every system act just a little different, thankfully these guys did not leave me high and dry when things were a little screwy for me, they also didn’t just shift blame to WP or Go Daddy and leave me hanging.

Not many theme creators and “internet marketers” would go this extra mile to ensure that a $27 or $37 purchase made the customer totally happy. Point for the good guys.

Some Live Examples

So let’s see what some of the bands and musicians have created over the past week. The first is from Adam Hoek, who you might remember from his guest post on Headliner.fm a few weeks back. Adam needed an upgrade to his existing WordPress site and got his BandWPTheme up on Monday, just hours after he purchased.

AdamHoek.com

Next up is Swedish Brilliance. They wanted to integrate ReverbNation into the theme, from its FanReach email collector to the player. They actually got it all going before I could shoot the install videos on how to make it all work. Then they were super awesome and wrote a forum thread on how to make it happen (bands helping bands).

Swedish Brilliance

The last one I wanted to showcase today was from Roaming Royalty, who after a few tech glitches and some help from our team, got his site up in about 2 days (yes, that’s more than 12 minutes, but to be fair, I knew the theme, knew its limits and had already resized images, etc – who would have wanted to watch a 2-3 hour video!)

Roaming Royalty

My Friday Bribe To Take Some Action

It’s Friday and it’s been a bonkers week. Plus we were competing with Apple on Monday (I know, our theme is almost as cool as the new iPhone). The fast action bonuses went fast and that was awesome for us (bad if you take a long time to decide on things).

So here is what I am going to do. Anyone that grabs the theme from now till Sunday at 11:59pm I am going to hook you up with No Limit Networking. We gave 20 of them away and have heard some really cool things and think it might help you develop some content for your new WordPress site. Here’s what one member said about No Limit Networking:

I got into No Limit Networking and I ate that whole thing up today in 1 sitting. nice stuff! Really opened my eyes to how I should be expanding my people circle.

Just grab the Platinum version (which is going up to $47 on Monday) and I’ll know to shoot you the bonuses.

Cool? Cool.

Have a great weekend and I look forward to seeing more of your sites over the weekend.

-G

Tags: bandwpthemes, Music Marketing, wordpress