How to Create a Beautiful WordPress Music Website in 5 Minutes
You’ve probably heard of or seen a WordPress website. Chances are you’ve even created one yourself. Maybe you’ve used it to build a blog, or to sell your products online. Or maybe you’ve even used it to grow your social media following. If so, then you know exactly what I’m talking about.
I’m sure you’ve seen other sites like Spotify or Apple Music and been amazed by their beautiful and functional user interfaces. These sites’ functionality is powered by WordPress and their design is driven by Bootstrap, a free and open source front-end framework that provides HTML and CSS templates to develop a responsive website.
So let’s get to the point – you want to know how to create a similar WordPress music website in 5 minutes, right?
What Will You Need?
It’s always amazing when a developer can drop a site down for you in a matter of minutes and you can just walk away from the terminal, with a functioning website ready to launch.
Whether you’re a complete beginner or an experienced developer, you’ll need the following:
- A healthy dose of skepticism
- A working knowledge of HTML and CSS
- A contenteditable div (i.e. a textarea)
- A default WordPress theme (can be downloaded for free from GitHub)
- A free domain name
Step by Step
Now, let’s get to the good stuff. I’m going to show you exactly what to do, step by step. First, you’re going to need to sign up for a WordPress account (you can use your email address already associated with a Twitter account if you have one). Second, you’re going to want to install WordPress on a web server. Third, you’re going to want to browse the WordPress documentation to learn how to build a basic theme. Finally, you’re going to want to get inspired by some of the great WordPress themes out there and build your own unique, beautifully designed site.
Before you start coding, there’s one more thing you need to do.
Pick A Domain Name
Now that you have a WordPress account, you’re going to want to pick a domain name for your website. You can use your blog’s name, or you can choose a unique domain name that’s memorable and easy to type (i.e. musicdownloads.net instead of simply mdwn.com).
The funny thing about domain names is that they don’t have to be fancy or expensive – they just have to be unique. That’s it. Now is a good time to mention that you can register your chosen domain name with nearly any hosting company for free.
Installing WordPress
The first thing you need to do is visit the WordPress install page and follow the prompts to install WordPress. Next, log in to your WordPress dashboard and click on the Settings button to access the theme’s options.
Now is a good time to mention that you can also choose a different option called the TwentyFourteen theme, which is essentially the same as the TwentyThree theme but with several extra features. For our purposes, we’re going to stick with the default TwentyThree theme.
Customizing The Theme
Once you’ve downloaded the TwentyThree WordPress theme from WordPress.org, you’ll need to visit the Theme Options page and click on the Customize button.
From here, you can make a few easy changes to the theme’s appearance. First, you can choose a different background for the site. You can use the provided photo from your computer’s hard drive or you can use a plain background like sky or white. Don’t worry, you can’t choose a solid color background because that would cause problems for accessibility (screen readers would be unable to read off of the background).
Second, you can change the theme’s font by clicking on the Appearance tab and selecting a different font from the panel.
The third option is the header. You can place a logo in the header, or choose to leave it blank. If you leave the header empty, then you’re going to want to put text in the heading to provide additional information about your site. Remember, the better the information that’s presented, the better the UX (user experience).
Creating The Content
With the theme set and the content in place, it’s time to start creating content. First, you’re going to want to create a page for the music that you’ve uploaded (i.e. a landing page).
You can use the WordPress back-end to create the page, or you can use the desktop version of WordPress to create the page and then upload the HTML file using FTP (File Transfer Protocol).
Either way, you can access your new page using any web browser.
In either case, you’re going to want to create a bit of content for your page. For our example, we’re going to use a short-hand for the sake of this tutorial for the sake of brevity. So, on our music download page, we’re going to say that the band Joy Division is comprised of a singer, a guitarist, a bassist, and a drummer. If you’ve never heard of Joy Division, then you probably aren’t aware of the groundbreaking music that they created in the 1980s, which is considered to be among one of the most influential bands of the 20th century.
If you created a blog using WordPress, then you’re probably aware that you can use this platform to connect with other bloggers and establish yourself as an authority in your niche. In order to do this, you’re going to want to connect your blog to Twitter and create blog posts on a regular basis. You can put out content several times a week if you want to see more engagement on your site.
Now that you have a basic understanding of how to create a WordPress music website, it’s time to get inspired and build your own unique blog or web portal. Good luck out there.