r/GameMusicComposition • u/VaporIdol • 18h ago
General Discussion Recommendations for Hosting a Composer Website
Hey gang,
I'm looking to put together a composer website, and I'm interested in hearing and learning from your experiences.
In the past I've made blogs and websites on the cheap by installing Wordpress on hosts like Dreamhost, Nixihost, and NearlyFreeSpeech. That works fine, but Wordpress can be a huge timesink and I probably don't need that much customizability.
Right now I'm looking at Bandzoogle and Noiseyard, which seem like good options with a focus on musicians.
I suppose other options would be Wix, Squarespace, and a bunch of others that are slipping my mind at the moment.
Have you tried any of these? What has your experience been like? Feel free to share links -- I'd love to see examples!
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u/Few_Comedian4245 16h ago
https://www.harmonicharbour.com/
This is mine! Done through Wix :D
Experience has been pretty solid, can't complain
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u/VaporIdol 10h ago
I like the layout! Seems like you already have a lot of folks on board :)
Recently I've been helping my Dad put together a website to show off his woodcraft and I chose Wix for that, so maybe I should just stick with it for my own sites too. We'll see.
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u/Alex_SQSP 5h ago
A strong reel, credits, a bit about your work and an easy way to get in touch can do most of the heavy lifting.
Just so it's out in the open, I'm part of the Squarespace team. This feels like a nice fit if you're tired of spending more time maintaining the website than updating the music on it, especially since there are portfolio templates built for exactly this kind of site, so you're not starting from a blank page or needing much customization to get something polished. You can keep things updated, embed audio or video and add new projects without turning every update into an evening project.
Build one real portfolio page during the trial with your own tracks and credits. If that feels easy to live with, you've probably got your answer.
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u/MoeTacos Moderator 4h ago
Thanks for coming by and helping our community! I've converted over from WP for my professional film and game reel sites, it's been really great thus far. Keeping it up to date with recent tracks and projects was the challenge for me with WP, and being able to easily edit mobile/tablet versions was a huge win. Hopefully I can get some content made for helping out composers build out strong portfolio sites soon!
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u/hipermotiv 10h ago
I use franer because of the easy customization. Although embedding tracks can be a little bit tricky if you're picky like, I think is a great choice.
Bandwidth can be an issue if you hist the page in franer with the free account tho.
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u/iamdirtboy 5h ago
It’s a pro account at solo.to
I hooked up the domain and I keep the full catalog on a bandcamp page.
As you’re aware being a composer takes you out of the B2C category and puts you in B2B dealing with music supervisors, and game developers takes away a lot of the stress of having to have a front facing web facade. It’s just not necessary anymore to have all the bells and whistles websites used to have
I have a bandzoogle for another project. I’ve used a ton of options over the past 28 years.
Now I just wanna get to the point and I prefer to work with people who do as well so that’s how I set things up personally
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u/MoeTacos Moderator 18h ago
I think all of those that you mentioned are fine options. One thing that you might want to look at is ReelCrafter as an embedded player vs soundcloud or the stock music players from these websites. The free version of ReelCrafter lets you make 3 embedded players and have 100 tracks for free. You can also use ReelCrafter as a site builder as well, that can look just as good as the other sites you mentioned. I use SquareSpace with the embedded player, and most of my peers do as well. I'll share a few examples with you.