Hello and welcome to our series of blog posts on how to start a piano studio! This is our third blog post on the topic of the piano studio website. And we are focusing on how to turn all your precious content into a public website accessible from the Internet.
By now you have learned already how to pick a unique name or domain name. You are aware of the importance of a branded email address for your piano studio. Figured out what is at the heart of the Internet and how the websites are structured and built. As well as how important the origin story is in connecting to your prospective clients.
From the text editor of your choice to the website
Until now you have been working in the text editor of your choice. Chances are all the content exists now in the form of paragraphs of text hopefully with some photos or images. Our next step is to convert all this content into a functional website. It usually happens after you sign up with one of the managed hosting providers. The platform will allow you to create all the pages and host them with that hosting provider. How do we do that?
Hosting a piano studio website costs money
You have learned earlier that the Internet is built from resources or often called pages. The creation of the pages requires a platform and tools. The platform and tools are installed on hardware (or often called servers). Hardware just like your fridge requires electricity to run. Hence hosting your website, just like running your fridge, costs some money. The price will vary from provider to provider and you are free to choose any. There are two things you should be paying attention to. First is the ability to set your own custom domain and second no third-party ads. As long as those two are satisfied you are good to go with pretty much any plan. Note that your piano studio website will not require a lot of space and bandwidth to function properly. Keep in mind that the price will also depend on the platform you go with, more about it is down below.
Platforms and tools
The platforms and tools for authoring content are called Content Management Systems or CMS for short. The topic of CMS is always a source of heated debates in the world of the Web. Everyone is trying to prove that they made the best possible choice of CMS. In fact, it is always a trade-off of cost, easy-to-use, flexibility, and time-to-market factors. Self-hosting of CMS platforms like WordPress, Drupal, Magento, Joomla, and Squarespace would be of course the most flexible option. We are using WordPress for our clients as this is the most supported, easy-to-use and flexible platform on the market. Learn more about how to set up your very own WordPress website by yourself in this series of articles. Do you want to experiment with different platforms? Then website builders may offer just what you want.
Website builders
Do you have some expertise with one of the advanced platforms? If the answer is no, you may consider Weebly, GoDaddy Website Builder, Wix, Squarespace or Google Sites for starters.
All of them provide a free option or trial period. They also give you an idea about the platform. A variety of templates employ a wizard-based approach and have flexible pricing options. The following links below list the pros and cons of some of the platforms.
- Wix Vs Weebly Vs Squarespace Vs GoDaddy Website Builder Vs Jimdo Vs WordPress: Which is the Best Website Builder in 2018?
- GoDaddy Website Builder vs. Wix vs. Weebly: Website Builders Compared
- Wix Vs Weebly – Battling To Be The Best Website Builder
Pick the platform and the pricing plan which allows you to assign a custom domain to your website. Turn off the third-party ads. The rest will be simple. You signed up with one of them. Switch it to use your piano studio domain. Select one of the themes. Update pages with your piano studio content and go live!
Congratulations! Just like that step by step your piano studio website went live. Now you can share the news, and communicate the fees, policies, and changes via the link to your piano studio website. You did it on your own! You did it with perhaps a minimum investment of your time and money! And you are now ready for the next step. Marketing and advertisement of your piano studio.
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Start piano studio and enjoy teaching the piano!
