How Can I Create a Fan Site?

Written by: Emily Hume

Creating a fan site is a great way to provide a space for fans to gather and talk about their favorite artists or favorite style of music! It can seem a bit overwhelming to start, but With the Band has some tips and tricks to make it easier. We have put together some of our favorite tools to use for building a website that is cohesive and welcoming to your audience!

1. What Is Your Fan Site About?

Think about what you want people to be talking about and see when they arrive on your fan site. Is it going to center around one artist? Will it be about upcoming events or music releases? Or will it be about your favorite genre of music? A great way to try and determine what you would like to put on your site is to look at what most inspired you to start a fan site! Look at what music you most listen to, fandom and fan accounts you love, and artists you love. Once you have decided what your fan site is about, then you can begin to put it all together!

2. What Will Your Fan Site Look Like?

This is all about image! Decide what type of branding you want your site to have. If there is a specific color scheme or overall mood you are going for, making those decisions now will make it much easier to keep up with over time. Having a specific look will also help your site to stand out from others, making it easier for fans to remember your fan site! Again, a great way to explore branding you want is to look at what inspires you, and also what artist or genre you will be focusing on. Usually, you will be able to see some kind of pattern to follow. If you are wanting to entirely do your own thing, up next is what we suggest!

3. What Content Will Your Fan Site Have?

This is where you really get to be creative. Making your own style and content can be daunting, but there are some great tools to help you along. At With the Band, we absolutely love using Canva to help us design our own content. Canva is a free graphic design platform, used to create social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents, and other visual content. Whatever you want to create! It can be great to help put together content for you fan site, as well as content to promote your site! It will help you to stay consistent with your branding and colors as well. They even have templates that you can use to make content if you are not wanting to start from scratch!

4. What Rules Will Your Fan Site Have?

One very important final step is to set some rules! This can be a good thing to get worked out before getting to your site itself. If you have some content and guidelines ready to go, then putting them into a site will be much easier. If you want it to be a positive, safe space that doesn’t tolerate negativity or hate, be sure to outline these rules. If you want fans to only talk about a certain subject, then make that clear! Your fan site is only for a specific genre, artist, or topic.

5. How Will You Put Your Fan Site All Together?

Now for getting your fan site all set up! A great tool to use to set up your site is Wix. With the Band has even used this site ourselves! In Wix, you can create your entire site, check domain availability and extensions (what you want your site to be called), embed Google Forms, make blog posts, answer messages from your site visitors, and so much more! First, you want to check domain availability for what you would like your site to be called. One you have established what you want your site to be named, and confirmed that it is available, it is time to start building your site! Playing around in Wix will also help you to decide what all you might want to include that you may not have thought of before. This is a great place to really get going!

These are With the Band’s tips for starting a fan site! We hope that you create an amazing space for fans to share their love and just be themselves!

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