Many are turning to Wordpress as a CMS and that’s what drummer-for-hire, BrianDoherty , did. He said, “At first I had a pro do it [Website] and then realized that in order
to update the content, I’d have to learn to do it. Thus, I use Blogger and Wordpress—free
and easy.”
Originally a blogging application (and still is), Wordpress has become very popular
for building and managing complete Websites. It’s free and relatively easy to use, but it
can also be extremely robust. Wordpress utilizes “plugins,” or small applications, often
free, that perform all sorts of functions. There are plugins to handle contact forms, SEO,
image galleries and much more. For musicians, there are Wordpress plugins that tie into
ReverbNation and SoundCloud, create performance calendars, stream music, integrate
social media and many more. Plus, given its blogging roots, with Wordpress, a blog can
be easily created and incorporated into your site.
Similar to Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla are popular options for building an easy-to-
maintain site. Singer-songwriter, Anna Fermin, took the Drupal route with her partner.
“My collaborator/business partner, Aaron Barber, took on the building of our Website. It
was built using Drupal, which Aaron learned on his own from the bottom up. Since my
other talents lie in graphic design, we were able to team up to build and design our site.
It was a lot of work and time put in for Aaron to learn the language of Drupal, but we had
a very small budget, and for what we wanted, we were going to need to implement on our
own. We simply couldn’t afford to hire someone to do it for us. In the end, we got ex-
actly what we wanted: a Website with a highly customized look and functionality. No
cookie-cutter website here,” said Fermin.