BandPage Plus Features Keep Getting Better

Two months ago we quietly released some amazing new features as a part of our Plus subscription package.  The idea behind these new features was to allow you, the artists, to more effectively brand and customize your website or blog when utilizing BandPage solutions to manage your online presence.  Now with our newest release, creating a customized and consistent feel on your website is easier than ever.  Check out the list of improvements we made to the BandPage Website and widgets below.  If you like what you see, you can go ahead and upgrade to Plus here.

• Include a band logo in place of your band name on the BandPage Website
• Choose from 12 different fonts for your BandPage Website 
• Choose from 12 different fonts on the BandPage Widgets
• Add a twitter tab
• Add a new customized tab
• Change the names of your existing tabs

If you haven’t had a chance to check out these new features in the wild, here are some great examples of Plus BandPagers putting our tools to good use!

Upload Your Logo

A logo is one of the most important components of any artist’s branding strategy as it is inextricably linked with fan recognition.  Our Plus subscription now allows you to upload your own logo to the Bandpage Website to ensure your branding is consistent across your various online properties.

Choose from 12 Different Fonts

You can now choose between 12 different fonts options on both the BandPage Website and widgets to help you further brand and customize your digital presence.

Add Twitter Feed

We even added a way for you to add your twitter feed to your BandPage Website so your fans can stay up-to-date on everything you’ve been up to

Additional Navigation Tab

And last but certainly not least, you can now add an additional tab to your BandPage Website.  Use this tab to direct fans to your online store, YouTube Channel, Instagram – wherever.

If you have any questions about how to get your BandPage set up or need help upgrading, check out our Help Center for more info or drop us a line at support@BandPage.com.

Tip of the week: Updating your Band Name and changing your Direct Link

Without further ado we would like to introduce you to two of our favorite new features in your BandPage Profile:

• Updating your Artist or Band name
• Changing your Direct Link and BandPage  Website URL

After many weeks of your feedback and requests, we put our minds to work to find an easy-to-use and simple way for you to update your Display Name in your BandPage Profile, as well as request a new Direct Link without ever having to send us an email!

How to update your Artist or Band Name:

Step One:  Sign in to the BandPage editor and select to edit your BandPage.  By default you will land in the “Create Your Profile” tab, which is where you can access and update the information that is in the About section of your Bandpage Profile.

Step Two:  In the text box below “Display Name” you will see your current Artist Name.  To change this, click on the text space and start typing your new Artist Name.  This will change your Artist Name everywhere that your BandPage Profile is displayed across the web.

Step Three:  Once you have the correct name typed in, click on the blue “Save” button and your Artist Name will be updated!

Now you can update your  Artist Name as many times as you want, instantly.

How to update your Direct Link:

Step One:  As with updating your Artist or Band Name, you can change your Direct Link in the “About” section of your BandPage Profile.

Click on the text space below “Web Alias” and begin typing the new Direct Link that you want to have.  Remember that this will update both your Direct Link on Facebook and your BandPage Website URL:

fb.bandpage.com/webalias AND webalias.bandpage.com

Step Two:  Once you have typed in the Web Alias that you wish to have as a Direct Link and BandPage Website URL, a dialogue box will appear that says one of two things:

“This alias is either invalid or already taken.” means that the Web Alias you have chosen is not accepted by our system, or that it is already in use by another BandPage. In this case, you will need to choose a new one.

“This will change your web alias in the following locations” notifies you that the alias you have chosen is available and wants to make sure that you are OK with where the changes will appear on your BandPage Profile.

Step Three:  If the Web Alias that you have chosen works, then you just need to click “Save” and you’re done!

If you have any questions feel free to check out our Help Center or shoot us an email to Support@bandpage.com!

Tip of the week: Demystifying Domain Names and how they work with your BandPage Website

In an effort to make sharing your music easier than ever, we created the BandPage Website Extension.  We made this so that your fans could have a sleek one-stop-shop to experience your sound and find out more about you.

When you set up a BandPage Website, we automatically generate a subdomain for you:  yourname.bandpage.com.  If you like the subdomain that we already gave you, then you don’t need to read any further!

What are Domain Records?
The technical term for a site’s main domain is “A record” and for a subdomain it is “CNAME record”.  CNAME stands for Canonical Name record and it is a type of ‘internet resource’ in the Domain Name System (also referred to as DNS).  DNS generally provides the map that servers use to send traffic to and from each other on the internet.

The domain names that we use to access websites (“bandpage.com”, “reddit.com”, “twitter.com”, “tumblr.com”) are associated with an identification number by these records.  Computers talk to each other in numbers and DNS is their translator.  DNS takes the names that we type into our browsers and translates them into numbers so that the computers know what server a human wants to access.

Setting Up Your Domain
There are two parts to a domain setup:  an “automatic domain redirect”,  and a “DNS CNAME record.”  These two things are the minimum capabilities that you need from a web hosting provider in order to successfully setup your domain.

How to Achieve The Redirect
First create an automatic redirect on your web host that redirects the main domain to the www. version e.g. “misterinterrupt.com” to “www.misterinterrupt.com”  If your web host supports this, then you will see an option for it.  It may just be a setting that states it will “always use www.thefloodplain.com” or always use ”thefloodplain.com”.  Talk to your host before signing up and make sure that this is something you can do with their service. Once this is set up, typing either of these urls into the browser will take you to the version with the “www.” prefix.

How to Create Your WWW CNAME
Next we will create or modify the CNAME record for your ‘www’ subdomain so that it will redirect to your BandPage Website Custom Link, found in the editor here.

A CNAME can be any word that prefixes a domain name as the word “myband” in: “myband.radrecordlabel.com”.  The CNAME record for www can be created on your web host in the DNS or custom DNS section in your domain manager.

This is an example from Dreamhost:

You will need to check with your host to ensure that you can create your own DNS records.   A CNAME is pretty simple and is made of two text fields.   There is a label, or alias field, as well as a value field which is the “canonical” part.  You can understand this record as setting an alias, or subdomain, to point to the canonical name of another site or another of your alias/subdomains.  You will want to put “www” in the label/alias field and “myband.bandpage.com” in the value field.

If your host supports it, you can try to make a “wildcard” CNAME by putting a single asterisk * in the label/alias field. This makes all subdomains point to your BandPage Website.

Wait For DNS to Update And Then You’re Done
Those are the two things that you need to do in order to make your BandPage Website show up when your fans type in your own domain name.  One thing to note is that DNS can take a while to update (technically, sometimes up to 48 hours), so it is best to not change it very often to avoid being confusion over which of your recent changes have propagated through the internet when you are testing it.

We cannot provide steps for editing DNS records on all the different hosts out there, but we hope that this gives you the general knowledge to be successful with any host.  Here is a helpful article that does have steps for some of the more common hosts.

If you have any other questions, visit our Help Center or feel free to contact us at Support@bandpage.com!

Tip of the week: Try out the new BandPage Plus features!

Since we launched BandPage Everywhere back in July of 2012, we have received a lot of really helpful feedback from you all about how we could improve these features.  We listened to those requests and are excited to present you with some killer new customizations tools!

Now, you can customize your Website with some great new options:

• Include a band logo in place of your band name
• Choose from 12 different fonts
• Add a twitter tab
• Add a new customized tab
• Change the names of your existing tabs

And you can exercise a bit more customization with your BandPage Extensions:

• Change the font- choose from 12 awesome styles

To access these new features, go to BandPage.com and sign in.  If you aren’t already a Plus user, you can upgrade your page in a few simple steps!

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to visit our Help Center or contact us at Support@bandpage.com!

BandPage Announces BandPage Everywhere!

BandPage Announces BandPage Everywhere, Giving Musicians a New Website and Ability to Embed Extensions Into Existing Sites and Blogs

Update Once, Publish Everywhere

When we built BandPage on Facebook many of you asked if you could ‘take it with you’ to your existing Website and blog. Well now you can.  Our new BandPage Everywhere features allow you to take any component of your BandPage (your music player, tour dates, videos or photo gallery ) and quickly and easily embed it on any of your other online properties.  You can use our customizable widgets to easily manage and showcase your content on your various websites without having to call your web developer or know how to code.  And once the widgets have been embedded, updating your content is as easy as logging into BandPage.com and making the appropriate changes.  All updates to your widgets immediately happen in real time.  Managing your content across multiple places has never been easier!

BandPage Widgets

BandPage Widgets are made to blend seamlessly into your existing website or blog design using our transparency slider and black or white background color options.

BANDPAGE WEBSITE

Our BandPage Website is the easiest way to set up a professional looking artist website in a matter of minutes.  We automatically pull in all of your shows, photos, videos, bio and music from your BandPage Profile and display it in a clean and sleek looking format.

A MESSAGE FROM THE TEAM

The BandPage team is committed to finding new and innovative ways for bands to connect with their fans. We’ve got some great things coming in the next few weeks, and we’d love to hear your feedback, or any questions that you may have.

Our mission here at BandPage is to build the solutions you asked for that make a difference in your day-to-day lives.  For more info on BandPage Everywhere, you can also check out our Press Release. 

Sincerely,

J Sider and the BandPage Team