When I moved to the Seattle area, one of my goals was to rediscover personal hobbies I enjoy (which is why I started Fickle Father). When I was in jr high and high school, I did quite a bit of music. I played French Horn in symphonic band, drums in marching band, and sang in the choir. I really enjoyed performing music with a group. But I hadn’t done that since high school.
My son was going into jr high and chose to play trumpet in the band as one of his electives. So we bought him a trumpet (a cheap one from Amazon).
I started playing it too.
This got me thinking, “I wonder if there’s a band around town I can join?” So I googled it. Lo and behold, there were a couple community bands near me.
I joined the Puyallup Valley Community Band (PVCB) as a trumpet player. However, in my google searching, I noticed that the band’s website was not connecting. Digging a little further, I realized that the domain had expired and was for sale. Not wanting some nefarious person to purchase it (which has happened to me), I snatched it up.
I was then able to connect with the band’s board and offered to help them get the website back up and running. So now I’m the band’s webmaster.
The Instructions
The PVCB Board asked me to create a simple website that was similar in look and feel to another community band:
The Board also gave me a word document with the outline of what they would like for the main pages and the content that should be on those pages.
The Redesigned Website
Based on these instructions, I created a similarly designed website on WordPress using the Astra Theme. It is fully responsive and I also added a menu link to the Band’s calendar, a blog section, and a members only section.
How long did it take?
I did not create a logo and used images that the Board had available. As a result, this website was actually pretty quick to put together. I had the bulk of it done over a lazy Sunday afternoon. I then met with the Board to go over some tweaking and launched it.
All-in-all, I would estimate that the entire website, from framework to launch, took roughly 3-4 hours.
That being said, there is information throughout the site that is “coming soon” and the membership access still needs some testing or troubleshooting. So it’s not quite done, but that is mostly a matter of not having the content available.
If you are in need of a website to promote or share your hobby, let me know!
