After making a lot of ‘illustration rich’ websites I wanted to make a template website, especially for music artists with a clean design. Even though aimed at artists, this theme can also be used for companies, bloggers and portfolio sites.

Most content is displayed on the homepage (long page) which scrolls easily up and down thanks to jquery scroll. Yet, it’s not a one paged website: archives of important categories (news categories, but also a full video, photo and audio archive) are placed on separate pages to keep the overview.

This is the result (with dummy content):
http://www.pablominoli.com

The job:
Pablo (a performing artist & composer) needed a clean and simple website that does have the social media opportunities for visitors, however; he is not that active on social media himself so it shouldn’t be ‘in your face’.
Of course he also needs to showcase his news, audio, photos and videos.

The Homepage:
The homepage has several blocks:

• General News
• Agenda
• Video
• Audio
• Footer

And can be extended with f.e.: a photo block.

Every block has the latest uploaded items and a link to the full archive page of each block.

The navigation has a main navigation which will take you to the several pages, and a sub navigation to take you to the several blocks on the home page.

News/Video/Audio/Agenda items only show the first paragraph (and/or photo) of each item and can be fully opened in a smooth popup.

The popups:
Each item opens in a popup which contains the full content, social media links for each item and a commenting system for visitors. If popups are linked (f.e. : all news or all photos), then the visitor can navigate through them within the popup.

The agenda system (based on Gigpress but adjusted and altered) is easy to use: the artist can put new gigs from the back-end, divide them in tours (if wanted), save venue information and the system can generate an related news item going with the gig.
Not to mention the possibility to import an agenda by excel/csv import. Very convenient for those ofter performing artists.

The news item will be placed underneath the ‘upcoming shows’ section and you can choose if you want the system to publish it immediately or automatically on the day of the gig.

On the homepage it shows the next three upcoming gigs, but once clicking ‘full agenda’, all upcoming shows come up.
The website owner can also choose if he/she wants the visitor to be able to go through gig archives.

Visitors can click a separate agenda rss feed to import the agenda into any rss reader of import an agenda item into their Google Calendar or iCalendar.

The Video and Audio blocks are based on embedded content that you can pull from sites like YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud or any other platform that delivers embeded content. Yet, if you want to upload you’re own videos directly to the site: that is possible.

The embedded content won’t show directly while loading the homepage, to avoid long load times, but will open in a popup when an item is clicked.

Within the popups visitors can also promote the audio/video on their social media pages and comments can be placed.

Comments
A smart commenting system was build in: commenter can comment at each other (threaded comments) and visitors do not have to make an account at website as they can login with their Facebook account. It is also possible to build in this option with Twitter and email addresses of commenters/subscribers will still be saved!
Commenters can choose if they want their comment to be published to their Facebook- or Twitter account.

The Footer:
The bottom part of the website contains several standard items like the first paragraph of a customizable ‘About’ page (with popup) and a customizable contact section, together with links to archive- & category pages.
In the popups, specific news items can be re-posted to social media, but in the footer the main website can be promoted by clicking on the social media icons at the bottom.
If the visitor is interested in the social media pages of the artists: links are placed.
And last but not least: a search function to find things on the website.

Extra possibilities:

• More blocks (separate categories)
• Photo Gallery
• Featured Video on prominent place on homepage
• Have visitors upload photos
• Profile pages of band-members
• Separate blog page
• Biography/photo download
• Mailing list subscription
• Shop
• Twitter feed
• And much more (ask)

Specifics:
Graphic Design by: Tineke inTOWN
Logo: Tineke inTOWN
Web Development by: Tineke inTOWN
CMS: WordPress
Theme: Tineke inTOWN
Plugins: Agenda System | Facebook system
Jquery: Grid System, Smooth Scroll system, Colorbox (Popups).
CSS: CSS 2 & CCS3
Optimized: Partly (still in progress)
Bug checking: 90%;
Google Analytics: Not yet
iPhone/iPad/Mobile: Usable without extra mobile theme.