Net Notes

Besides designing web sites, I am also a Bluegrass Musician. I play the mandolin and sing, travel to bluegrass festivals, attend bluegrass jams.......its a big part of my life. The California Bluegrass Association has a monthly newsletter called the Bluegrass Breakdown which features all kinds of news pertaining to the Bluegrass scene here in California and abroad. In exchange for some ad space, I have the opportunity to write a monthly column for the Breakdown offering readers tips, advice and news from the World Wide Web as it relates to Bluegrass Music. I intend to keep an archive of them on this web site, enjoy!

July 2004

This Month: High Tech Secrets of the 2004 Father’s Day Festival

Wow, what a festival! It wasn’t as relaxing as past festivals for me since I got to play on stage and present several workshops (including one about Web Sites), but it was very satisfying and memorable. Probably the best one ever, for me anyway.

I thought it would be fun to snoop around the festival looking for high-tech gadgets and gizmos. I figured it would be pretty easy to assemble an article about this having seen several such things in years past without even really looking. For instance, one year there was a gas generator powered blender, making margaritas at 2 AM. Of course there is also the ever present, back-of-the-fiddle handheld computer with hundreds of song lyrics on a backlit screen “invented” by my pop, Rick Cornish.

I assumed there would be more, but low and behold, there really weren’t, which is kind of cool actually. For one week a year, people leave their fast-paced lifestyles behind and settle in for an old-fashioned bluegrass festival. I believe Rick Jamison said it best, “Life in the City, always gets me down, hustle tussle bustle, but that ain’t how I’m wound…”

Some notable exceptions though…

One person, to remain nameless, had a wireless Internet connection to his laptop and was using this to gain access to his mounted camera feeds at home so he could monitor his pets. Some people really love their pets…

Big Jon McNiell, a banjo player, took some nice digital photos of the stage acts. Rather than wait ‘til he got home, he transferred them to his computer and showed them around. I won’t even pretend that John was the first to do this; most people know Tom Tworek has been doing this for years. I don’t bother asking how many mega pixels Tom’s latest camera has, I just remember it was 6 MP three years ago and I just addtwo more every time I see him.

Another little device that seems to be catching on is the mini-disc recorder. At the CBA Music Camp I must have seen a dozen of these floating around. In case you don’t know, these ever-cheaper devices can record live audio onto a little disc which can be edited, recorded over, transferred to other devices and much more. They are great for recording workshops; just make sure it’s cool with the presenter. Which reminds me, a woman asked me what the etiquette for photographing a jam would be. I wasn’t quite sure. Are there rules for this? She obviously meant a jam filled with people she did not know. Any pointers on this might be appreciated by others, e-mail me and I will share it with the readers.

A few stage related items that I, frankly, do not know anything about, caught my eye. I noticed several of the performers were wearing ear monitors rather than using old-fashioned monitors. (monitors are the speakers that the stage musicians use to hear themselves, just in case you weren’t sure what I was talking about). I am guessing these things work pretty well since more and more people are using them, though one member of the Bluegrass Cardinals said he wanted a little nail and a hammer to make his stay in (it kept falling out). I also noticed that Mountain Heart was playing instruments that were neither next to mics nor plugged in, so I assume they were cordlessly amplified? That is new to me. Sounded good. But then again, so did Pine Mountain Railroad right before them that used the old-school mics and monitors, so go figure. I also heard something about the sound system using a fancy new repeater thingy that accounts for sound relay so that the folks in the way back heard the sound at the same time as the folks in front.

In any case, I am sure there were many high-tech secrets I missed. Please e-mail me any you think are worth mentioning; I would love to share them with readers.

June 2004

This Month: Content Management Systems

There are three ways to keep your web site up to date...here they are in no particular order:

1. Learn how to use web-authoring software (Dreamweaver, FrontPage) and do it yourself
2. Pay a web master/designer to do it for you
3. Pay a programmer a one-time fee to create a content management system for you, and do it yourself

What exactly is a Content Management System (from this point, CMS)? Generally speaking, it is a web-based program that allows users to change or update the content of a web site for the rest of the World Wide Web to view. Almost all of us has used one before but might not have realized it. Here are some examples;

• Web-based e-mail, like Hotmail
• Discussion boards and forums, such as the CBA message board
• Personalized on-line calendars, such as My Yahoo!

These are common examples, but a CMS can be set up to allow easy updates to just about anything. For instance, did you know that most of the CBA web site is updated via a CMS? Obviously the discussion board is changing constantly as people add posts and replies. All of those entries are handled by a CMS. But it goes beyond that. The Almost Daily News, the News Items, the Chairman’s Message…all of that is maintained by a CMS. Let me explain.

Rather than the owner opening up Dreamweaver or Front Page (which can be daunting to a newbie), the owner simply logs into a control panel web page using their Internet browser, no special software needed! The control panel has been customized to meet the needs of whatever particular web site it controls, but in most cases is very simple to use. For instance, if Rick Cornish wants to get rid of yesterdays daily message and post today’s, he just copies the message from his word processing software (like MS Word) and pastes it into an entry box in the control panel. Once he hits submit, the CMS takes the new message and posts it for the whole world to see, and the old one is off to the archives.

Here is a very practical example; your band’s schedule page is always in flux. When new gigs are found, they need to be added. Gigs that have already occurred to need to be removed. Most likely it’s the page of your web site that changes the most. A CMS would allow you to simply log onto a control panel page, enter the appropriate information into an on-line form, click submit, and you are done. If you want to remove a gig because it is over, you would just check the “delete” box next to the gig date in question and hit submit, there, that was easy.

A CMS can be developed for every page of a web site and can get quite complicated to create, but almost never complicated to use. Alternatively, you could have a CMS developed for just certain pages, such as the schedule page of your web site. One great feature of such a CMS would be that anyone in the band, given the user ID and password of course, could make these updates, so the burden could be shared. A CMS could also be developed to allow photos to be posted and displayed, band updates on your home page, link additions or updates to your favorite sites, and just about anything you can think of as far as updating and adding content goes. In fact, a CMS could even change the overall appearance, not just content, of your web site, but that is another story.

May 2004

This Month: The Year in Review

It has been a year since I started writing this monthly article, so I thought I would go back and read all twelve of them. If you would like to review any or all of them, they can be found at this address:

www.cornstalkdesign.net/NetNotes.html

In reading the columns, I realized I have been spewing an aweful lot of info, so I decided to summarize the most important tips from the past year into one article. Here we go, in some cases paraphrased…

Fonts
Too many fonts can really clutter a design. You typically only want to use two or three fonts per product. Use an accented font for headers or larger type, and stick to more standard, easy to read fonts for the bulk of the content, such as Arial or Verdana. Use only a few different sizes and formats (i.e. italic, bold, underline) and be consistent.

Frames
There are a lot of good reasons NOT to use frames, and only a few reasons TO use them. If your site has them, read some of the articles listed on this page and consider re-designing your site without frames.

www.sitepoint.com/article/1204/7

Image Processing
Never insert an image file into your web site and then resize it using your web authoring software.

You basically want to use only two types of files, .jpegs and .gifs. Use .jpegs for photos, and .gifs for all other image types, including clip art, and logos. This is not a hard and fast rule, but is generally used by most web designers.

NEVER, under any circumstances, take an image from a web site and use it for a printed product.

Links
1. If you have links to other people's web sites, such as www.cbaontheweb.org, make sure that when someone clicks on that link that it opens in a new browser window. This will keep your web site open in the original window thereby increasing the odds that they will come back to check out your site some more.

Spreading the Word
If you manage to get bluegrass into a new venue, make sure to let everyone know that that venue is open to more bands so that momentum can be built to establish the cafe/club/concert hall as a place where bluegrass music can flourish (unless you want to keep it all to yourself). And of course the easiest way to do this would be to post it in the events section of the CBA web site!

Digitizing Music
…according to all of the web sites I checked, if you own the LP, there is no law saying you cannot transfer the LP onto a CD for your own personal enjoyment. You cannot give a copy to a friend, and of course, you cannot sell a copy.

Using a Mailing List
Don’t send too many e-mails. If you start e-mailing people too much they will get annoyed and ask to be removed, or worse, get annoyed and not ask to be removed because they are your friend. A beginning of the month or end of the month e-mail summarizing the upcoming gigs should suffice. An emergency e-mail for an out of the blue gig every so often is totally acceptable.

A Web Presence for Your Band
…if your band doesn't have a web site at all, having a band profile on the CBA web site is the next best thing!

Web Hosts
Looking for a web host? Make sure they have a good track record:

www.webhostingratings.com

April 2004

This Month: Bluegrass Web Sites… A One-Man Survey

For a while now I've had a general feeling that the current state of California Bluegrass Band web sites was, frankly, not doing so well. Once and a while I will visit a random band's site and come away thinking that certain things don't look right, that the design is flawed in a major way, or that someone has decided they need a site, buys some software, and just goes nuts. As this happened more and more frequently, I started to wonder what the true state of bluegrass band web sites was, so I decided to take a more comprehensive look. Rather than visit sites randomly when they came to my attention, I have now visited every single web site listed in the "band profile" section of the CBA's web site.

Now, before going on, I need to make a gigantic disclaimer. I have a business called Cornstalk Design, and I build web sites for a variety of customers, bluegrass bands included. So you could say that I have a sort of built in conflict of interest when it comes to assessing the quality of web sites linked from cbaontheweb.org. However--and this is really the point I want to make--I believe that with some basic knowledge, a little skill and lots of patience and determination, anybody can build a decent bluegrass band web site. It's precisely because I really do believe this that I undertook to write Net Notes more than a year ago. I've attempted to be objective, and I offer the following in the spirit of constructive assistance.

Now, back to the analysis. I rated bands on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being unattractive and poorly designed, and 10 being highly attractive and expertly designed. That makes 5 just sort of there, not good, but not bad either. Since there were so many, I admit this was done very quickly—I spent just enough time at each site to click a few links and get a general sense of what was there. I did not rate content or load time, mainly just layout and appearance.

So here are the results:

• As of March 1, 2004, there were 164 band profiles on the CBA site (is your band listed?)
• 71 of those bands had no site at all (!), which means that 93 bands did have a web site
• Average rating of the 93 sites that I viewed: 4.1
• % of bands below average: 54.8%

Again, this is just my opinion expressed in statistical form. It would be really cool to have others go through and do a similar rating, anyone interested? E-mail me.
I don't want to offend anyone by singling out sites that had poor ratings, but I don't see why I shouldn't list those at the top.

The only band that got a 10 was the Earl Brothers (www.earlbrothers.com) their site is really professional and original, and was clearly done by someone who does this sort of thing for a living. A few others that topped the charts were Ho'Down Quartet, All Wrecked Up, and Homespun Rowdy.

Since I am not publishing the entire list, you can e-mail me if you would like to know how I rated your band. I will review your site again to get a fresh take and look in greater detail at your entire site.

One thing that I did not consider when rating the sites, was the use of frames. I did notice however, that frames were heavily used. There are a lot of good reasons not to use frames, and only a few reasons to use them. If your site has them, read some of the articles listed on this page and consider re-designing your site without frames.

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1204/7

With the advent of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) web authoring software, anyone can create and update a web site. This is both very neat, but also not so great when it comes to quality design and layout, since most users will not take the time it takes to develop a working knowledge and practice of this medium. One solution might be to have a professional web designer create a template for your band of which you could then make routine updates.

Of course I realize that for many of the Bluegrass folks out there, their band is a fun hobby, not a serious business venture that warrants capital investments, such as professionally designed web sites.

March 2004

This Month: Helpful tips on using fonts.

Choosing which fonts you will use is just as important as choosing colors, images, and content in your web and print designs. Don’t agonize over which colors you will use, what photos are best and what your finished products will say, only to use Times New Roman because it is the default font on your computer. Nothing is wrong with Times, just make sure you are using it because you want to, not because it is the default.

Are you sick of the same old fonts that came with your computer? Most people are, but don’t know what to do about it. That’s why we keep seeing the same fonts used over and over. I see them everywhere, Kid Print, Arial, Geneva, Verdana, Times, and the list goes on. These fonts are fine, but there are thousands more out there, and they are FREE! Just get on the Internet and search for "Free Fonts" and you will be amazed at how many cool fonts are out there. All you have to do is download them to your hard drive and then stick them in your fonts folder (makes sure no applications are running while you do this). Next time you open MS Word or any other software that let’s you choose fonts, the new fonts will be sitting there ready for you to use.

It really is that easy, but here are a few cautions.

First, if you use an "off the beaten path" type of font in say, an MS Word file, and then send it to your friend to look at before moving forward with the project, be aware that your friend probably will not be seeing what you saw originally. If your friend does not have that font, the software will replace the font you used with the closest match, and if neither of you is aware of this, you could end up with a final product that looks nothing like the original. A simple solution would be to e-mail the font to your friend as an attachment and have him/her drop it in their font folder. Problem solved.

The same is true in web pages unless you get fancy. If you use a font that most people do not have, and then most people will not be seeing the site as you do at home, which could be a problem. There is, however, a way to embed the font in a web directory so that no matter who is looking at the site, on any platform, using any browser, they will see the font as you want them to. This is a bit complicated but you can read up on it at this URL:

http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/design/fonts/tutorials/tutorial2.html

Second, some fonts you will find are for MACs and some are for PCs, and some are for both. Make sure the font you choose is available on the necessary platforms before you go too far down the road.

Thirdly, don’t go nuts. Too many fonts can really clutter a design. You typically only want to use two or three fonts per product. Use an accented font for headers or larger type, and stick to more standard, easy to read fonts for the bulk of the content, such as Arial or Verdana. Use only a few different sizes and formats (i.e. italic, bold, underline) and be consistent. For the body, keep the font size large enough to read but not so large that it becomes clumsy. Different fonts have different sizes….for example, 12-point Verdana is noticeably larger than 12-point Times. Create a solid contrast between headers and body…..i.e. if the body 10 point Verdana, do not make the header 11-point Verdana, the size difference is not enough to distinguish them.

Finally, be aware that Internet users can override your specifications on your own web site, which can really screw up your layout. For example, you might want your body text on your web site to be 12-point Arial, but all an user has to do is select Text Zoom. All of sudden, all of your text has grown, potentially wreaking havoc on the structure of your site (by this I mean stretching tables and displacing images) One thing you can do to control this is use CSS Style Sheets and set the font size in terms of pixel heights rather than point size. Users cannot override this. Of course, this could be bad if your users have vision impairment and depend on Text Zoom to be able to read your content. So keep that in mind.

February 2004

This Month: Capturing and processing good band images part II

As promised, time for some more information about digital images. If you want to read or re-read the NetNotes from last month, they are on-line at this address:

http://www.cornstalkdesign.net/ (hahaha, you are already here!)

Here is a very important rule one should follow when adding photo images to a web site.

Never insert an image file and then resize it using your web authoring software.

Web authoring software includes programs like Dreamweaver or MS Front Page. They allow you to re-size the image after inserting it by clicking on one of the corners of the image and moving the mouse in towards the center of the picture (smaller) or out away from the center (larger). This is a really bad idea for two reasons (which makes me wonder why they give their software this capability!)

1. The image will become pixilated, i.e. not crisp. This is true whether you make it larger OR smaller.

2. If you make the image smaller, the file size will NOT change!

Reason 2 needs a little more explaining and is also a good opportunity to understand web page loading time.

A web page file, usually an HTML file, contains code that most people do not see. An Internet browser (like Netscape or Internet Explorer) reads that code and displays the proper information for the viewer to see. This can be text, tables, images or all kinds of other stuff. The more text, the larger the file is and the longer it will take to load. The more images you have, the longer the load time. Also, the larger the image files, the longer it takes. This means you could have ten images that are 10 KB each, or one image that is 100 KB, it would amount to the same load time. Anywho, back to the original point……..when you insert a photo and then resize, the file size will NOT change! Only the display of the image will change, the file will still be 10 KB or whatever it was originally.

Practically speaking, this means that if you know you want your image smaller, you need to resize it using image-editing software like Adobe Photoshop. If you do this, not only will your image look better, it will be smaller in display size, AND in file size, and therefore make your page load faster!

This leads to the next image editing trick that you should know……optimizing your image for the web. Let’s say we have a scanned photo that is 300 dpi, 5 inches wide and 4 inches tall. We want to put it on our web page, but it’s definitely too big as is. We open the file in Photoshop (or other image editing software) and change the resolution to 72 (read last month’s article for in depth info on this topic) and see what has happened to the image size. Let’s change the units we are working in from inches to pixel (this is a click of the button in Photoshop) and pretend that our image is 1000 pixels by 800 pixels. That’s pretty big so let’s chop it down to 500 in width, making sure that the "Constrain Proportions" box is checked so that when we change the width, the height changes with it automatically and proportionally. A sidebar, if your image is 500 by 302 pixels and you would prefer a nice round height, change the canvas size. That will chop off 2 pixels and give your image the dimensions of 500 by 300, nice and round.

Now that the image is the perfect size and resolution, how does it look? Odds are, it might have lost little bit of its crispness, but you can use the Sharpen filter that comes with Photoshop (not sure how this works in other programs). Now it’s crisp and ready to go. If you save it as is, the file will be pretty large (relatively speaking) for a web image. To correct this, we should optimize the image for the web. Optimize is basically a euphemism for degrade. We want to lower the quality of the image so that the final file size is smaller. This becomes a game of trade-offs--you still want the image to look good, but you also want it to be small in file size (not display size). Someone new to this can play with the levels and determine their own standards. After that, one usually uses the same quality on every image for consistency. I generally use a quality of 30 for jpeg images.

Photoshop actually has a feature called "SaveForWeb" which will allow you to view four copies of the image side by side each with varying quality so that you can compare them. It even shows you what the resulting file size will be. It should be noted that when tweaking an image in all the ways mentioned previously, when you finally save for the web, make sure that it’s only a copy of the original file in case you need the original later for something else. We already know that that there is no going back, once the dpi is saved at 72, you can’t just put it right back up to 300.

Finally, a very important point about file types. You basically want to use only two types of files, .jpegs and .gifs. Use .jpegs for photos, and .gifs for all other image types, including clip art, and logos. This is not a hard and fast rule, but is generally used by most web designers.

I know I was very general, let me know if you have specific questions.

Next Month: Helpful tips on using fonts.

January 2004

This Month: Capturing and processing good band images

Whether you need to create a slide show of your family vacation to the last bluegrass festival or put the latest band photos up on your band's web site, this article should be a good starting point. First a disclaimer, I am not a photographer by any stretch. If your band needs a good photo to send to promoters, the best thing you can do is hire a professional who has a high-end camera and experience with this type of photography.

Most people are going digital these days. That is fine for most applications. Obviously, the more megapixels (from now on, MP) the better. A 5.0 MP camera can deliver print quality 8x10 prints. A 2.0 MP camera can't do that, so if that is what you want do not buy a 2.0 MP camera. If you want to make a large poster of your band, you are going to need a lot of megapixels, but most people would probably just go ahead and shoot with film, scan the negative at the necessary resolution and go from there (except professionals who have gone digital with upwards of 10+ MP!). If you want to throw up some family photos from your latest excursion on your web site (or web-based photo service), 2.0 MP is totally fine.

In other words, what you really want to do is figure out what you want out of your photos before you actually choose a camera. That seems obvious but there are plenty of photos circulating out there that are clearly not of print standard resolution, and my guess is that they were either taken with a low megapixel camera, or borrowed from the web. This brings us to cardinal rule number one.

1. NEVER, under any circumstances, take an image from a web site and use it for a printed product.

Here's why: the Internet is viewed on a computer screen. Screen resolution is 72 dots per inch (dpi)(some call this ppi, or pixel per inch, same thing). Therefore, when one adds a photo or image to a web site, one should make the resolution of the image 72 dpi. You could make it higher, such as 150 or 300 dpi but it would not appear any more clearly and would increase the file size of the image and therefore make the web site take longer to load (which is bad for impatient web surfers).

The standard resolution of printed products, however, is 300 dpi. Anything less than that and the crispness of the printed image starts to degrade. It doesn't help that 72 dpi is not only less than that, it is MUCH less than that! That is why when you print a page of a web site or borrow an image from a web site to use in your flyer or newsletter or whatever it may be, the image looks blurry and/or jagged, also known as pixilated. Some people might say about a low-res photo that has been printed, "...this photo has a case of the 'jaggies'."

Using image-editing software such as Adobe Photoshop, you can take a photo that is 300 dpi and change it to 72 dpi in order to save it for the web. This brings us to important rule number two.

2. You should NOT take an image that is 72 dpi and change it to 300 dpi.

In reality you can definitely do that with Adobe Photoshop. Some people might do this and think that they now have an image that is 300 dpi and therefore perfectly okay to print, but it isn't. Luckily, there is an easy way to tell. Print it. You will see that the image has become pixilated because the software had to add pixels that it wasn't really sure of (it involves averaging and blah blah blah, scientific stuff that I don't really know much about) over the same or larger area. Bottom line is, if you want your printed product to look good, never increase a 72 dpi image to 300 dpi.

I sort of lied though. There is a method for taking a 72 dpi image and converting it to a 300 dpi image and still have it look good. Unfortunately it is sort of complicated, but equally unfortunate, digital cameras force us to do this if we truly want to know what size photos our camera can produce. Here goes.......

Let's say you have 4.0 MP camera (what a coincidence, that is what I have!). You just took some photos and jumped through all of the hoops involved in getting them onto your computer. And, what luck, you just happen to have Photoshop! You open the photo and bring up the image size window, what the.....! The image is 72 dpi!!!! Why would my camera give me an image with a resolution of 72 dpi, I can't print that according to the January 2004 Net Notes article! But wait, the other thing you'll notice is that image size (not resolution) in inches, is 30 by 22. Of course your printer can't even use paper that size.

Your camera assumes you don't have Adobe Photoshop and that you use the software that came with the camera. That software can take this image and cram it into a smaller space, say 5 x 4 inches and print it onto paper that your printer normally uses (and this will magically increase you resolution, but you will never know it). If we want to do that in Photoshop, we have to do math. We want to change a 30 by 22 image with 72 dpi resolution to an image with a resolution of 300 dpi and an undetermined size. Remember, our goal is to figure out what size photo our camera can give us at 300 dpi. To do that, we use a formula that looks like this:

(Existing Width) x (Existing Resolution / Desired Resolution) = True Width

In our case that is:

(30 inches) x (72 dpi / 300 dpi) = 7.2 inches

Luckily, since you can constrain the proportions when you set image size (i.e. when you change the width, the height automatically changes to match), you do not need to do this formula again for the height.

This was pretty complicated I know, but hopefully interesting. If you were to take the image in the example above and increase the size to 8 x 10, the image size window would still say 300 dpi but in reality that will just spread that pixel information over more area and therefore degrade the quality of the image. However, the difference might not be noticeable to the untrained eye so it might be okay. The bottom line is that you want your image to look good, so make sure you always print it out and check to make sure it is nice and crisp.

I feel like I've barely scratched the surface but at the same time, have written way too much. Because of this I've decided to make this a 2-part series! Please send questions if you have them, if I don't know the answer I can probably get it for you.

December 2003

This Month: Navigation and content tips for your band's web site.

You have decided to develop a web site to promote your band, business, or self. Whether you are doing it yourself or working with a professional, it is still up to you to decide what the site will contain. You could have the flashiest web site in all the land, but if the content is not up to date and interesting, people will take one look and move on.

When developing your content, the easiest place to start is with the navigation. By navigation I mean the items across the top, down the side, or both, that say something like:

Home | About Us | Calendar | Links | Contact Us

When you click on one of these, the Internet browser takes you to a new part of your web site that lists more detailed information about that topic. Each of these links can take you to a new page within your overall site, a place lower on the same page, or even to someone else's web site. This simplest of examples might have everything you need, but chances are, you will come up with something tailored to meet your needs. Whatever you choose, make sure that you organize the information in way that is easy to access. Organizing your pages in a logical manner will also help you keep track everything which is especially important as your site grows.

Once you have settled on your navigation, the content you must then develop becomes apparent. Taking the example above, you'll need to develop a biography of the people involved and what they do, a calendar section, a list of links to other relevant web sites, and a list of the ways folks can get in touch with you. And don't forget that your home page needs some sort of introduction, or at least some indication of what your site is all about. You are not limited to developing only the content dictated by the navigation you have chosen. With the example above you, you might also develop a photo page that is accessible from a link not included in the main set of navigation, but from the "About Us" page for example.

Regardless of the navigation links you choose, you want to make sure that they are always in the same place on every page and that they have a consistent look. In other words, you want to make moving through your web site as easy as possible.

Once you know what your navigation buttons will say, now you can decide what they will look like. You have two big choices. One option is to use simple html links as shown on this site along the left hand side:

http://www.mallisonrealestate.com/

The page also shows option two, using images as your links. In this case, the navigation along the top is made up of images that are linked to other pages within the site. This site also shows examples of rollover buttons. When the mouse is over the navigation button, the image changes colors to indicate that it is an active link. This is a way of adding interactivity to a site but can be more complicated (and costly if you are paying someone to design your site). In some cases though, it is worth it.

Here are a few content tips.

1. If you have links to other people's web sites, such as www.cbaontheweb.org, make sure that when someone clicks on that link that it opens in a new browser window. This will keep your web site open in the original window thereby increasing the odds that they will come back to check out your site some more.

2. If you have band web site and you have recorded music, add some .mp3s to your site so that people can listen to your music. If you do this, make sure to indicate how large the files are so that people know what they are about to download. You can swap sound quality for file size, i.e. lesser quality equals smaller file size.

3. Photos are great but make sure they are optimized for the web. Believe it or not, some people are still using modems and nothing sends a web surfer away faster than a page that loads slowly.

4. Speaking of photos, include a high resolution (300 dpi) photo of your band, company or self that promoters can download and print out. NEVER ask a promoter to download a "regular" (72 dpi) photo from your web site to use for print. It will become pixilated and not represent you in a good light. While your at it, you might want to include a .pdf file of your fact sheet that folks can view on-line and/or print out. These two items together make up what many refer to as a press kit. Make sure this info is easy to find.

5. If you have items to sell, make sure to include a merchandise page. You don't need to get fancy with e-commerce unless you have enough stuff to sell that you can justify it. Otherwise, just have people send a check and an order form and include all of the necessary info. If its a CD, having sound sample files might help you sell more. If its t-shirts and what not, make sure to include photos.

November 2003

This Month: Using the Internet to find gigs.

Have you formed a new band that is looking for gigs? Is your veteran band sick of playing the same old places? Are you a fan of bluegrass and just can't get enough? You’re all in luck; the Internet can help you find bluegrass venues!

Let’s begin with the easiest. Go to www.cbaontheweb.org and press the "Search the Calendar" button. Towards the right hand side of the page, click on the "Venue" pull down menu. Viola! There's a pretty good starting point. Some of those were one-time special events, but many of them are venues that regularly host bluegrass music. To see what a particular venue has done recently, select the venue, review and edit the calendar range to your liking and press the "Search Events" button. It should show you what has been going on at that venue, thereby helping you decide if you should pursue the lead, either as a band or a fan. This will also give you an idea of the caliber of the performers. If Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder is a regular, that might tell you that this venue might be out of your league, or conversely that this is exactly where you want to play.

Why re-invent the wheel? Many bands all across the country have web sites, which almost always have a calendar component. Just visit calendar sections of other bands to see where they are playing and then see if you can get a piece of the action! Another thing many bands list on their web sites is their "band resume" or "past performances" which is a way of letting browsers know where this band has played. It's yet another way you can figure out where all of the action is. Here are some examples:

www.wildoatsnhoney.com/PastPerformances.html

www.cabinfeverbluegrass.com/Calendar.html

Not sure how to find band web sites? The CBA web site lists several hundred bands that you can view by clicking on the "California Bands" button.

Recently, I have heard several people comment that there seems to be less and less bluegrass venues. Without seeking a sociology grant to study the topic, I cannot be sure this is true or not, but it doesn't really matter. If there are less, that is bad, let's add more. If there is a steady level, that is bad, let's add more. If there are more and more venues all the time, let's keep adding more.

Whether you are a fan or performer, exploring new venues is the hardest way to find a gig, but it can be done. Visit local web sites for community calendar listings to find where other types of music are being played. (e.g. www.thewavemag.com) Is there a local brewery that features jazz on the weekends? Go to their web site, review their calendar and shoot them an e-mail suggesting they try a bluegrass band. If you do manage to get bluegrass into a new venue, make sure to let everyone know that that venue is open to more bands so that momentum can be built to establish the cafe/club/concert hall as a place where bluegrass music can flourish (unless you want to keep it all to yourself). And of course the easiest way to do this would be to post it in the events section of the CBA web site!

October 2003

This Month: Transferring LP's to CD's.

Records can be digitized and reproduced onto CD's using a computer. Most people would not make this transfer in an effort to replace their old LP's because old record collections are really cool. However, you can't listen to a record in the car or on a plane, so many people these days are transferring their records on to CD's so that they can listen to them more easily. This also results in better sound quality (some say) since you can clean up cracks, pops, and hisses heard on the LP's using computer software before you burn to CD.

First of all, according to all of the web sites I checked, if you own the LP, there is no law saying you cannot transfer the LP onto a CD for your own personal enjoyment. You cannot give a copy to a friend, and of course, you cannot sell a copy. Second of all, while this can be done on a MAC or PC, I have only done it on a MAC. Third of all, an excellent web site that goes into nitty-gritty details on this subject can be viewed at:

http://www.delback.co.uk/lp-cdr.htm

Here is what you will need:

1. A new-ish computer. When you record an analog signal to CD format, which is 44.1kHz, 16 bit, stereo, one minute of music takes about 9 MB of space on your hard drive. That means a full length CD, 74 minutes, will take up 650 MB (actually now you can get 700 MB CD's so that is 80 minutes of music). 1000 MB is 1 gigabyte and hard drives these days are ranging from 20 GB on up to 100 +. Older computers have hard drives with 2 GB or less depending on how far back you go, so an older computer would probably be able to hold ONE of your LP's and probably become highly dysfunctional while doing it. The resulting file(s) should be a .wav file.

2. A sound card. You can buy specialty sound cards for better results, or you can use a standard sound card that has a "mic" in jack. Newer MAC's are not coming with sound cards, so you can buy one and install it, or you can buy a USB audio device that you just plug into the USB port. You connect the record player to the sound card using standard RCA cables. For those without sound cards, there is another option that I learned of as well. The latest models of external CD burners can record straight from the record player. So in this case, you would connect your record player to your CD burner, take the burned CD into your computer to "clean" it, and then burn the fresh CD. Some say that this method will produce better results because the recording devices on these new-wave CD burners are better than those on most standard sound cards.

3. Software. You'll need some sort of software that can record the signal received by your computer's sound card. The industry standard is Roxio (Toast for MAC people, same company) For about $80-$90 you get software that can do it all AND even more. I went to www.download.com and found one called LP Recorder 5.0 for $30. In a previous article I mentioned some freeware called AnvilStudios. This software can record the signal but doesn't really have the editing features that you might need, such as crack and pop clean up. These features will take the entire sound file that is created and clean it automatically. The software is also for separating the larger single file (really two large files, one for each side of the record) that is recorded into song tracks. Some can do this automatically, others you might have to do manually by listening or by viewing a sound wave. Of course, you wouldn't want to create noticeable pauses where there shouldn't be any, such as on The Beatles "Abbey Road" where songs blend together seamlessly, but that hardly ever happens on bluegrass albums anyways.

4. A CD burner or mp3 player. Most newer computers are coming with internal CD burners. For those without, you can buy internal burners and install them, or external burner that connect to your computer. Once you have cleaned up your sound file, it is time to burn your new CD. Some software that you use to clean it up can also burn it, others might not be able to, so you would need to use whatever burning software came with your burner to do the trick. Another cool idea might be to save all of your new song files as mp3's. This way you can burn them to a CD at a later date, listen to them on your computer, put them on an mp3 player, and basically store them for much longer than you can store the larger .wav file. The idea is that you cannot really sit on too many .wav files because they are so large, so you either need to get them on CD and then delete the .wav file from your computer, or save copies as mp3's and then dump the .wav files.

September 2003

This Month: Sharing music files over the internet with your band mates

My life is really crazy right now so this will be a short one. It's really just a concept anyways, the details would bore you. Ralph Nelson and the rest of Wild Oats & Honey (WOAH) recently hired me to design their web site (based on an illustration they had done previously) which can be seen at

http://www.wildoatsnhoney.com/

Besides the new site, they also had a cool idea that allowed me to explore a new realm. Many WOAH members have mini-disc (MD) recorders that can record live sound onto small discs using a microphone. They can use these to record a new song they are working on, a band practice session, or really just about anything. Problem is, to share these with each other they were mailing the discs back and forth. They asked me to see if there was an easy, cheap way for them to share these using their web site.

I discovered that there IS a way to do this and they agreed to have me set it up for them (no charge for research of course). Here is what I did, without too many details.

1. I found freeware called Anvil Studio which can be downloaded at http://download.com It is free forever (not just a trial) and can take sound that you feed into your computer via the mic input in the sound card and turn it into a computer file. This is an analog transfer but results in a digital file that can be e-mailed or or uploaded to the internet.

2. I set up an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) account via the web host that we already had in place for the web site. This was a free service included with web hosting. This allows one to drag an drop the sound files (usually .wav files) onto the server using an internet browser such as Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator. This is usually faster than e-mail and let's you transfer large files that you might not be able to e-mail. Sound files are usually large so it seems appropriate to use FTP rather than e-mail, especially since it is so easy.

3. I set up a tutorial for WOAH and put it on their web site so that they could always refer to that. It is a step by step instruction manual on the entire process from downloading the free software, to transferring the file once it is done.

Another thing to mention is that you do not need a MD recorder to do this. A tape recorder, voice recorder, or anything like that will also work. You can even get a lapel mic and plug it straight into your computer and record live sound right onto your hard drive and then ship that off to its destination.

I am sure not all of the kinks have been worked out of this system but it seems like a good plan. I really enjoyed researching this project and would like to thank all of WOAH's members for the opportunity. I learned a lot.

August 2003

This Month: Building and maintaining a mailing list for band

When a band has a gig in a small venue, chances are the owner is counting on the performers to make sure the event is "sold out." If your band packs the house, the owner is happy and you get more gigs! Word of mouth, flyers, web sites, message boards, press releases (if you are really serious), etc., can all be effective in letting the public know about your band's next show, big or small. But building and maintaining a mailing list of fans is probably far and away the most effective way to attract more fans. And it can also lead people to your web site where they can learn more about your band.

Your list can have both mailing addresses and e-mail addresses, but I suspect most bands out there are sending the majority of their notices out via e-mail since it’s so cheap and effective. Not only will this attract more people to your gigs, it will also attract new and different people, since e-mails can be forwarded to friends and family, especially if you ask people on the original list to help you spread the word. There are many ways in which one can go about building and maintaining such a list. I will attempt to cover the methods with which I am familiar (in no particular order), but would appreciate any further suggestions (see my e-mail at the end of the article). But first, a few pointers in general, no matter which system you use.

1. Always give people an out. This is something like "If you wish to be removed from this list, hit the reply button and put the word ‘remove’ in the subject line." This can be at the end of the e-mail, or right up at the front. People appreciate this.

2. Make sure you protect people’s e-mail addresses. This can be done by placing all of the e-mails in the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) field of the e-mail. Everyone will get it, but they won’t know who else got it, and predators cannot steal the e-mails of the masses.

3. Manage your list. It goes without saying that when you collect new e-mails at gigs, say on a sign-up sheet, you should add them before your next e-mail. It would be rude to ask people for their e-mails and then not use them after they have gone to the trouble of giving it to you. On the flip side, after you send an e-mail, delete anyone from the list who requests to be removed and any bad e-mails that were bounced back.

4. If an e-mail gets bounced back, try sending it again, but this time as a single e-mail to that one person. Some people use filters that deny any e-mail sent to more than 20 people!

5. Don’t send too many e-mails. If you start e-mailing people too much they will get annoyed and ask to be removed, or worse, get annoyed and not ask to be removed because they are your friend. A beginning of the month or end of the month e-mail summarizing the upcoming gigs should suffice. An emergency e-mail for an out of the blue gig every so often is totally acceptable.

6. Some internet service providers will limit the number of e-mails you can send at one time. If you are having trouble sending to your large group, break the e-mails into chunks of less than 50 people at a time, that is usually the limit. This can be annoying if you have hundreds of people, so you might want to research more effective methods.

E-Mail Software
There are many programs out there that can send, receive, and manage e-mail. One of the most common is Microsoft Outlook. This program will also keep track of your addresses, phone numbers, calendar items, and more. If you use this for your e-mail already, you can start using it to manage your band’s e-mail list. The problem here is that you will end up with a bunch of random e-mails of people you don’t really know floating around with all of your day-to-day contacts. Many of your day-to-day contacts are probably on your band’s e-mail list as well, so the trick is to properly mark each record in such a way that you can sort the list when you need to, to separate out the various entries. In any case, Outlook can create a distribution list for you so that when you are ready to send out the e-mail to your fan e-mail list, all you do is create a new e-mail, type in the name of the distribution list, compose the content and send. Then deal with the removes and bad addresses of course. You can also create a new "profile" in some programs so that your band e-mail list and your regular day-to-day lists stay separate.

MS Excel Spreadsheet
Maybe you don’t want to get all of those band e-mails tangled up with your regular day-to-day e-mail list. Any easy way to avoid that is to keep a spreadsheet (usually MS Excel) with all of the e-mails that your band collects. It can also include names, addresses, phone numbers and all that jazz, or it can be just e-mails. When the time comes, highlight all of the e-mails, copy, and then paste into the BCC of your e-mail. If you also keep addresses, Excel can do a mail merge to create mailing labels (in combination with MS Word). If you decide to keep just e-mails, you can also do this with MS Word. This system is kind of cool because every so often you can e-mail it around to your band members and ask for them to add new e-mails or check for records that are out of date.

FileMakerPro 5.5 or later
This is only for serious database people, but if you have it, you can use it to manage your list. If you bring up all of the records that you want to send to, FileMaker has a feature called "Send E-Mail" that, when activated, pops up an e-mail with all of the e-mails in the "TO" field. Of course you should move those to the BCC field before sending. You can also use FMPro to create labels, envelopes, mail merged letters, and a lot more.

Yahoo! Group
Yahoo! E-mail allows you to create a distribution list to send to. Get a Yahoo handle and try out their e-mail services. They are kind of slow but effective in the long run. However, you can also create a Yahoo! Group for your band where you can share photos, post messages and more. When you send e-mail to your Yahoo! Group, everyone who has agreed to be a part of it will get the message. Pop-up and banner ads abound, but it's free.

Internet Provider
Most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) (AOL, Earthlink, etc.) come with free e-mail. Some can even be accessed and used on the internet from any location. Most of them probably have a distribution list feature. Odds are you can probably rig MS Outlook or other e-mail software to run these types of e-mail accounts as well.

Palm/Handheld
I have a pretty old handheld (a Handspring Visor) so I might be out of the loop on this. I have it set up to sync with my MS Outlook, so I could use my handheld and associated software to manage my list. If you are using your handheld with the Palm OS software that it came with, for example, you can export the e-mails of the people on your list to a file, open that file, and then copy and paste those e-mails into the BCC column of your e-mail. Perhaps newer versions of Palm OS or other handheld software have e-mailing capabilities? If anyone knows, please let me know and I will share the answer with everyone in the next column.

In fact, if anyone out there has any other cool methods of building and/or maintaining a band e-mail list, please let me know! I will post them on my web site:

www.cornstalkdesign.net

For those of you who are not in bands, please be aware that these lists are out there. You can take advantage of them to make sure you know when your favorite bands are playing next and share them with others to help spread bluegrass music.

July 2003

This Month: Using the CBA web site to promote your band or event.

Every month the CBA's web site gets about 46,000 "hits". As a fan you can use the site to hire a band or find out what shows or festivals are happening near you. As a band, you can harness this bluegrass fan magnet to promote your own band or event. If you haven't visited the site yet, check it out at:

http://www.cbaontheweb.org/

You'll notice there is a section devoted to bands. This listing can be sorted by band name or by city to help one find what they are looking for. This is a great tool for someone in need of a band. Just imagine, some rich family with a mansion in the Saratoga hills decides to have a big party and they need a bluegrass band but they don't know where to start. After searching the internet for a while they find the CBA's web site, go to the band page, sort by city and viola!……they have numerous bands to choose from and tons of pertinent info to go on before they even start whittling down their list of who to contact first.

What if your band, perfectly capable of playing anywhere in the Bay Area, as an example, is not listed there? I guess you wouldn't be in the running for this high paying gig. Or, what if your band is listed but you did not list it, some CBA volunteer just threw up whatever they could find on your web site and its way out of date and not really attractive to a potential customer? Possibly the same result.

This might sound a bit far fetched but consider the fact that this new-fangled CBA web site has only been around for about six months and in that time has seen 212560 hits. It is clearly the new internet Mecca for Bluegrass Music in California and beyond.

Listing your band's profile and gig dates is extremely easy and can be changed and updated at any time. Many sections feature band names and venue drop down menus that feature all previous submissions so you do not even need to type in the information…….just select it from the menu! If you hit any snags, all you have to do is e-mail the CBA volunteer staff and they will quickly help you through the process. You can even add a band photo to the profile!

Just imagine that someone from out of town decides they want to see some bluegrass music. They make their way to the CBA web site's calendar, perform a search by the city they are in and the date they want to see a show……immediately they are given a list of shows in the area. If they do not see anything they like, they can change the search parameters to expand the area of interest. If your band's gigs are listed, this could lead to a whole new fan base. Or if you are just a fan, this could be a great new way to expand your appreciation of the music.

Finally, another cool trick your band can use to better maintain its calendar is to re-direct your band's web site's calendar listing to the CBA web site's calendar section for your band. Why maintain a band calendar web page AND list all the same dates on the CBA's calendar when you could just do one? There are several benefits:

1. Anyone in your band can keep the CBA calendar listings for your band up to date. You do not have to pay a web master to do this for you, or pester your overworked tech-savvy guitar player to maintain your own calendar page in his/her one moment of spare time

2. You only have to keep one set of listings current, rather than two

3. The ease with which this is done usually results in a much more accurate and up to date calendar

You might be wondering, "Why would I have MY calendar page on MY band's web site go to a totally separate web site?" You would be correct to be concerned, this is sort of a web design no-no. You do not want a link to lead to another web site for fear that the user might not return. However, there are two tricks you can use to reduce the seriousness of this problem, though neither is perfect.

One is to set your calendar link, which links to the CBA calendar listings for your band, to pop up in a new window. This is very easy to do (I won't go into details however) and basically means that there are now two internet browser windows open: one with your band's web site up, and a new one with the CBA calendar listings for your band on it. When the user is done with the listings, they close that window and are once again staring at your band's web site, which they may or may not need to consult again, but at least they haven't forgotten about it.

Another more complicated but slightly cooler method (but also not so cool for other reasons) is to have the CBA calendar listings for your band pop up within a frame on your very own web site. For a cool example of this, visit this link:

http://grassmenagerie.com/ and click on calendar.

This basically means that the user is looking at your listing on the CBA site within the frames of your band's existing web site. When they are done, they can click on another link and navigate the rest of your site, possibly not even realizing they were consulting the CBA's web calendar. The major downside of this method is that you have to use frame sets, which can be complicated to set up. You also lose the ability to direct users to specific pages. For instance, without frames, if you are sending out an e-mail to your fans and you want them to visit a specific page regarding an upcoming show, you could tell them to go to

www.myband.com/upcomingshow

However, with frames you would have to say, go to www.myband.com and click on "upcoming shows." This example doesn't seem that complicated but it can get rough the further down the navigation tree you go (i.e. click on this, then this, then that, look for this section, click on that……...)

In summary, the CBA web site is a high-powered tool. Its power comes from excellent technology on the back end and the user-friendly display of information on the front end. It can benefit users and bands alike and will only become more valuable in time thanks to the CBA Board and volunteers that have created and maintained it.

I almost forgot to mention, if your band doesn't have a web site at all, having a band profile on the CBA web site is the next best thing!

June 2003

This Month: Can't afford a designer? How to get started on your own.

Almost anyone who knows how to use Microsoft Office products can learn how to build and maintain a web site thanks to a nifty piece of software called Microsoft Front Page. It is web authoring software that writes all that nasty HTML code for you so that you do not have to worry about <a/> and <head> and all that unattractive code that seems foreign to many people. If you aren't sure what I mean, go to any web site and right click anywhere on the page and select "view source" and you'll see HTML code in all of its glory. The reason Front Page makes this so easy is because it looks and feels just like all of the MS products like word and excel so it is really easy to learn. Web design snobs look down their nose at Front Page for various reasons but really it can handle most anything you ask it to. The snobs like Dreamweaver. It is the industry standard. There are countless others out their that you could use, including many free ones that you can download in a few minutes.

So let's assume you read last month's article about hosting (if you missed it, it's on-line at www.cornstalkdesign.net) and you already have a host for your site. Then let's suppose that you have decided on which web authoring software you are going to use and you get that all loaded up and ready to go……what now? Well you could start creating web pages that link together, have written content in them, maybe a nice background, etc. (I won't actually go into details about how to do these things, you'll have to read a tutorial, take a basic class, explore on your own, or use your software's "Help" section.) I am guessing you will want to add photos.

Adding photos is easy to do, but not so easy to do right. Most people add them in and then re-size them within the web authoring software. This is a big mistake because the image will not look good (it'll have a case of the jaggies, i.e it will become pixilated), and if you add it in at a larger size and then shrink it down, it will take your page longer to load than if you had reduced the size in image editing software (e.g. Photoshop) and then placed it. Additionally, you can use image editing software to optimize the image, creating a balance between load time and apearance, but this is a topic for a whole article. Do not rush out to buy the ever-expensive Adobe Photoshop since there are plenty of free downloadable programs that you can use (any suggestions would be great, I'll post a list of them on my web site)

You also might want to add sound samples, most commonly mp3s. There is plenty of software out there that can take a CD and create an mp3 from one of the tracks, but you might want to do a little research and get one that can also chop the song at a specific time and then fade out, thereby giving you a "sample" rather than the whole song. This way, you tease people and get them to buy the whole CD instead of gving it to them for free. Hopefully you can also find software that can control the bit rate which esssentially controls the file size of the final mp3 that you create. Again you want a balance, something that downloads quickly but still sounds good. I only know how to do this on MAC (using a combo of iTunes and Studio16), so if enlightened readers could e-mail info about mp3 creation on a PC, I will post the info on my site and let everyone know about it in the next article.

After you have a page or two ready to go, upload them to the server and make sure that the world can see everything you have done before proceeding. Make sure it looks the way you want it to look on Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator on both PC and MAC. There are other browser and platforms but these are the most common.

If you want a more professional look than you can muster in a few hours of fiddling around (assuming you are starting from scratch), but you can't afford a full time web designer, you could hire a designer to make a good looking site for you and then you could make daily or weekly updates to your band schedule, band journal, or whatever. Basically, you would hire a designer, but you would be the master.

May 2003

This Month: Domain Names and Web Hosting

Among the many ways in which a band can promote itself, a web site is one of the most dynamic. (performing may be the only better way) People can read biographies, check out your schedule, listen to sound samples, and so much more. In other words, if you have the resources, I highly recommend establishing a web presence for your band.

Part of having a web site is having a web host. This is a company that puts the files that make up your site on a computer somewhere. This computer, or "server," will show these files to internet- users when they type in your web address, (a.k.a. Uniform Resource Locator (URL) or domain name). Free hosting exists but often comes with unattractive banner ads or pop-up ads. Here is an example in case you don't want to spend any money.

http://free.prohosting.com/

If you are willing to spend a little money, you can get your own unique domain name and a web hosting account. (I pay $5 per month) The advantage of having your own domain name is that when you are on stage, you can say, "Check out our web site at bnibluegrass.com!" instead of "Check out our web site at geocities.com/bnibluegrass.html." (just an example) It's easier to say, its easier to type, and it's easier for your fans to find on the internet.

Most web hosts can register your domain name for you, but you can also create a domain name and just sit on it until you are ready to use it. You can also register a domain name from one company, and host it with another. If you had your heart set on something that is already taken with a .com ending, you may be able to get the same address with a .net ending or a .biz ending.

If you want to shop around for a web host, check out the site below. It has consumer reviews of all the various hosts (100's of them) along with prices, programs, and much more. If there is interest, perhaps we'll cover what to look for in a web host in a subsequent article.

www.webhostingratings.com

April 2003

Hello everyone. Welcome to the first of what will be a regular Breakdown column dedicated to offering readers tips, advice and news from the world wide web as it relates to Bluegrass Music.

I have been designing and maintaining web sites for the past five years with several sites under my belt. I don't know everything, but I know enough to create award winning web sites that are user-friendly and that showcase the products or services of my customers. You can see some of my work at www.cornstalkdesign.net (for less subtle advertising, see quarter page ad on another page somewhere in the Breakdown).

As with Joe Weed's column, I am hoping that this becomes a question-driven column, i.e. you send me questions via e-mail, and I try to answer them as best I can in the Breakdown (or by writing back to you). Until then, I have come up with enough fodder for a few months, so here is just a taste of what I will be covering in no particular order:

• Adding sound samples from your band's cd
• How to pick a web master to do your band's web site
• How to choose a Web Host
• Essential Content for your band's web site
• Capturing and processing good band images
• The importance of keeping an up to date band schedule on the web site
• Best and worst bluegrass web sites on the internet

Anyhow, feel free to barrage me with questions if you have them (phil@cornstalkdesign.net). Until next time, my only advice is that you check out the CBA's web site, maintained in part by some excellent CBA volunteers, at www.cbaontheweb.org