EightyOne

Not only have we finished the new demo, but I’ve also managed to get the new site up and running in time for its launch!

I took a different approach to my previous attempts, and came up with a design first before converting that to a Wordpress theme rather than trying to build a design as a theme. It’s a little minimal at the moment, but the plan is to work in some odd details and do some tweaking as and when I feel inspired to! I’m not exactly a ‘that’ll do’ sort of person, but the most important thing was to get something I was happy with together, and go for perfection after the launch. :)

The design is a fixed-width, single column layout, with a horizontal navigation at the very top of the page and a large banner for the demo underneath. I removed the banner for anything but the home page, although this leaves the other pages looking a bit sparse, which is something I’ll have to work on. Also, I plan on implementing some archives sorted by month and category.

I’m also trying out Google Checkout for selling copies of the CD online (£1 + P&P!). As the service didn’t launch that long ago, Google are waiving the fees (which are still cheaper than PayPal) for the rest of 2007, which is quite nice. It makes it very easy to set up a ‘Buy it now’ button — this simply links through to Google Checkout to handle the rest, which is all we need since we’re only selling a single item. We’re also giving the CDs away to people who come along to our gigs — it’ll be interesting to see what the demand is, both at gigs and through the website.

Left Hand Red’s new three-track demo, Voyeur (named after the first track), should be ready very soon. Dan is going to record an extra vocal, and after that it just needs a few tweaks to the mix.

We’ll be selling the CD through the website (I really, really better get cracking on that redesign) for a paltry £1, but it will also be available free to anyone who comes along to one of our gigs (while stocks last!).

We’ve agreed to charge for the CD to recoup costs, but to give them away at gigs, as anyone who comes to see us deserves something for their time (and hopefully it will encourage people down). No-one’s mentioned downloads, but as they don’t have any overheads, I will sneak them up on the site free of charge. :)

It’s been aaaaages since my last update on the development of the new Left Hand Red Wordpress theme, and that’s because there hasn’t been much developing. Last week, however, I pushed myself to plow on.

The dark grey scheme wasn’t inspiring me much, so I’ve replaced it with a white/light grey scheme with red highlights, and ditched the single-column format with the addition of a second column for secondary navigation and blurb. I’ve only really been blocking things out, and it’s very much still ‘bare bones’, but once I’ve settled on a colour scheme and layout I will start introducing some graphics and styling touches.

I’m currently using a red background for hovered links (see below), which looks quite striking on the simple, monotone background.

I’m probably still going to use a single-column layout for single posts and pages. I’m also going to implement Gravatars for comments, which I have more recently added to the existing site.

Last night, Left Hand Red played an opening slot at the Hope & Anchor in Islington, London. The venue has quite a punk pedigree, with appearances by loads of famous bands dating back to the ‘Seventies, and it also serves as a ‘feeder’ venue for the Dublin Castle, so we were naturally quite excited to be playing there. Unfortunately, the reality didn’t really live up to the expectation.

Things didn’t get off to the best start when Russell, Jane and I ended up getting ourselves lost in East London, but in the end we were only about 15 minutes later than our prescribed sound-check time of 19:30. Being late for sound-check never creates a great impression, so we were relieved to see that the other bands were still sound-checking themselves when we arrived.

When our turn to sound-check came, we were told that we only had 10 minutes, so we hurriedly went about setting up. Disaster! My bass failed to produce any output at all! I tried a different lead, just in case, but going in to two amps and my tuner showed that I was in trouble. Fortunately, we were able to borrow a bass from another band, and did a rushed and very ropey sound-check through a couple of verses and choruses.

By the end of our sound-check, it was already time to start our set, so we didn’t even bother leaving the stage. We played through half-an-hour or so of our most gig-friendly stuff, and of course, gave it the usual gusto. The whole thing felt like a bit of an effort though. The monitoring made it difficult to hear what we were doing, and the tiny stage (and we’re only a four-piece) was cramped and difficult to move around. It wasn’t the ideal environment for getting in to a performance. The unfamiliar bass and an unusually mobile drum kit didn’t help matters, either!

In the end, I think we put in a reasonable performance, and there were some positive comments on how everything sounded. We’ve learned not to let setbacks get us down, and to put as much effort as possible whatever the venue, crowd or situation, and hopefully that helped the impression we left.

Russell had an exam the next morning, and Jane and I had to be up early for work, so we left shortly after finishing our set and speaking to some of the people who’d made the trip up from Sussex. It might have been nice to stay for the other bands, but I didn’t feel particularly compelled to hang around, either. So, after two-and-a-half hours of travelling, and just an hour-and-a-half in the venue, we were off!

We’re often told that we need to look outside of Brighton if we’re going to go further as a band, but I have to say that I’m not sure we’ve got much from our travels to the capital, either. The venues we’ve played in just don’t seem to match up to those in Brighton, and it doesn’t feel like we’ve achieved much extra exposure (but it’s always great to play to those who come to check us out or make the journey with us).

Maybe we’re spoiled for choice in Brighton, or maybe there’s so much competition in London that it’s hard to get in to the good venues. We are going to be looking outside of Brighton for future gigs, particularly in big Uni towns and cities like Southampton and Reading, and I’m sure we’ll keep trying London, too.

Progress is slow to non-existant because I’m suffering from creative block (AKA lazyness). So far I’ve done a little styling on a plain theme that I’ve applied to the ghost-blog of my chum, Dan Stevens.

So far, setting up the theme has been almost as easy as setting up a stylesheet. In addition to your stylesheet, though, you have to create at least one template file, which forms the markup. This is essentially setting up an XHTML file with added custom PHP tags to insert the blog posts and information. e.g.

the_title()

This template I’ve split in to three files — header.php, footer.php and index.php. This will allow me to re-use the header and footer, whilst providing customised versions of the main content to suit the front page, individual posts and archives, for example.

The most useful concept to get to grips with is the Wordpress ‘Loop‘. This is the portion of code responsible for looping through posts, and repeatedly inserting the desired markup.