Official Luthiers Forum!

Hey all --

I'm starting down the long road of designing a website, and am feeling pretty overwhelmed by all the options out there, at least for photographers and artists. Curiously, few seem to be an ideal fit for the multi-faceted world of lutherie. It seems a good lutherie site includes attributes of many different styles of websites, sharing aspects of an art/portfolio-related site, music (embedded audio and video clips of instruments), e-commerce, blog, service industry (repair and restoration), and even education (instrument-building instruction).

It'd sure be great if someone would design some dedicated WordPress themes for luthiers, but until that happens, for those of you with websites, can you offer any suggestions on any WP themes that you feel are a good fit for lutherie?

Alternately, what are some of your favorite luthier websites?

Thanks.

Ken

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Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

I think you can do all that stuff with something as simple as Weebly, which must be one of the simplest editors out there.
I always think that the best websites are those that get the point across in a simple, uncluttered and coherent manner. I'm no fan of bling. Well taken, large photo's are important too.

Hi Ken,

I am a programmer and they often build websites where I work also. When it is a cheepy for someone that we know or it's a favor etc. We often purchase a template from this site and modifiy it to our needs http://themeforest.net/category/wordpress. Some really good quality templates for cheep. There is a lot to go through though.

Jeremy D.

I'm not a website designer but....

I designed the template and built and maintain my website as you can see here.

I designed the look of the home page and the second and third level pages in PowerPoint and sent them to Magicdust (google them, they appear local to me but in this virtual world they could be anywhere). Magicdust set up the three levels of blank pages (I wanted plenty of drill-down with the horizontal menus at the bottom) and I did the rest. It was really not much more difficult than uploading text and files to the OLF site.

Here's a site in Wordpress by a late friend of mine, Alan Lloyd, which he built himself before he sadly succumbed to cancer in August. Alan managed to get plenty of depth to his site, which still lives on.

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

Thanks for the suggestions. I have found some good-looking themes on Themeforest, and I'm currently debating the necessity of a website being "responsive" to the various I-gadget formats, ie, the site's ability to automatically reformat itself when viewed on different-sized screens. Seems pretty desirable in this day and age, especially going forward.

I'd love to see some other "favorite luthier" sites, especially if they're your own.

Ken

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Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

Try mine Ken:

www.historicalguitars.co.uk/

I did this in Weebly. Some embedded media. Not sure how it displays in different browsers/screen res.

I don't think there's anything out there right now that even begin to compare to WooThemes: http://www.woothemes.com/

I've used a number of their templates (and their competitor's) Top notch stuff. Once you install it and spend some time watching their video tutorials, you'll see how absolutely awesome their setup is. Your website literally turns into an erector set

I am not much of a programmer... I just take a stock theme and replace the images with my work. It's about all I can do.

If someone designed a luthier oriented theme for wordpress it would be really nice.

taiwanluthiers.wordpress.com

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Ken - I am a web designer by day - and my main focus is WordPress. I use a lot of themes from ThemeForest - and also do significant customization to existing themes or build themes totally from scratch.

My current guitar site is built on a theme. www.burnerguitars.com My business site is one I am converting to a custom WP theme I am designing. You won't know the difference. www.slidearts.com


Feel free to PM me if you want to chat more. Would be happy to help any way I can.

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P A U L B U R N E R
Burner Guitars

In looking at so many sites, the one thing that is immediately apparent is the better the photography, the better the website, regardless of bling level. Both Michael and Paul's sites clearly illustrate that. Their photography is outstanding, and coincidentally, so are their sites. Great sites guys!

What is really surprising to me is that many of the websites of the most well-known builders I could think of are woefully out of date, considering the ubiquity WordPress, et al. I guess it's just an indicator of how rapidly the technology changes. My sculpture website has suffered the ravages of evolving technology for sure.

Paul, be looking for a message, tomorrow -- I have some mixing to get to tonight. Thanks!

Ken

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Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

Good luthiers aren't necessarily good with computers, especially when things become obsolete as soon as it hits the market.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Ken,

You have hit upon my most common statement to my web clients. If you give "them" good photography to look, at they will want to stay on your site and look around more.

My son and I have only built 13 guitars, but from day one we were committed to showing interesting photography of our builds - and I think it has helped to generate interest in what we do.

I have personally done some of the photography - but have also paid some $$ to have some photos done for me when I am tight for time. I think the money is worth it in the long run.

Next up for us is to provide some audio clips of our guitars. Everyone wants to hear them. I personally don't think they show much relevance when you start considering all the various qualities of computer speakers - but it is something I think we need to provide.

Looking forward to chatting with you!

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P A U L B U R N E R
Burner Guitars

My website absolutely rocks. I mean, SUCKS. So does my typing, apparently.
I'm planning on replacing mine with one or two of the WooThemes that James mentioned.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Paul,

Nice site!

Did you find WP at all confining in doing your layout?

Pat

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Thanks, Filippo.

Seems like there's a new visual aesthetic on the web these days. I don't know if it's driven by WP or not—I'm out of the loop—but it's a different look compare to what I'm used to, with many sites having a WP look without using WP. My site is getting dated, and needs a new look, but at the same time, I want to avoid force-fitting the content into theme layouts. Maybe it's time to get up to speed with Dreamweaver again.

Pat

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Sounds like a niche market in the making. Oh Paul...

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Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

Pat, as a web designer, I did the Dreamweaver route for YEARS AND YEARS. It was, and probably still is, the web standard for a huge percentage of web designers.

The thing I have learned over the years is that people want the power/control of their web site in their own hands. I totally get that - and for years had touted Contribute - even though I didn't like it that much. (Dreamweaver was just too much $$$ and to big of a learning curve.) I made the move to Wordpress so I could give my customers/clients something better than Adobe Contribute.

When I discovered WP - it allowed me to offer a product that didn't cost the customer anything for software to administer it, could be used from ANY browser on any platform, ANYWHERE in the world.

Now... the thing you need to know is that you do NOT have to use a canned theme. A theme can be created from scratch - to your specs - with all the great features of widgets, plug-ins, etc.

There are many companies that will take a layered Photoshop file and turn it into a WP theme for you. I've done it - and had great results. I'm saying all this to encourage you to come up with an idea for a design that you like - and then take advantage of the features WordPress has to offer as far as being a great CMS.

All the best!

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P A U L B U R N E R
Burner Guitars

Look at WooThemes. Literally, erector sets for the web.

I can drag my banner here, I can drag it there. I can delete it. I can choose the google font of my choice for the blog title from a drop-down menu as if I were using Word. I can drag the blog here. I can drag customer feedback there. I can drag a special announcement over there.

I believe the benefit of going to a web-developer is now less about building the site and more about building an effective strategy.

Sorry this has turned into such a hijack of Ken's thread, but geez, thanks you guys, Paul, Filippo, James. I'm in for WP!

Pat

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

I am also a web master and programmer by day. I run a few WordPress sites and they work out quite well. There are so many free templates to choose from. Just keep looking till you find one you like. If you can do any programming then you can easily tweak them to fit your needs. Some one mentioned responsive design. I will not build a web site today that does not have a responsive design. It's absolutely paramount. It's not just for iDevices but for all kinds of hand held, tablet, PC, etc.. Many people in this next generation don't even have a PC but rely on phones and tablets. The easier you present your content the easier it is to sell. Personally I'd rather sit at a nice desktop to look at pictures of guitars but it's just the way things are going now.

And also +1Million on the quality photo's. There is nothing worse then designing a site for a client and they hand you a batch of amateur photo's.

Pat -- No worries on hijacking the thread, this is all useful info to me.

JFMcKenna -- I'm glad to hear your take on responsive design. It seems pretty essential to me, so responsive themes are all at the top of my list.

I do intend to check out WooThemes, too. James, do you know if any of those are responsive?

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Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

I believe all of the newer ones are. I've purchased two of them; when you purchase one, they let you download two more for free, so I have a total of five or six that I've actually tinkered with. Here is an example:

http://aslanguitars.com/site/ When you see a "page not found" message, that's because I've made those pages private for now.

Right now I have the navigation menu fixed to the top, but one click of the mouse in the admin section would make it responsive to the width of your browser window, and if I wanted, it would display on the left side of the browser window as soon as your browser window became X wide. If you look at the site on a smart phone, you get the mobile version.

WooThemes does have a pretty significant thorn in it's side. Their image gallery stinks. It's hard to describe, but when you click on a picture using their gallery, it essentially takes you to a blog post with the picture attached. The best practice for the past seven years (at least) has been to display the image in a dynamic layer over the main content of your site. If you click on my gallery link, you'll see the gallery plug-ins I was playing with. They were all very easy to find and install. NegGen Gallery displays the thumbnails, and Easy Gallery Pro displays the photos presentably. I wish I could find something that did both.

And then you get into the fun stuff, like adding a spiffy slider like http://codecanyon.net/item/royalslider-touchenabled-jquery-image-gallery/461126?ref=Semenov&ref=Semenov&clickthrough_id=74450581&redirect_back=true for another $12, which really opens up possibilities!

At this point you have less than $60 invested.