I have one! It’s mostly a glorified business card though… I’m learning web development right now so building a site for my music was good practice. I built my own node based ssg to make it easier to maintain and I host it with GitHub Pages so it only really costs me time and the price of the domain.
https://treenotemusic.ca
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I only have a website cause it is a place one can find everything about me, and since I don’t use social media, it is then my only option. Plus it looks more pro than a FB page or whatever.
It has brought me a bit of new business too, as a new client contacted me through my site after they found me somewhere else which led them to my site and from there they learnt about my services and then became a client. Which is huge for someone like me who does not do any kind of promotion anywhere.
I share with my students the url of my website, which contains practice .mp4 accompaniments for all the 4/5th grade music. Many students come back and tell me they were not able to “find” the website. Then I try to explain the difference between a url and a search, and I get deer-in-the-headlight responses.
To make matters worse, most modern web browsers conflate the search and the url. I suppose anyone who knows what they are looking for on the web is not a good consumer.
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Might have more luck handing out the url in a QR code
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Thanks, some of my fellow teachers have used them on handouts. Nevertheless, the teacher in me would rather see the kids learn how to type a url, than have them sink further into illiteracy, insert exasperated emoji here.
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Actually, If you use Safari’s compact mode, search/url/tab title is a single component.
And don’t even get me started on explaining to students what is a file and a directory…
Yeah i see what you mean.
It’s an interesting thought tho, are we going full circle with search engines going back to being searchable site directories, simply because that’s what the users use them for?
And what responsibility does that transfer onto them in regards to knowing you’ve hit the actual site and not some scamming ripoff 
It’s flattering to think someone would go through the trouble of pretending to be my web site. But very unlikely, given that I am small potatoes.
I ask nothing of users. No logging on, no forms, no JavaScript, no cookies, no follow me or push the like button. The only purpose of the site is to be useful. If someone wants to download the entire contents of the site and use it with their violin students, go for it.
Interesting thread and topic.
Another way to think of a website I think, is as a CV. Not far off a business card I suppose, but it’s a historical list of projects and things you get up to. I have a website, but lately I get close to cancelling the hosting and url to save a few bucks, but in the end realise it’s useful to have keeping around - usually some application to something a website is a good look - I dunno like a course or a program of some kind.
I used to blog a lot more. Both in terms of sort of updates, and photo dumps. More recently my site is just a kindve archive of selected projects and documentation. I guess Instagram has replaced the photo side of things.
But I think like any of the social sites, if people really like your content and you keep posting enough of it, particularly directly to your website and not to social or aggregate platforms, then people get to know the url and will come direct.
For instance i really like John Grubers thoughts at daring fireball, I always just type in that url and go directly there when I wanna see what’s up.
I think there’s a lot to be said for going against the grain and avoid all platforms like Soundcloud, bandcamp, YouTube and places like that.
Like Louis ck does, just list your new stuff on your site behind a paywall and that’s it. And really, how many fans do amateurs really have? Probably none, lol. Maybe 5.
I remember when these sorts of platforms came along, particularly with video, it was useful because you didn’t want to have to pay for the bandwidth fees. But if you’re not big, I don’t really know if that’s an issue.
I think there’s a lot to be said for making your own website and keeping everything off all other platforms. Just go all in on your site being the main place to be, the mailing list, shop front, the lot of it. If you do tweet or post or whatever then it’s only ever a trailer or announcement pointing back to your site.
But otherwise, I wish there was more uniqueness to current day platforms. Like something that linked custom websites together with the same goal, ie music. As it stands everybody just has to have the same ubiquitous bandcamp or Soundcloud page, it really sucks the life out of the limitless potential that is the digital canvas of the web, and artists potential to really do something unique there.
I think websites are cooler for sure, but it would be cool for it all to be tied together in some way. I don’t think bandcamp really manages this community aspect well, and I would really like to see them up their game and offer more features and variety to page design. A whole new version of bandcamp would be amazing, it really is stating to look dated imo.
Bandcamp is too good, in a sense. It’s just better than anything you’ll come up with yourself unless you have serious web skills. I mean I’d love to make my own artistic website, I deplore the homogenisation of the Web, but I don’t want to be a web dev. I’m already a songwriter, producer, singer, engineer… Trying to do it all is counterproductive
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