Designing the new Hatebreed Website....
The past two weeks have been pretty much pure hell for me since E1 Music (formerly KOCH) has started releasing the tracks (week by week) from the new Hatebreed covers album, "For The Lions". Let me just explain a little more... First of all Roadrunner still had ownership of the domain, then E1 got it. But here's the problem, nobody knows what the FTP information for the website is on RR's server. Why is that a problem you ask? We can't download the site, or backup any databases but it's sort of okay with me for one reason... We get to build a better website! The current website is great and all but it's not very user friendly. Expecially since social media has pretty much taken over since Hatebreed released their album, "Supremacy" in 2006. Now Jamey Jasta uses twitter daily, and we depend highly on social media to spread the word of news and tour information. We HAVE to have this stuff.
The current Hatebreed website doesn't have dedicated pages for each post and everything is generated in one iFrame (I don't know who's genius idea this was, even in 2006? WTF? You can't bookmark any posts on digg or facebook, or even twitter. The biggest problem for me is there's no way for the fans to respond to the news we post on the site and you can't bookmark a damn thing on there. Not to mention we can't advertise anything on there.
Check out the newest band website that I built for Walls Of Jericho (http://www.wallsofjericho.net). When I set out to redesign and rebuild that site, I wanted a way for fans to respond to the band and post comments but I really didn't want to use WordPress... The website turned out great, it's easy for me to update and there is a banner manager for the site so I can design several banners showcasing several tours, items for sale in the store or contests, I mean there is a impossible amount of options there and it's a great tool that every band should use.
What of some of the features you like about your favorite band's websites? Do you even visit your favorite band's websites anymore? Comment!
By the way... I'm not knocking what the guys over @ Sons Of Nero did with the website at all, they do great work!
