I’m not gonna lie, I went into this project, or this site, kinda dreading it. It’s a lot at first glance, trying to make a full-on website, and have the pressure of putting your name behind it, and knowing that it would be critiqued at the end of the day for a grade. But as I started to work on it, I began to like it.
Granted, it’s a fair bit of work, especially with time constraints involved, and with life as it is right now, time management is as important as ever. But going out and getting material for articles has been a great experience, and learning about all of the intricacies around building up a website and making content that is not only informative but easy to enjoy, has not only been enlightening, but very fun.
I like my website itself, honestly, the only thing I would change is would add more of my content and my code to make it less generic. But the layout is nice, it’s easy to read, and I feel as though it mostly reaches its aesthetic goals. I’m proud of the content I’ve written, but I desperately need to work on making my articles more friendly to a general audience by making them shorter. 1400 words for an article on a single show in Austin for a niche band is quite simply too much.
As far as the site stats and the Twitter stats, I’m not particularly surprised. I only had one or two visits a week, mainly after I had published an article. I only achieved a single Twitter follow, and a few likes here or there. My most popular week was the week of October 4th, primarily because that was the week I had posted the most content and made the most tweets. Nothing very impressive. That being said I haven’t done much to promote it. Honestly, without a brand associated with it, I highly doubt the statistics would change very much. But, after a rebrand a,d some minor alterations, I could see this site being very well-becoming successful. This type of music is a booming industry, and there aren’t many outlets that cater to it, so there’s genuine potential for growth.
As for the future, I’m not gonna lie, I would like to do something like this professionally, whether for my website or another. I enjoy the subject matter, I enjoy the work, and I can honestly say that I don’t think I’m too terrible at it. But, we’ll just have to see what the future holds, and where the music takes us.
-David W.
South Texas Music Underground 