After visiting every listed website for Kentucky bands, I thought I might note a few tips for new webmasters getting ready to start or take over a website for their high school band.  When looking for a place to host your site, try to find a host that doesn't have too many pop ups.  Pop unders and banner ads are better than pop ups if you need to use a free host.  Freehomepages.com uses banner ads at the bottom of your page which works very well and a very inexpensive paid host is doteasy.com.  It is about $25.00 to $35.00 for domain registration or transfer and then no additional charge for hosting, unless your site gets too big.  Doteasy.com would be sufficient for most high school sites.  kyband.com was originally hosted there, until we needed more bandwidth.  I recommend a paid host for your site, but if a free host is your only option you can visit freewebspace.net for more help in selecting a host.

For content or features for your site you can visit bravenet.com, freesticky.com, freebyte.com and hotscripts.com plus hundreds more.  These are just the few that I visit. 

Other tips for building your site are (1.) Include a contact page or contact information on your website.  Be sure to include a mailing address as well as email addresses.  If your site is for a county school be sure to include the name of the city that your school is located in.  Many county schools are not located in the town that you might guess.  (2.)  Include the year when posting dates.  If your site has a calendar be sure the year is posted as well as the month and day.  Many sites have information posted for their bands and visitors can't tell if it happened last year or is coming up this year.  (3.)  Title your pages.  Be sure that when you create your pages that you give each page a title describing that page on your site.  It is frustrating for visitors to bookmark or add a page to their favorites from your site only to find that when they are looking for it later it is titled 'newpage3.html'.  If you are using HTML it is easy to correct this.  If you are using a page builder on a host site then you need to find the proper way to add or change the page title.  Check the top left corner of your browser to see if your pages are named properly.  (4.)  For additional information read the "Requirements" and "Selection Process" pages in the Awards section of kyband.com at www.kyband.com/awards.html.  If you need help with these suggestions or have any questions about setting up your own website or finding a host, feel free to contact us at mail@kyband.com.