Changing or upgrading your website can be a bit challenging and frustrating — especially if you’re trying to do it on your own, or on a laughably tight budget.

I’ve managed to get the site at least looking presentable, and I thought I’d tell you how I’ve done it, what it cost me and what I’ve used, in case there was anything here that you thought might be useful to steal and go and put on your site.

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It’s not just for rock bands and rappers, you know…

I was presenting at a ‘getting into the music business’ seminar today, and in the break I was approached by Nuala Pinson who had managed to get hold of one of the (now quite rare) print copies of the 20 Things e-book. She was very enthusiastic about it, so I asked her if she’d mind if I asked her about it on camera.

Nuala on the e-book from Andrew Dubber on Vimeo.

Nuala’s looking for a bit of assistance with her website - and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind doing an exchange: implement the 20 Things on her behalf, and she’ll help you sleep better at night with one of her relaxation audio programmes.

Image by Photog Phillip

The website, as you may notice, is not looking its usual self. I’ve been talking about a site overhaul for months now, and it’s time I got to work on it.

So this weekend, I’m going to give it a go. I’ve upgraded to the latest version of Wordpress, I have a few ideas about what I’m going to do with the site - and I just kind of liked this template.

So… please excuse the mess and the missing navigation. There’s no easy way to do this without a bit of disruption to normal service.

I was going to walk away from the Radiohead/Aqua thing, because it didn’t seem particularly important, but I had a quick look at the Ridinghood site, where Sebastiaan has been giving it a bit more thought and it raises for me a few questions I can’t answer on my own.

Namely:

How can something that affects the musical environment of millions of people NOT have cultural significance? What is this thing you call culture?

Must art be representational?

History is the only significant variable in aesthetics?!

Please explain.

And to answer the question about what ‘fake plastic’ might be - I think it’s called hendiadys in literary criticism. These are Oxford boys, after all - perhaps they’re just being clever with words by introducing redundancies for added effect.

However, if it makes you more comfortable, put a comma between the two words in the phrase ‘fake, plastic trees’. That removes all of the linguistic problems that an overly literal reading of the title would introduce.

But actually, perhaps ironically, fake plastic is polyvinyl chloride - which is what they used to make Barbie dolls out of in the 1950s, and which collectors are now having problems with, because they’re starting to get sticky on the outside and leak a chemical substance resembling estrogen. Apparently, it’s causing havoc with the developmental progress of people who play with them (as if the toys themselves weren’t doing that enough by themselves).

These days, of course, they use real plastic instead.