Disclaimer: This is a long post, but we guarantee you it’s worth the read. This is a big theme release!
Today sees the release of a theme that us at WooHQ are hugely excited about – partly because we have a few musicians within the team who are passionate about creating something they’d personally want to use, and partly because of the innovative modules and thinking that has gone into it’s development. We present to you “Unsigned”.
Unsigned was initially designed by our friend Ryan Downie, given the brief to design a modern version of one of our older, popular themes Backstage, all the while keeping it hugely versatile in it’s usage, for individual artists/musicians, as well as bands – spanning all genres of music. A rather difficult brief, but one that we feel Ryan mastered.
Matt was tasked with it’s development, whilst Mike given the design to slice, dice and convert into a WooFramework powered theme. As a musician and former band manager and promoter, Matt approached Unsigned from that angle- what would a musician, band manager or promoter want out of the theme?
The Unsigned homepage, as customized on our demo. And boy can you customize it, thanks to complete widget and theme option control!
One of the major advantages of Unsigned is that the artist has full control over the technical nature of their exposure. Whether aware of it or not. The functionality has been developed to anticipate the needs of the artist without them needing to add any extra code. This same approach is working hand in hand with our modular coding approach, making the code both smooth for the customer and swiftly maintained by us. The Unsigned homepage is almost completely controlled by widgets and a comfortable amount of theme options, making it hugely flexible (something a couple users expressed interest for yesterday).
A run down of the various Unsigned modules
Let’s jump straight into the various theme modules as there is a lot to cover.
Custom post types power Unsigned, and the Events module has a particularly clever one.
Events Module
Woo – Events caters for the management and listing of events (gigs, festivals, etc). Events can be grouped into categories (club, concert, gig, festival, etc) and tours. These are both custom taxonomies.
An event’s status (upcoming, right now, past) is determined by it’s start and end date/time. It’s also possible to select one of these types for display in the Woo – Events admin, making it easier to view snapshots of your events calendar.
The events module and the widget that controls it. Simple.
Woo – Events comprises 3 widgets as well as a custom “Tours” page template. The widgets are for listing events, tours and tour dates for a specific tour. The events widget has options to display all events, upcoming events, past events, events happening right now, events happening this weekend and events taking place in the current week. The “Tours” page template serves as an archive for listing tours listed on the website. These link to tour detail pages where the events for that tour are listed.
Venue listing, as well as links to online ticket sales and an optional price display are available per event.
Discography Module
Woo – Discography is where the artist manages their album releases. Albums can be sorted into categories and comprise a cover image, unique catalog ID and a release date.
Each album has an audio player facility, which uses tracks that are uploaded directly when adding or editing an album. The tracks can be re-ordered and managed using native WordPress lightbox windows.
The album widget placed on the homepage, and it's controls.
If WooCommerce is installed, each album displays an option to link the album to a product. If there is a link made, an “Add to cart” button for that product will be displayed alongside the album on it’s detail screen, as well as in the Woo – Albums widget. View the shop page here.
An album page with WooCommerce enabled allowing you to sell your albums.
Woo – Discography contains two widgets: the Woo – Albums widget, to list either all albums or albums in a specific category, and the Woo – Album Player widget, to list and play tracks from a specific album using an HTML5 audio player.
Photos Module
Woo – Photos is where the artist manages their photo galleries. Galleries can be sorted into categories and comprise a cover image and photo management section.
The photo management section is a clear and easy to use box in the admin that allows for the quick uploading, management (re-ordering, etc) and inclusion of images in the gallery. This is then applied on both the gallery detail screen and the Woo – Photos widget.
Woo – Photos comprises two widgets: Woo – Photos and Woo – Galleries. Woo – Photos displays either all photos with a limit count, or X number of photos from a specific gallery. Woo – Galleries displays a list of the photo galleries available, either in a specific category or across all categories.
Videos Module
Woo – Videos is where the artist manages their embedded videos from YouTube, Vimeo, etc. Videos can be sorted into categories and comprise an optional posterframe and an embed code field.
Woo – Videos consists of a single Woo – Embed widget which, similarly to our standard widget, displays videos from a specific video category or all videos, allowing for the quick switching between videos.
Band Module
Woo – Band Members is where the artist manages their band member profiles. This section consists of a “mugshot” image and a “role” field, for the band member’s role in the band (eg: guitarist).
Woo – Band Members also consists of a single “Band Members” page template, which lists the band members in the order they are set to display in. This can be re-arranged via the “order” field when adding/editing a band member.
Their band biography is added via the content area. View the biography page here.
Homepage slider
As has become a favourite within our themes, Unsigned includes Woo – Slides. This module displays a large background image on the homepage, as well as a slider content area above the content on the homepage. When navigating through the slider, the background image fades to the appropriate image.
These images are added using the slider image field.
Soundcloud integration
Woo – SoundCloud is a bridge between Unsigned and SoundCloud. When a username is specified, the system connects to SoundCloud and retrieves the user’s tracks and playlists.
These two content types are outputted via a Woo – SoundCloud – Playlist widget for specific playlists and a Woo – SoundCloud Tracks widget to display individual players for specific tracks.
This data is cached for a month to avoid speed issues and high load. It is possible to force-refresh this data via a “Refresh SoundCloud Data” button, made available under the “SoundCloud” tab in “Theme Options”.
Changing to a light style is as simple as flicking a switch. As is changing the logo. Transforming the look.
Adding a different background image, and using some different homepage widgets further demonstrates the theme's flexibility. All done in 5 minutes...
Spend another 5 minutes with the theme and can you imagine the possibilities? You have to view the theme listing for more information on all the functionality packed into this theme. Trust us!
Let us know what you think! Any feedback is welcome in the comments below.
P.S. Thanks to Captain Stu for letting us feature them and their awesome music in our demo.
Grab Unsigned with a 12% discount coupon, valid until 2 February 2012. Just use UNSIGNED12 as your coupon code on checkout.
62 Responses to “Musicians and bands take note!”
Can’t wait to use this theme.
Once again, a really great theme.
Of course, Unsigned would be the best choice for a musician website. Well designed with fully responsive layout for all browser widths as well as resolutions!
Good Job!
Sweet!
Simply AWESOME!! Can’t wait to work with it!!
Any way to get the Events module on more themes!
That “might” be possible if we get enough requests WooIdeas
Hi Matt,
All modules in Unsigned are “hot swappable”, so to speak (styling may need to be added on a per-case basis to accomodate the module).
We can provide basic guidance as to how to achieve this in our Support Forums.
Please do. Not just for the events module, but for any theme module that is swappable across themes. This would make a great tutorial.
You can use gig press! It works great!
AWESOME!!
Finally, so happy! I may even have to write a blog post about this!
Don’t forget to showcase Unsigned using the Affiliates Widget on your blog.
Ditto to that!
This.Is.Sweet!
I’ve been anxiously awaiting this theme. You’ve delivered a nice looking theme with all the features a musician/band requires. Especially love that Soundcloud integration is possible.
Kudos Woo Team.
Thanks Craig. We’re glad you like it.
Do you have an existing band/musician website you’ll be using Unsigned on, or a new project you’ll be developing with the theme?
@matty
It’ll be a new project.
Looks great for a very specific-targeted theme! I hope some more general/basic themes come out soon as well (more magazine themes, please!)
Next theme sounds right down your alley.
Killer man!
This theme can be used much more than just a band website….
Just wanted something like this… Thanks
Rahul,
Thanks for your kind words.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. Band Members could become Speakers, Events could become workshops/talks and without much modification at all, you’ve got a website for a conference, for example.
Also, all modules are able to be toggled on or off, so any unwanted modules can just be neatly packed away for possible future use.
That’s the genius of Matty and Mike right there!
Way more Matty than Mike
From someone with a strong background in artist management I can tell you one thing this is missing right away. The most important thing to promoting yourself as a musician/performer.
Free music downloads in exchange for email addresses. Most artists now have realized that unless they’re as big as lady gaga they should just give away all their music free in exchange for email addresses. That email address list is worth its weight in gold.
Artists don’t make money off their album/song sales, we’re talking about pennies to the dollar here, they make their money touring, hence having a mailing list.
As I understand it this theme has woocommerce built in, would it be that hard to use the same url hiding mechanism to power an email4download widget? I know many people that would be sticking with bandcamp and topspin until you do, myself included
Really hope to see this, I’m certified by pointblanklondon.net for music business and online artist promotion and have managed lots of talent, so this suggestion doesn’t just come out of nowhere
if you’d like i’d be happy to help you work on this feature, i’m quite familiar with woocommerce already and think adding at least mailchimp would be a good start since mailchimp is a free service up to 2,000 subscribers/12,000 emails a month. Quite substantial to be a free service IMO
Definetly second this request! Especially for new artists where giving free downloads is nearly a must. Could probably construct something using gravity forms , but if u guys can offer this feature as part of your theme that would be best! Thinking something like Free Feature download of the day widget….make it really easy of an artist to post a different single that’s readily visible on any page instead of having to create a coupon code for a free download through the cart.
C
I’ve been looking for a theme to use for a Church website project – especially needed events functionality, so i’ll be taking this theme for a spin, thanks Woo!
Nice design, fellas.
Add a persistent music player and I’ll buy it.
Useless for my client if you cannot change pages without the music stopping.
Or at least a popout player.
My 2 cents.
Thanks for your feedback, Simon.
A persistent music player (popup) is in discussion internally.
@Simon, you can make music still playing when you change pages with a little bit customization. I’ve done it for a client. It doesn’t need popup
Please elaborate, and what is the site?
I have hacked in the scm musicplayer now but i don’t like editing inside themefiles. Makes updating themes a painful process.
I also tried the audiobar plugin. I didn’t like that. Are there other persistent audioplayer plugins? (Google is not my friend regarding this issue)
And sorry for not saying this in my previous comment. But this is an awesome theme. (Go Woo!!)
Kate,
Could you please share your customisation with us on our Support Forums? We’re keen to see how you did this and possibly use it as a reference for future theme updates.
This can be done so easily by changing permalink settings and including jQuery Address. Then just have your permalink change the address’s hash code to fetch pages/posts/addresses through jQuery.
Put your music player on your main template page and boom shakalaka. Persistent music.
Deffinetly getting this for my band but
being a graphic designer and musician the
only problem I see is other than the background
and littler header theres nothing really that
will make your site look creative and original to others.
Is there a way to add a banner on the top to add a band
photo too or artwork ect?
Awesome though content wise.
Cheers
Kon
The beauty of the homepage is that you can place whatever you like on it and order however you want seeing it almost entirely widget based. You could easily add a banner in the header space (there is a theme option for that), or an image anywhere else using a text widget.
Look forward to your band site soon!
Sold
Could this theme be used to create a site with unlimited number of bands or is it for one band only?
Hi Tricia.
Out of the box, Unsigned caters for a single band. With some creative use of custom taxonomies and a few code tweaks, it should be possible to customise the theme to work for multiple bands.
Is it compatible with wordpress multisite?
Yes all our themes work on WPMS (our demo server runs that).
That’s good – thanks Magnus
Great work, guys! Bold and simple. I like simple and I think fans like simple, too. Looks very good on my iPhone.
Glad to see you took notice of my and other guys’ suggestions to do something about integrating Soundcloud.;) The text widget can help with embedding other services like Bandsintown etc.
I’ve not looked closely at the woo commerce offering, but I see you’ve incorporated that into this.
Since I’m just getting things rolling online for my music project, I’m debating if that route is better than something like http://www.bandcamp.com.
Hi Craig.
WooCommerce works with Unsigned, as well as having specific integration, linking a product to one of the albums in your discography.
I believe going the WooCommerce route would open up more options in terms of merchandise sales… rather than selling only music, you could sell physical merchandise, etc (not sure if hosted services offer that?).
You can sell anything through Bandcamp, music, merch, AND bundles, and they do it beautifully. But Bandcamp itself isn’t enough. There’s a nice workaround: one can create a subdomain – music.yourdomain.com – and point it to one’s Bandcamp page, while creating a page called music (store, whatever) in WordPress and redirecting it to Bandcamp using the redirect template. Something like that.:)
@Adi
Thanks…that’s very helpful…I like the idea of a sub-domain.
Clean install does not pass w3c validation!
Please advice. joseleguina.com
Validation is important!
Found it here:
http://groups.google.com/group/html5boilerplate/browse_thread/thread/6d1b6b152aca8ed2
Does anyone use chromeframe?
Hi Simon.
We’ll be happy to help out in our Support Forums, if you could please post your query there.
hot hot hot. great job ryan!
great theme! checked out the demo..a few questions/comments before I buy:
Is there a way to download purchases instead of snailmail?
Tried clicking on the play buttons on the player widget but nothing seems to happen.
Also tried loading the demo on my ipad but no success.
The load time all around also seemed very slow.
Am I right to guess this is because its a demo and not an actual site?
Looking forward to rolling this out ASAP!
Thanks!
C
Hi Carlos,
You can sell digital downloads with WooCommerce so offering digital albums is entirely possible.
The demo has been quite hammered since the launch of the theme, so it’s not a true indication of Unsigned’s performance. After clicking play on the audio player give it a few seconds to buffer the song.
Great thanks for the response.
Also was wondering if the mobile versions are available to demo. Tried viewing on my iPad and the page only half loads and then freezes.
C
Try viewing it directly by closing the theme switcher at the top (click the red X)
Good job Ryan. Its very unique!
Looks great! I run a small indy record label with about 15 artists so have been looking forward to this one from you guys.
A couple of things caught my eye however:
I’m with Tricia – multiple artist functionality would be nice without having to do a lot of tinkering.
The audio player – it would be great to be able to scrub forward in time.
Events module – an option to purchase/book tickets through the site as well as an external link?
Add to card – some sort of visual que that the button has worked would be good. Other than the spinner on the cart widget you don’t really know if you have actually ‘added to cart’ and if your cart is above the fold you don’t know. Not sure if this is just a woocommerce thing that could be modified?
Great work tho, keep it up!
Amazing theme.. Thanks for sharing!!
One of your best new themes, purchased and now looking at all the possibilities.
The music player does not work for me in Safari on OSX SnowLep. It works in all other browsers, though. Not sure why… might just be me. Otherwise, this is an amazingly beautiful theme!
Well done you guys for coming up with Unsigned! Am just now working on a beta site to support a relaunch of a well known Canadian singer/songwriter. So far, am using Canvas theme with Topspin Media Tools integration but will now consider Unsigned. Tried to “play” with Unsigned as a test drive but having difficulty getting it up and running. Until you guys have refined some of the widgets and tools (ie. “email for media” and if you really want to do it right, add an extra functionality that provides a bonus offer if the recipient “shares”, as well as integrated messaging), would still retain Topspin integration.
Awesome themes, time to empty cash out some funds from my wallet.
Thanks
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