If you (or your dance or service) do not have your own web page, but have always wanted one, here is your chance. The Dance Gypsy can now build and host a dedicated page for you, your dance or service— your own addressable page, not just a segment in a long list of dance sites, or a generated page in a large data base— with your own text, your own logo or picture, your choice of background, your contact information and your own description of the special unique and wonderful aspects of your dance. It can even contain automatically updated descriptions of your upcoming dances, and keywords for network search engines.
Why would your dance want its own web page anyway?
- People can always find you or your dance when they do a web (Internet) search (Dance Gypsy listings often come up number 1 in a Google search)
- Your dance is not lost in a sea of other dances on someone else’s page.
- Your own page can contain whatever you want— not just the standard listing provided by an index service such as the Dance Gypsy.
- Your page can reflect the special personality of your dance (e.g., a picture of your dance hall).
- Other dance-related sites can point to your dance page (for example another dance in your town could link to you by including on their web site: “While in OurTown for our dance, be sure to also visit the Wonderland dance.”
- Dancers can explicitly ‘bookmark’ your site for future reference, and the page name is simple enough that they can remember it easily.
- It can contain any information useful to Gypsies traveling to your dance such as driving directions or the location of that neat restaurant where everyone goes before the dance.
- And finally, because ‘everyone else is doing it’: more than half of the dances listed in the Dance Gypsy now have their own web site.
So what does it look like?
Actually we offer two versions
Full web page hosting
You are the final determiner of what your site looks like, but for a an example of Dance Gypsy-hosted web page, look at this.
Schedule display only
If you already have a web page but can’t seem to get around to getting it updated, you can insert a Dance Gypsy-created schedule into your own web page. The schedule will automatically get updated every time other Dance Gypsy pages are updated. You maintain total control over all other aspects (including the web address), but your schedule stays up to date with no extra effort.
But isn’t it expensive?
Well, normally yes. Commercial web designers often charge $50 to$100 an hour for their services. But the Dance Gypsy will set up your web page for just a $25 (one time) set up plus $25 per year for hosting your page — and we will guarantee that rate for 2 full years.
If you just want to import a schedule into your own (created and hosted elsewhere), it is just $25 per year (i.e., no set up charge).
Advantages of a Dance Gypsy site over other sites:
- Automatic updating of your dance schedule — at no extra charge (updating occurs whenever the Dance Gypsy’s other web pages are updated).
- No need for you to purchase your own domain name (this could cost more than $25/year all by itself).
- No worry that your local computer guru will quit dancing and leave you in the lurch.
- Automatic inclusion of relevant keys for use by search engines.
- A nice easy to remember URL (e.g., a uniform name such as:
www.theDanceGypsy.com/dances/wonderland
- may be much easier for dancers to remember than an ad hoc one such as
www.somebusinessname/somepersonname/wonderlanddance.html)- That name will remain the same— even if the nice person who put up your page on her own site leaves you.
- Cheap and inexpensive.
Are there any down sides?
Well yes, doesn’t everything have its down side? Truth in advertising suggests we tell you of any potential disadvantages we know about. So here they are:
- The Dance Gypsy web page is a limited service. We are not offering to update and change it every month (beyond the regularly schedule updates). Sure, if we get it wrong, or if your contact person changes (also see Email forwarding below), we’ll fix that, but we won’t be making arbitrary changes every time someone at your dance wants a new “look and feel” or special one time information about this month’s events.
- This is not a big fancy complex site with many buttons taking you to multiple pages devoted to special aspects of your dance; it won’t play music or display lots of special or animated graphics in each section of the page. It is a simple, direct page of your own basic design without too many special bells and whistles.
- The Dance Gypsy is not really in the business of designing. For this price, we cannot build big fancy sites or even create the graphics— you must provide any graphics you want (we can however arrange for low cost site-development if you need it).
- The URL address, while uniform and easy to remember, may be a bit longer than it would be if you had your own domain name.
What can your page contain?
The “what” really is not very limited; it can contain essentially whatever you’d like, But the typical content might include:
- Logo or picture
- Name of your event
- General description of the dance
- Your regular caller, musician or instructor
- generic schedule and season
- days, times, sponsors etc.
- automatically updated listings of confirmed dates
- location and direction for getting there
- contact information: Name, phone, address Email, even web address
- any other special information dancers may need or want
- background color or pattern of your choice
- it should be limited roughly to that which will fit on a typical sized computer screen with one picture or logo and a single background choice.
How to get your own page
First, remember that these pages are available only for dance-related services and activities. This means a dance venue, dance sponsor, dance musician or band or caller, or other person or group directly involved in providing services to the dance community.
Assuming the above applies, just send us the basic information:
1. The name of your dance.
2. The name you want in the URL for your dance, which will look something like:
www.theDanceGypsy.com/dances/your-dance-name3. The text your would like for the body of the page. The more precise you can be here, the better.
4. A picture or logo (this should be in electronic format)
5. A background image or color preference (generally you will often find that having both a logo and background image may produce hard to view results. Similarly a background image with bold or bright color patterns may make reading difficult)
6. And, oh yes, the money for the service ($25 for design plus $25 for the first year’s hosting (or $50 for two years))
Generally speaking electronic submission is best. You can even send the money electronically:
Advertise in the Dance Gypsy
The Dance Gypsy is happy to list all events — even those that do not advertise! But advertising your event or service gets you greater visibility while providing the Dance Gypsy with much needed revenue. Go to the advertising page to see all that you can get for our very inexpensive rates. And remember: you can always list your event for free — whether or not you partake of any of the other services.
Dance Gypsy Email forwarding service
Make sure that your dance-related Email actually gets to the person who can help by letting the Dance Gypsy forward your dance-related Email to you. The Dance Gypsy will receive your dance-related Email, using your own dance-name at our domain (
theDanceGypsy.com) and automatically forward it to you at your regular Email address, making sure your dance-related Email goes to your current contact person— with a reduced amount of spam.
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