The Bandhamster blog
The real story of building this, in order, mistakes included, plus practical guides for anyone running a band. No marketing team, no polish pass.
Guides for bands
How to Find a Dep at Short Notice
Your bassist's off sick and the gig's in six hours. A practical guide to finding (and keeping) a good dep.
How to Actually Find Live Music Gigs Near You
Venue Instagram pages, a stale Facebook events tab, a ticketing site that only lists the big shows. There's a better way.
How to Find (and Vet) a Venue for Your Next Gig
Wrong crowd, no PA, a promoter who doesn't pay what they promised. Ten minutes of vetting saves a bad night.
The build log
Embed Your Gigs Anywhere
Paste one line into your own website and your real gigs show up there too, live. No retyping, ever.
Read the entryWe Hit the Free Tier. On Purpose, Sort Of.
Tickets, QR codes, and a database that quietly stopped letting new code out the door.
The Bug That Wouldn't Die
A real debugging war story: two wrong fixes, then the actual Cloudflare API limits.
Three Pillars in One Day
Gig alerts, the band directory, and real bookings, all shipped together.
33,000 Venues, One Home
Real addresses for over 33,000 UK venues, sourced from OpenStreetMap.
The Musician Board Is Live
Real posts only, from day one. The musician board and gig guide both ship.
We're Not Just a Website Anymore
The plan was always the whole home for live music. This is the day we started building the rest of it in public.
Going Live
Eighteen days after the first commit, one flag turned Bandhamster into a real website.
Genesis
The frantic first afternoon: scaffold, rebrand, rip out the database, all before dinner.