How to Start a Fansite

Obtain a place on the web for your site. You might want to do this through a free service, or pay for your own space free from advertising. Registering a domain name is a cheap and easy way to make your site stand out.

Gather information on your chosen subject. Beginning with basic statistics is a simple and easy first step. For example, if you’re starting a fansite about a musician, do some research and find out their date of birth, hometown and discography. For a fansite about a film, why not list production credits and box office earnings?

Design your site. There are many good sites which offer free layouts, or you may prefer to make one yourself or ask a friend.

Expand your information. Begin including more in-depth information for interested visitors. Think about what you would like to see in a good fansite. Things like image galleries, plot synopses and character profiles make for interesting reading for fans of your chosen subject.

Flesh out your site with content from other sources. For a film fansite, this might include reviews, or fan art and fan fiction for anime and manga.

Make your fansite interactive. Include a place for your visitors to express their opinion on the site or the subject, give them an email address to submit their own fan art and fan fiction, or run a popularity poll.

Include links to external resources. Make a list of good fansites dedicated to the same subject as your site. Contact the administrators of these sites and request a link exchange, whereby you both post links to each other on your respective sites. This benefits both parties with increased visitor traffic.

Make a page with all the resources you’ve used to build your site.