Celebrity Website Or Fan Site: Where To Begin

Celebrity Website

The MTV Movie Awards were held last night. Were you watching? Of course you were. You live, sleep, eat, and breathe movie stars and celebrities. In fact, you know so much about your favorite celebrity, you could probably be their stunt double in their day-to-day life.

Have you ever thought about creating a fan site, or are you a celebrity looking to create an online presence? In both cases, start with managed hosting services from a top hosting company.

Celebrity Website: The Whole Shebang For The Busy Celebrity

If you are just too busy being stalked by the paparazzi to work on designing your celebrity website, you can rely on a graphic designer who offers complete services, even website hosting.

For example, CL Web Studios specializes in celebrity website, offering web design, maintenance, marketing, hosting services, domain security, SEO, photo editing, and more. They dub themselves the “all-in-one website provider,” offering anything you might need to get your website up and running, and keeping it fresh for your fans.

If you go this route, you'll want to assure you find the best option to suit your needs, likely a company who has dealt with celebrities and their specific needs in the past. Read through reviews, or visit the sites of other celebrities to see who's hosting their sites.

Additionally, if you are looking for the complete package, you'll want to find a company that integrates Flash movies into your site, as well as a message board and/or blog. Fans want a place to discuss the latest gossip!

Celebrity Website: Things to Consider Before You Create One

Ok, so you probably aren't a celebrity reading this. It's more likely you are a die-hard fan of so-and-so, and you want a place to show your love of everything so-and-so. There is a lot to think about prior to creating your site, and it goes far beyond who you'll choose to provide your managed hosting services.

• Watch what you're posting as content. When it comes to the law, you are able to infringe on the copyrights and trademark of a celebrity to a point if you are a fan site. You should try to stay away from any logos, product names, slogans, etc. This could be misconstrued as being an “official” celebrity site, and could land you in hot water.
• Don't push the limits when it comes to copyrighted material. For example, you love The Hunger Games, so you start a site devoted to the series. You could post your favorite excerpts here and there, but you should not post the entire book word-for-word. This would be a blatant copyright infringement, and a great way to find yourself in a courtroom.
• Do your homework. Research your subject, and see if there is information as to their feelings on fan sites. Star Trek, for example, links to fan sites in their community, and fans of World of Warcraft can take advantage of the “official fan site kit” which includes legal terms to lay out ground rules for the kind of content you can and can't use under their name. Want to create a DeNiro fan site? Email his publicist, Google his name to see what others are getting away with, etc. All of this research is to keep you out of legal trouble, so be diligent.

Celebrity Website: Ready To Create Your Fan Site?

So you did your homework, and you're ready to begin. Whether you choose a full service web design company to do everything for you, a site like Fan Sites Network (fan-sites .org) to host your site (they take applications, and only accept the best design), or a top hosting company like Hostgator, as long as you play by the rules.

Have you ever considered creating a fan site? Do you think the rules are too lenient for fans posting content about celebrities? Let us know by commenting!