Piano Studio of Lola McIntyre Web Site has been in continual use since it was first uploaded in 1999. McIntyre, is a leading piano educator and early proponent of digital media. PianoStudio.cc is one of the earliest piano studio web sites, globally. The web site name, Piano Studio of Lola McIntyre, was chosen to be a stronger hook for early search engines, which pre-date Google. In fact, the URL http://PianoStudio.cc was chosen for the same reason. There were 2 others with that title at the time using up the dot com and dot org extensions. Hence, dot cc was selected. Within the first month Piano Studio of Lola McIntyre was linked to The Piano Education Page, and other leading piano pedagoy portals, serving as an example to the profession.
Necessity being the mother of invention, Lola McIntyre recognized how a web site would improve communications between she and her students, and serve as a vital tool in holding a high standard for her students' developing musicianship. An site outline was drawn, and early web designers were consulted. The cost? as much as $10,000. Lola McIntyre taught herself HTML code, found web text editing tools, rolled up her sleeves, and started to learn how to create her own. There were few templates available at the time, and the site design was too large and complicated to be restricted by templates. Most importantly, McIntyre had the forsight to value regular Updates (Logs or Posts). This growing need by many early web developers evolved into Web Logs or Blogs, Also, regular invitations to 'email' with ideas for content and comment resulted in receiving communications from throught the world. Blogs with the user's ability to comment, favorite or share is today's standard (Web 2.0).
Great measures were taken to protect students who may access the site. Advertising has never been allowed, which was especially vital in the early days before cyber filters. Piano Studio of Lola McIntyre was declared a 'safe site' by McAfee Site Advisor. It is without ads, phishing, pop-ups, etc.
Search engines and Google Searches are morphing even, now. More importantly how one searches is shifting from Google, to running searches through one's own favorite social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Locally, IndyMoms | Indy Moms Like Me is being utilized in the same way. No longer are searches snagging a site's 'front page' or 'index', but rather landing a user to the content-rich page specific to their search.
Popular pages accessed via global searches are: Piano Teacher Support Site, Kids Piano Page (in great need of an update), Collecting Music Antiques, How To Write a Press Release and Hall of Fame. McIntyre created a page for her piano tuner, which is resulting in new business for John McArdle, Piano Technician.
The most common use for the studio web site is to learn about Studio Policies, consult the Lesson Schedule, gather information regarding Spring Recital & Rehearsal, and find dates, times, & purposes for each Studio Class.
Although the web site for Piano Studio of Lola McIntyre is celebrating it's tenth anniversary since it's initial upload in 1999, Lola McIntyre has been teaching for over 30 consecutive years. (See: Biography)