Voltaire's Ghost: building a site as dark and alive as the music.
A full custom build for a gothic rock band on the rise — designed to feel like the band, not like a band website template.
A band that had outgrown a placeholder.
By the time Voltaire’s Ghost came to Built by Danny, they already had chart positions, a Grammy-nominated production team, international press, and a debut album recorded. What they didn’t have was a site that matched any of that. The existing presence was functional at best — nothing that communicated the band’s aesthetic or gave a first-time visitor any sense of who they actually were.
The brief wasn’t about features. It was about identity. The site needed to feel like the band sounds: gothic, cinematic, atmospheric. The kind of place you linger in rather than click through. And it needed to do that inside the constraints of Wix, the band’s preferred platform, which meant solving real problems creatively rather than just choosing a flexible stack.
Wix as a canvas, not a limitation.
The entire site was built using a hybrid architecture: Wix handles the CMS, hosting, e-commerce, forms, and events natively, while a system of custom HTML embeds — each a fully self-contained, brand-accurate component — handles everything Wix can’t do on its own. The design language runs consistently across every embed: void black backgrounds, gold accents, Palatino Linotype for editorial weight, Courier New for mono detail. Every section feels like it belongs to the same world.
The real design challenge was making a Wix site feel nothing like a Wix site, and doing it in a way that could actually be maintained.
Custom HTML Embed System
Every complex section — hero, bio, members, press, videos, EPK, contact — is built as a standalone branded embed with its own CSS design system, scroll passthrough, and mobile responsiveness. Wix provides the structure; the embeds provide the soul.
Velo + YouTube Data API Integration
The Music Videos page pulls the band's latest uploads automatically from their YouTube channel via a Velo backend module. No manual updates needed when a new video drops — the page stays current on its own.
Dynamic Press Section
The "In the Press" section queries the Wix Blog database in real time, filtered by category, with automatic pagination. Every new press post the band publishes appears in the section without any design intervention.
Full Electronic Press Kit
A standalone EPK built as a single-page embed — members, bio, accolades, stage plot, discography, and booking CTA — designed to be sent directly to venues, journalists, and labels as a living document.
VHS Video Experience
The Music Videos page features a custom YouTube-style layout: featured player on the left, scrollable sidebar on the right. A VHS scanline and glitch overlay runs on the player for atmosphere, and the sidebar populates automatically from the YouTube API.
Ongoing Creative Partnership
Built by Danny serves as the band's ongoing web creative director. From writing blog posts, building press announcements, to keeping the site current as the band's story develops.
A site that feels like the band sounds.
VoltairesGhost.com now reads as a destination rather than a directory. The gothic aesthetic is consistent from the hero fog animations to the gold-ruled EPK to the VHS video player. Press from New York Weekly, the Chicago Journal, BH-Review, and Fresh Music World lives dynamically on the site. The YouTube API keeps the videos current. The Wix Blog powers the news section without anyone touching the design layer.
The band went from a placeholder to a platform — one that can grow with them as the catalog, the press, and the fanbase expand.
Have a project like this coming up?
If your project needs the same kind of care, something that looks sharp and stays easy to run, let's talk about what that looks like for you.
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