Creating your own video channel – Introduction -revised
By John Rothko |
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Setting up your own video channel sounds expensive, a lot of work and really complicated, but it is not as hard as it sounds and it certainly does not cost a lot of money. In fact, it is very cheap if you know where to go and how to do it! Apart from creating your videos (obviously), it consists of 4 steps which are explained in great detail.
Those of you who want to join up for the newsletter will receive a couple of very interesting goodies that will not only make it easier to publish your videos on other sites, but also adds extras to your hosting. Joining up is free, so there is no reason to wait, join up now!
All video tutorials about this series are in the process of being moved to the member area, therefore signing up is a smart thing to do.
Definition of a video channel
I sometimes refer to YouTube, Brightcove, VideoJug, MySpace etc.. as video channels, but they are actually Video Portals (or networks if you like), containing video channels. In the context of this tutorial, I mean that you can have your own video channel, like you can have it on YouTube, with a couple of differences:
- You are in total control over the quality.
- No redirects to the video portal as is the case with YouTube and most others if you click on the view window in the player.
- You are in total control over the video player, which has the same options as most video channels.
- You are in total control over the look of the site and you add features as you see fit.
To be fair on the video portals, there are downsides to having your own channel:
- You do not get traffic from your favorite video portal, unless you create special promotion videos which you upload there (I would recommend that in any case).
- You do not get into the featured videos of your favorite video portal, unless you keep creating specials for that portal in order to get traffic to your site (again, I would recommend doing that).
- If your videos are immensely popular and therefore use up more then 5 Terrabytes bandwidth per month, you may have unexpected extra costs.
5 Terrabytes is like having 100 videos of 10Mb each and those can be watched once by 5,000 visitors during a month. Depending on the compression and size, a video of 10mb can contain about 10minutes of video, to give you an idea. So, in normal circumstances, if you are not a famous star, you have enough reserve to have about 100 videos on your site and given the fact that not every visitor is going to watch 100 videos, you probably can say that about 20,000 visitors a month will not exceed 5Terrabytes bandwidth. Does that sound good to you?
Here are the steps that need to be taken, I explain every step in detail:
- Open an account with a hosting provider which allows you to play streaming video & setup your domain.
- Press a button to install WordPress or Joomla.
- Look for a good template to use. Download a script and a Flash video player to stream your videos.
- Upload your own videos to your web space and brand your video player.
The reason I spread this over several parts is that there are a couple of things that take time to get used to and I do not want to rush you into this, so you simply can adnvance to the next tutorial at your own pace. Working with Joomla or WordPress requires a bit of study too because you have to dig a bit deeper into the system then you are used to. But don’t be afraid, there is no coding stuff to do and I’m here to help you along the way. If you havez questions, just write a comment in one of the related tutorials and I will respond.
I use video tutorials and text to make this work for you.
Again, if you want to make sure you do not miss out on any of the steps involved, you may want to subscribe to the newsletter by email with the latest posts and as a result, get some bonusses you will not regret.
You can find all finished tutorials on this series here below and in the member area or in the topic: Video channels/networks (on the left).
Here are the previous parts:
- Creating your own video channel – Part 1/4
- Creating your own video channel – Part 2/4
- Creating your own video channel – Part 3/4
- Creating your own video channel – part 4/4
Topics: Video Channels/Networks | Site search | Write comment
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August 30th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
[...] Creating your own video channel – Introduction -revised [...]
August 31st, 2008 at 9:53 am
This is a great introduction to building your own video channel. We are so thrilled by it that we wrote an article to promte this excellent tutorial series. Keep up the good work!
WomenCorp Team
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:12 pm
[...] Creating your own video channel – Introduction -revised [...]
November 22nd, 2008 at 5:15 am
[...] setting up your own independent channel is not such a bad idea. Here is the introduction on how to set it your channel up, an A to Z tutorial how to accomplish this. You might be surprised how cheap it [...]
July 27th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Thanks for the great introduction. I will go through all the the series completely ! I’ve been searching on the internet for a web hosting company that allows the playing of streaming video, as well BOTH Joomla and WordPress installations. Can you make any suggestions as I’m very new at this. Thanks, and also, if you know of anyone that works with Joomla and WordPress, please send their link.
Thanks again.
July 27th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Hi Alfred,
A lot has changed in the meantime. Currently, DreamHhost does not perform very well because they accept too many sites on the same server and as a result, the performance is below standards. At the same time, YouTube has improved incredibly. You can now upload High definition video with really great quality.
That said, the series are still valid, except that I would use the Flash player to incorporate uploaded videos from YouTube.
I should actually update the series in that respect. Such a lot happens in a half a year, you won’t believe it
As for easy installation of WordPress and Joomla offerd by hosting providers, there http://www.midphase.com and http://www.knownhost.com. I still use DreamHost for experiments and tutorials. They have an impressive vault of applications, but as I said, performance is poorly these days.
Hope this helps?
July 28th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Sorry Alfred, it is http://www.knownhost.com
They have virtual hosting from $25 a month, while midphase has regular shared hosting.
June 9th, 2011 at 8:00 am
Another good host that has WordPress and Joomla on auto-install is FusionHost. They also have a script ‘No Overloaded Servers’ policy as well.
We’ve been using them for over a year now and they are awesome!
I don’t like DreamHost either.
June 9th, 2011 at 11:02 am
Thanks Marketeering. We do have to take those “No overload server policies” with a pinch of salt, though. After all, you can’t expect too much from cheap hosting.
December 20th, 2011 at 9:24 pm
[...] but the reason I thought it was important to publish is that it relates to the tutorials series Creating your own video channel by John, since we need to make a decision on a CMS system to work in that series. So, here it [...]