Blog or Website?

Hey, Ive an idea to create a website which by the looks of things hasn't yet been done. The site/blog would invole alot of videos being sent in from around the world and was wondering what the best way to do this would be? How to start? Who to go through for hosting etc? Is a blog the way to go and people just forward in their videos to that? I will need alot of space to store the videos and who would be best to go through? Cheers in advance

 

Wordpress would be a easy CMS to use. It has tons of themes you could use and tons of community support. Hosting is available on a variety of services like bluehost or dreamhost.

 

Hey man

I'll give you an honest advice and tell you what I'm using now. If you are on the start of your career, then I'm pretty sure you will go for Shared Hosting plans. Two companies I recommend are:
-Hostgator
-iPage

And I'm talking this from my personal experience. I'm currently hosting my sites at iPage and I'm happy with it. You can stumble on lot of positive reviews about this company and if you are a newbie then iPage is a great solution. Almost free plans with a bonus free domain.

If you don't have coding knowledge, then go with WordPress and start creating your very first website.

If you are interested to hear more about Marketing, well...that's a lot longer. So if you need a help, feel free to send me a message. I will be really happy to answer every question. Or you can also visit my website (check signature) where you can find some useful informations that could help you out.

Have a great day!

 

It's funny... blog vs. website. There's really not much of a difference. Anyone familiar with online business and websites at one point or another ends up monetizing their site in some fashion (ik not always). While maybe there's a "technical" difference, when you sit down and start, you'll soon find that they are basically one of the same. Now an actual online business and a blog are typically a bit different.

The best advice I could give you, think in terms of "blog" and NOT "website" (money making). Write about a topic you are interested in, if you don't, you WILL LOSE interest and eventually outsource all your content. That's not fun, especially if you are trying to learn coding, seo, and everything in between along the way. I don't care how stupid a topic it is or how many people will say there's no money in it, because if you put the time in, you'll strike it rich $$ at some point. If it's a topic you can see yourself writing about or product you can pitch whole heartily, than it's a winner in my book. So...

don't stress over the details, because there is a lot more to stress about... lol Everything will fall into place. Unfortunately, that's usually later than sooner . Something I'am 99% sure most of us DP'ers can agree with. That's what DigitalPoint is here for...

Like VukasinI said, can't go wrong with hostgator or even webhostinghub (not a reseller as far as I can see ). Both hosting companies I've had good experiences with. Whatever you end up w/, make sure they have online customer support (godaddy...joke). Go for the cheapest plans, but the plan with enough flexibility to create multiple sites (unlimited addon domains). You'll want that. Don't invest in higher $$ plans. You'll be surprised w/ what you can do on shared hosting...

Definately wordpress. Honestly, don't waste your time with any other CMS (unless you have the time). You already made a step in the right direction by going with your own hosting company, having full control over your website is overall, far better than what you'll get with wordpress.com. Not to be confused w/ wordpress.org, that's the one you'll be wanting to use. After you figure the "upgrades" from wordpress.com to get some control over your site, vs. the few dollars a month you spend on hosting...wordpress.org is the winner. I would only advise using wordpress.com if you are not looking to jump in head first. Something I wish I had done. Spent tireless months working on such a limited platform. Wordpress.org is ~completely free btw (aside from premium themes, plugins, etc.).

To answer your exact question head on. Host your videos on youtube, earn cash from them, and embed your videos on your wordpress site. All it takes is literally posting the video urls into the page. And there's a lot of plugins out there to stylize those videos for a fast load time . Why use your own resources when you don't have too . Anyone else more familiar with video sites may have better suggestions...

Source:
A ~perfectionist who has been doing this for a little less than one year and was/is in the same situation as you. Spent tireless hours on codeacademy.com learning to code, reading every seo article under the sun, and still falling short. Don't bite off more than you can chew. I'll tell you what. A basic knowledge of html & css (incredibly easy), will get you far enough (php doesn't hurt ). Don't spend unnecessary hours customizing your site (Yh, I know, my blog looks like shit lol ). For the most part, SEO = common sense. On this forum you can find just about every ~blackhat tactic google is hammering down on. At the end of the day, a website, blog, whatever, is never really finished. And anyone with enough appreciation of websites can agree with that.

have fun . Longest post to date haha...nice

 

Thanks so much for all the help thats brilliant! Basically the idea was to have a site where people throughout the world could send a video in of a certain niche i am interested in and share it with others. That's the reason i was thinking a blog which is maybe linked into a site. With Youtube is there a limit to the amount of data you can upload as this has the potential to have a hell of a lot of Gigabites uploaded! lol Ill take each of your advice and info on as its very valuable to me. Cheers

 

A blog is a website and a website can contain a blog. You can use Wordpress as the platform, have a 'brochure' type of page in the index, with the company presentation etc. and a blog in a separate page, which is also run from the same Wordpress installation and with the same graphic theme. Most businesses that use WP are doing it this way. You can just add the regular pages for your business and, when you're ready to write articles, they are supported by wordpress and easy to implement. So, no need to think blog vs. site, your site, if done by someone who knows their deal, will contain everything you need

 

If its going to be a video site, having some unique written content cant hurt. So sticking that on the "blog" section of your site is the best way to go.

 

Thanks mate what would you mean by 'unique written content'. Ive little to no programming or computer skills

 

I meant just written/typed out words. Something search engines can process a little easier, opposed to just video titles...u dont need skills per say lol. Just install wordpress nd youre good do go

 

Oh yeh i got you now, i was thinking some sort of coding! lol Thanks

 

I recommend you choosing Ipage hosting if you have no illegal content on your site. Choose a shared hosting and pay 12$ for 1 year or 24$ for 2 years on promotions. I have hosting with them for last 1 year and not even a single downtime and 24/7 live support

Wordpress is the one and only one best cms I could think of. You can check themeforest.com and get some cool premium themes for your site as that is the only one you will be spending for. You should also choose to use Yoast Seo Plugin which has a free version and premium version. It is one of the best way to easily get indexed by search engines. You may also use their Video Seo Plugin from them.

Now coming to the videos part, i won't recommend you uploading videos to your server. If you do you are gonna need a fast server and fast internet. If a video is 50 MB and 1000 people view it per day then 50 X 1000 MB is 50, 000 MB which is nearly 50 GB. if you have many different videos it will take more bandwidth and server load. Without proper budget you may not be able to run it.

I recommend you using youtube to upload your videos to and then just embed it to your site. I think there are some wordpress plugins which embeds video automatically and post it when a channel is updated.

Blog is a good way to share your videos, try adding some short articles about the video in the post and get more organic visitors to your site.

 

If it is a video site, you should go with VPS / Dedicated hosting with lot of additional disk space.

But like others, I recommend to go with shared hosting. You can test, experiment and verify your idea. It will take time to build the site.
If the site grows larger, you can move to a new server. It is ok to have one day downtime and save a lot of money.

Shared hosting ($60/year) vs Dedicated Managed server for video hosting (minimum $150/MONTH) - Save $$$

 

I don't see any reasons for him to get a Managed Dedicated server actually. If you want to go for dedicated server try, datashack.net which are unmanaged. But the minimum cost is atleast 29USD/month so it is better to go for shared hosting as builtSEO said

 

A video site uses lot of CPU resource once you get 100s of visitors watching simultaneously.
The H264 and other video codec saves bandwidth and but uses lot of CPU processing power.

Generally Managed Dedicated Server from a popular vendors cost $150.
of course you can get unmanaged for low price.

 

Don't you think you think you're jumping the gun a bit. The site in question isn't even up yet. Go for shared hosting and upgrade when need be. Why invest more money now, on something that isn't a sure bet. At least that's how i look at it...

 

A tube site will be an uphill battle. There are several CMS solutions specifically for video sites, so you'd have to experiment a lot to find one right for your needs. If you are hosting the vids yourself, then be prepared for a LOT of headaches and hiring staff to moderate the mess.

If you do go with WP, then add Buddypress to create a community feel for your members.

Good luck!

 

Best of all first start blogging using free hosting from Blogger or wordpress, once you are active and gain traffic, you can purchase wordpress hosting plans or migrate to any of your desired host.

 

Website that has a blog.