You just created a video and you’re ready to share it on your website. So you create a new post in your WordPress dashboard and upload your video to the Media Library. “Hmm… that’s taking a while to upload,” you think to yourself. But that makes sense. The video is nearly ten minutes in length, and weighs in at more than 100 MB. When the file’s finally finished uploading, you click ‘Publish’ and… That’s when it starts to go wrong. Before long, feedback begins to trickle in… “I tried to watch your video, but it stopped playing after a few seconds.” “Hey, I see where your video should be, but all I see is a black box.” “I can’t play your video on my mobile device.” That’s odd. It worked for you earlier. You visit your site to pull up the video for yourself. This time, the page takes forever to load. Why is your site suddenly so slow? You’ve watched videos on other web sites and never encountered these issues. We’re Talking About Embedding vs. Self-Hosted Video Embedding a video is essentially a two-step process. First, you upload your video file to a third-party video hosting service like YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia. Then, you copy the URL to the video and paste it into a post or page on your own WordPress site. The video will appear on your site, wherever you pasted the URL. But the video itself is actually being streamed from the video host’s servers, instead of the web server where your WordPress site is hosted. Self-hosting means that you upload the video file to the same web server where your WordPress site is hosted, using the built-in file uploader in WordPress… the same way you might upload a photo or image to your site. With that as background, here are ten reasons you should never upload video files to your own web server — particularly if your site is hosted on a shared server. 1.Server Bandwidth Video files can be quite large in size. Unlike images—which are typically measured in kilobytes—an HD video file can easily weigh in at more than 100 MB. Now, imagine what will happen to your shared hosting server when dozens of folks attempt to watch the same video at the same time. Your web hosting provider allocates a certain amount of bandwidth and other resources for each server on their network, based on average traffic rates that do not include serving large media files to hundreds of individuals (or more) at the same time. Too many requests for a single large file will quickly exceed the limits of the web server on which your site is hosted, and bring your site—and any other sites that also “live” on the same server—to its knees. But you may never even get that far, because of… 2.File Size Limits and Storage Space Most web hosting providers limit the maximum size of uploaded files to 50 MB or less, prohibiting you from uploading video files that are longer than a few minutes or so in duration. Additionally, large media files may violate the terms of the Acceptable Use Policy with your hosting provider and result in your hosting account being shut down. If you’re able to upload large video files to your server on a frequent basis, you could eventually exceed the amount of storage space provided by your hosting account, especially if you regularly back up your site. In addition to the amount of disk space your video files will occupy, backups will begin to take significantly longer to execute. More data requires more disk space, and takes more time to backup. 3.Slow-Loading or Freezing Video If your video file resides on a single server with a limited amount of bandwidth, your audience may experience unexpected pauses while watching your video. It’s annoying. That’s because their computer is waiting for the file to download or stream to their computer. And it gets even worse if they have a slow Internet connection. 4.No Single File Format Standard for Web Video The current HTML5 draft specification does not specify which video formats browsers should support. As a result, the major web browsers have diverged, each one supporting a different format. Safari will play H.264 (MP4) videos, but not WebM or Ogg. Firefox will play Ogg or WebM videos, but not H.264. Thankfully, Chrome will play all the major video formats, but if you want to ensure your video will play back on all the major web browsers, you’ll have to convert your video into multiple formats: .mp4, .ogv, and .webm Now you’ve got three different video files to upload, each one potentially hundreds of megabytes in size. (By the way, just how much bandwidth does your Internet provider allow you to use before imposing bandwidth caps? You may soon find out after you’ve uploaded several gigabytes of video files.) 5.Hope you like converting videos. A lot. Most of your audience will likely watch your videos from their desktop or laptop with the benefit of a high-speed Internet connection. For those people, you’ll want to stream a large, HD-quality file so they can watch it full-screen if they choose. Generally, this means a 1080p or 720p file at a high streaming bitrate (5000-8000 kbps). But, you’ll also need to create a smaller, lower-resolution version for mobile devices like phones and tablets, as well as delivery to viewers with slower Internet connections. Now you’ve got half a dozen or more individual video files to ensure your video can be viewed on all the major web browsers and devices. But how does your site know which of those files to serve to each person? 6.Video Players A video player is a small piece of web software you install on your site that will automatically detect which device is requesting your video, along with its connection speed, and then deliver the appropriate version to that person. There are dozens of excellent video players that will handle this task (like Video.js), but WordPress also includes a built-in video player that will eliminate the need for a third-party video plugin. That’s great news! But it gets a bit tricky… 7.Cumbersome Code [or Shortcodes] Whether you use a third-party plugin or WordPress’ built-in video capabilities, you’ll need to create a bit of code to tell the video player which formats you’ve created, as well as their location on the server. It looks something like this… Even with the built-in support for video in WordPress, you’ll still need to construct a shortcode like this… [video width="960" height="540" mp4="movie.mp4" ogv="movie.ogv" webm="movie.webm"] So now you’ve correctly assembled your shortcode, uploaded all the video files to your server, and you’ve installed a video player to handle all the “behind the scenes” detection and such. So after all this effort, why does your video look better in some browsers/devices than others? 8.Varying Quality Across Browsers Remember earlier, when I said you’ll need to convert your videos into nearly half a dozen different formats and sizes? You’ll need a separate application to convert your files into all those formats. There are dozens of video conversion applications to choose from. And you may find that you need more than one to handle conversion into all the various formats. Unfortunately, every app handles the conversion process in a slightly different way. And that results in varying quality between your video files. Your video may look great as an MP4, but when you view the OGG file in Firefox, your video may look grainy or bitmapped. Making matters worse, each web browser handles video playback differently. So, the exact same video file may look fantastic in one browser, but horrible in another. I spent countless hours experimenting with the settings in my conversion software, and I never got this dialed in 100%. 9.Loss of Visibility and Traffic YouTube is the most popular video hosting platform in the world. More importantly, they’re also one of the first places many folks turn when they’re searching for a topic. When you host your video on a third-party site like YouTube or Vimeo, you also benefit from their popularity, and people could find your video—and subsequently, your own site—who otherwise wouldn’t have known your site existed. Plus, the social sharing features on those services encourage other folks to share your video with their friends and family, increasing your reach. 10.Piracy If you’re running a membership site with protected video content (like this site), you’ll also need to ensure your video files can’t be downloaded by some nefarious individual and then redistributed illegally on file sharing sites. One of the many reasons I now use and recommend Vimeo PRO is that you can hide your videos from the public, and then specify a particular domain on which the video may be embedded. This ensures your videos can only be embedded on your own site. So what’s the best way to add a video to your site? First, upload your video to a video hosting service, then embed your video into your WordPress post or page. When people view your page, the video will appear in the location where you pasted the URL. But the video file itself will be streamed from the video host’s servers, as opposed to your own server, where your WordPress site is hosted. The embedded video player will automatically detect the user’s device, browser, and Internet connection speed, and then serve the appropriate version of the video file to them. Nothing to install on your site. No plugins to keep up to date. No tricky code. Video hosts also employ massive networks of redundant web servers all around the world. When you upload a video, it is automatically replicated on every server on their content delivery network (CDN), which means when a visitor to your site requests a video, it will be served from the node that is nearest to their location, ensuring smooth playback and an enjoyable viewing experience. Your viewers will love you. And your video will be enjoyed the way you intended… no matter which device or browser your viewer chooses. Why do we recommend Vimeo PRO? If your videos are of a commercial nature, or if you want to protect your videos, making them available only to a select audience (like a membership site) you’ll want to check out Vimeo PRO. Vimeo PRO is a completely different service than their standard, free offering. It includes priority uploads and conversion, unlimited bandwidth, advanced statistics on your videos, and more. Best of all, you can specify the domain(s) on which your video may be embedded. This ensures your video only appears on your own website. Today, I upload my final video file to Vimeo PRO, paste the URL into my WordPress post, and hit publish. Easy. Vimeo converts my video into all the formats necessary, and their HTML5 embedded player works great across all devices. Their CDN serves streaming video faster than Amazon S3. And my videos look and sound precisely like I intended across all devices. If you run a membership site, you can hide your videos from the public
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