• Creating a Multimedia Experience: The Daily Quirk

    Bloggers use video to enhance their sites’ content in all kinds of ways, including everything from clips of films they review to instructional videos demo’ing DIY projects to home videos of family and friends. Adding visuals adds clarity to what you’re writing and helps explain complex concepts by helping your readers engage in a different way.

    The Daily Quirk is a collaborative magazine-style blog covering everything from film to fashion to fitness. We love its look, its tone — and the way it uses VIdeoPress.

    Scrolling down The Daily Quirk’s home page soon brings you to a sidebar widget highlighting featured videos that are uploaded and displayed using VideoPress. (The Daily Quirk is a WordPress.com blog, so it’s using the VideoPress upgrade; self-hosted sites can sign up for VideoPress and then use it via a plugin.)

    dailyquirkvideos

    The Daily Quirk is able to show sneak-peaks of upcoming films and insider interviews, like these pieces with the stars of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy taken at the most recent San Diego Comic-Con.

    Sure, The Daily Quirk could explain why the new Jason Sudeikis movie is so funny or paraphrase an actor’s description of what made a role challenging to play — and it’d be fun to read — but it’s even more powerful when we can see and hear for ourselves.

    Best of all, they’re using VideoPress, which means no bandwidth limits and no ads. When one of their posts goes viral, their hosting will never go down, and they never have to worry that an inappropriate ad that doesn’t mesh with their site will appear at the end of an embedded video. Great for them, and great for their readers!

    Want to take control of your video? VideoPress is a $60/year upgrade for WordPress.com users, or the upgrade plus this free plugin for self-hosted WordPress sites.

    Michelle Weber

    August 7, 2013
    Community
    Multimedia, the daily quirk, Video, VideoPress

  • Add Another Dimension to Your Site With Video

    As a blogger, you pore over your choices of words and images to make sure you’re communicating exactly what you intend to your readers. Why not add another tool to your arsenal? Using video can be an awesome way to illuminate, instruct, or just create a different kind of connection with your audience.

    You might think that video is just for news sites or college kids with too much time on their hands.  Think again — video can be used to enhance your content in lots of ways:

    • Were you going to include a photo gallery? Try video instead.
    • Do you write a DIY or cooking blog? Host your own show.
    • Mommyblogger? We’d love to see your rugrats’ antics.
    • Write a travel site? Give us the flavor of the medina you just visited in Casablanca with a video tour.
    • Use your blog as a journal? Try talking right to the camera to add a raw dimension to your musings.

    Now that you can shoot high-quality video with a DSLR camera or mobile phone, the sky’s the limit. Heck, you can upload videos directly from your iPhone to your blog!

    Once you have that perfect clip to push your post over the top, upload it right to your site with VideoPress, available both as a plugin for self-hosted WordPress.org sites and as an upgrade for WordPress.com sites. VideoPress is made to work with WordPress, so uploading couldn’t be simpler. And since you’re uploading the video right to your own site, there are none of the downsides of using a third-party video service: no ads, no maximum length for what you can upload, and best of all, no redirecting, so your readers start and end on your video and stay on your site the whole time.

    Since VideoPress is an Automattic joint, you know the technical side (that is, the side you never have to worry about) is going to be clean and efficient. VideoPress automatically selects the best video player for your viewers. Readers see a preview, including a title and preview image, as the full video loads. The preview is lightweight and HTML-based, so the rest of your page loads with no lag time.

    WordPress and VideoPress work together to make publishing online video easy as can be, so the only limit is what you can capture.

    Michelle Weber

    December 6, 2012
    Community
    Blogging, Multimedia, Video, VideoPress
 

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