Welcoming Shine

Also available as a .PDF to download this tutorial for offline reading.

We really need somewhere else to share our videos.

Are you tired of what YouTube has become? Video hosting being expensive? No good platform alternative? Then there’s still hope. This is not about making “the next YouTube”. This is about making your own static personal website solely for your own videos, and it can pay off.

Contrary to people’s belief, making a website is actually easy. The ones you see on Neocities or Nekoweb are not like the slow and bloated ones full of ads and scripts and trackers, they’re actually tiny files of HTML and CSS easily made with any text editor like Notepad, VSCodium, Brackets, and more.

There are also templates and widgets you can easily copy or download over to your website for quicker progress.

Resources:

step 1: getting a host and a website

You do not have to use bland and creatively limiting website builders like Wix and SquareSpace, there are many free webhosts that promise you control of your website along with some good paid ones.

Free webhosts:

Paid webhosts:

You can also get a domain name from Porkbun.

Webmastery (HTML & CSS) tutorials for beginners:

Layouts and website templates:

Layout Builders

Cool page builder:

Cheatsheets:

step 2: hosting and adding video(s)

Be cautious that these free sites are not meant to handle thousands of videos regarding the bandwidth and storage. I would probably recommend encoding yours to smaller sizes and/or using a paid service. Use them with care please.

Free services:

Paid services:

Hosting your own server as an option:

Get a burner computer to hook up to a storage and use your home connection. There are a few open-source services I can recommend for getting a storage VPS and a self hosted CDN such as SeaweedFS or Garage. It may be more than setting up an SFTP or Rsync then copying the file over to a designated folder but it works.

Adding the video to your website:

When you’ve set up your website and your pages, the next thing to do is to embed in a video. Just as easy as pasting this in your HTML file. You can use and modify it if you need to.

<iframe src="https://archive.org /embed/Free_VJ_LOOPS _created_with_ THRILL_SERIES_11" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Result:

There’s other options such as changing the video size and whatnot: width=“640” height=“360”

I use iframes for easy embedding, you can also learn more about video stuff here.

step 3: adding comments and such

Beforehand, I’ll let you know that widgets don’t work on Neocities for new users unless you get a Supporter plan. Though, there are other webhosts that allow you to use them for free.

Comment Widgets:

If you want to share video recommendations to others on your website, it’s as quick as writing up links, and you can even stylize it if you want to. Learn more about it here.

Need an alternative to “monetizing” your videos? Linking to your Kofi, Patreon, or any donation system works. Plus, you have more creative freedom to do whatever while getting paid compared to YouTube. You don’t even need to sponsor a shady product that has a scandal waiting to happen.

As part of making websites more social, webrings work for checking out others’ websites.

Making a Webring:

If you’ve managed to set up your website and your video pages, then congrats, you’re now able to share your videos without struggling with YouTube. Just be sure to preserve them for long and tell others to archive your videos if you need to.

If you're still itching for a video platform. There are two sites that could interest you.

https://www.bitview.net/

BitView's basically an homage to old YouTube in terms of design. The userbase is decent, and it's okay overall. Though, it's required that videos "must be under 15 minutes long and less than 2GB in size."

https://vanillo.tv/

Vanillo's modern interface makes it look welcome to newcomers, and the userbase is nice. What's very helpful is that you can even monetize your videos. There's also the option of paying for "Vanillo Pro" to have the ability to upload in 4K and with lossless audio.

https://www.newgrounds.com/

Newgrounds isn't really a general video sharing platform, it's mainly for animation. However, it has a helpful forum community. Not only does it allow animation videos, but it also supports art, music, and games. You may already know what this site is, but what I really want to say is that if you want to get into making animation, Newgrounds is one of the best places to do so, given how YouTube poorly treats the independent animation scene.

If you think this guide is helpful, please share it with others to help them.

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