What Is Vodspot?

Want your own video site? Where you’re totally in charge? But with just a few mouse-clicks, no technical knowledge, and is free?

Then Vodspot is for you. It’s our new publishing platform for your Vodpod videos collection. It lets you turn your Vodpod collection into your own video site (we’ll host it for you) , and that you can use to create a video section of your site or blog or just to have your own little video world in cyberspace.

vodspot_screenshot

If you already use one of our widgets, you can think of it as a widget on steroids.

Sometimes a picture is better than words — you can see an expample of what a Vodspot looks like above, or click here or here or here to see a few examples of “Vodspots” in action.

A Vodspot is powered by your Vodpod collection. It literally takes about 5 minutes to set one up, unless you want to really customize your site (you can fully customize the HTML in the header or footer, as well as the CSS for the page).

Like popular blogging platforms, we give you multiple templates (four to start, we’ll be adding many more in the coming months); let you configure the site as you like (with drag and drop modules); make it easy to add your own styling (you can even change the CSS); and enable you to domain map the site to the subdomain or domain you want.

If you want to make a little money with your Vodspot, just enter your Google Adsense code and we’ll run ads credited to your account on 50% of the page. Or, if you have a high-traffic and high volume sites,and you need to control more of the advertising or use a different advertising solution, you can upgrade to our premium offerings.

The rest of the entries on this site are to help you set up your Vodspot.

If you’re ready to get started, just click HERE.

Advertising on Your Vodspot

There are three basic choices for advertising on your Vodspot.

The basic, free version of Vodspot includes advertising. We’ll run ads credited to your Google Adsense account on 50% of your Vodspot pages, all you need to do is to enter your Google Adsense account number from the Vodspot configuration page (click “Advertising”).

If more control and flexibility is what you need, you can upgrade to a premium account. With a premium account, you control 80% of the advertising inventory on your Vodspot, and you can use other advertising solutions or platforms. It costs $20 per month, so it only makes sense if you have a reasonably high volume blog.

Finally, you can go totally ad free if you like. That costs $30 per year — about the cost of one coffee a month.

We’d love your feedback on all of this. Don’t be shy, feel free to comment here on this blog or over at our new Google Group.

Setting up your Vodspot: New to Vodpod?

If you don’t yet have a Vodpod account, you can sign up here and get both your Vodpod and Vodspot started.

First thing you’ll want to do as a new Vodpod users is to build up your video collection. If you’re unsure how to do that, we have a wealth of information on our Vodpod Blog here.

Once you’ve got your video collection started, you can configure your Vodspot. Learn how to get started with this post.

Setting Up Your Vodspot: Vodpod Members

Setting up your Vodspot will take 5-10 minutes, a little more if you want to domain map it.

To get started, go to this link (you’ll need to be logged in at Vodpod, naturally):

http://vodpod.com/account/new_vodspot

(If you’re new to Vodpod, go here).

If you maintain more than one collection on Vodpod, we’ll ask you to choose which one you want to use to power your Vodspot. We’ll also ask you to give it a name, and a subdomain on vodspot.tv (you can domain map the site later if you want).

Once you’ve signed up to create a Vodspot, we’ll take you to the configuration screen:

From here, you can get started setting up your Vodspot. Click “Template” to choose the template you’d like:

Each template allows you to add a variety of modules: RSS feeds to link back to your blog or website or Twitter stream or whatever; a tag cloud; different video modules (showcasing videos by tag, or most popular); additional functionality such as “Add a video” (which allows your members to suggest videos for your Vodspot); and a search module. Just click the “Add a module” link to add modules to various regions of your template.

Once you have the modules you want, you can drag-and-drop them to re-arrange their order, click the delete icon to remove them, or the wrench to configure a module.

You’re now on your way. There is plenty more you can do to make your Vodspot just the way you want it — modify colors, customize your header (if you know a little CSS, you can match your blog or website header), map it to a domain you own, configure advertising options and more.

We’ll use this blog to add more detail on these options — feel free to ask us questions here! — and on our Google Group we’ve just set up.

RSS Feeds on your Vodspot

Your Vodspots now have RSS feeds for the homepage, tag pages, and the most popular videos pages.  If you’re using a modern web browser, you’ll notice a little RSS icon in the location bar when on these pages.

Customizing your Vodspot Header

We expect that many Vodspot users have existing websites or blogs, and want to incorporate their Vodspot into them.  With this in mind, we’ve made it so that you have complete control over your header, to help replicate the design of your existing website in Vodspot.

Basic Header Customization

For most users, our basic header customization will be sufficient.  This allows you to set the name of your site, a link back to your main site, the colors, and an optional logo.

Advanced Header Customization

For users looking for more control over their header, you can click the “Edit Header HTML” link and provide your own HTML for the header.  If you would like to replicate your main website’s header, just copy and paste it into this field.

If your html requires some CSS, you can click the “CSS” tab and enter it there.

If you need any help with this, please contact me at spencer at vodpod dott com.

Setting up Domain Mapping

When you setup a new Vodspot, you will be given a URL like http://your-collection.vodspot.tv.  Some of you may wish to setup your vodspot under you own domain, such as videos.your-domain.com, and this can be done by a process known as “domain mapping.”

To setup domain mapping, you will need to do some basic DNS configuration.  How you do this will depend on which DNS provider you’re using for your domain name.  Most major domain name registrars, such as godaddy.com, provide their own DNS services.  The basic steps are as follows:

1. Login to the webpage for managing your DNS.
2. Create a new CNAME record.
3. Enter the subdomain that you want your Vodspot to be located at.  For example, if you want videos.your-domain.com, you would enter “videos”.  Do not enter “http://”
4. In the host name field, enter “hosted.vodpod.com”.
5. Save this CNAME record.
6. Go to vodpod.com/account, and click your Vodspot on the right side of the screen.
7. Click the “Domain Mapping” link in the Vodspot configuration.
8. Enter the hostname you want your vodspot mapped to, “videos.your-domain.com” in this example.  Do not include “http://”.
9. Note that it may take a few minutes for this to work.

Godaddy Instructions

Since it is impossible to provide instructions for every DNS provider, I will provide instructions for domains hosted with godaddy.com.  If you don’t use godaddy, don’t worry, the basic steps listed above are the same accross all DNS providers.

1. Log in to your account at www.godaddy.com.
2. Open the Domains tab and select My Domain Names. You’ll be directed to the Domain Manager page.
3. Click the domain that you’d like to use with Google Apps.
4. Click the Total DNS Control And MX Records in the box entitled Total DNS Control.
   Note: Adding entries to the Manage Subdomains section does not create a CNAME record.
5. Click Add New CNAME Record. If you’ve already created a CNAME record for the address, click the marker icon under the Actions column next to the existing CNAME record.
6. Enter the subdomain that you wish to use for your video site. For example, if you picked videos.mydomain.com as your address, enter videos for step one.
   Step 2: As the host name, hosted.vodpod.com
   Step 3: Leave the TTL value to the default selection.
7. Click OK. In the Review and status box, you can see the results of your updates.

If you have any problems getting this working, please leave a comment or contact me directly, spencer at vodpod dot com.

Vodspot Themes

Similar to popular blogging platforms, Vodspot has a variety of “themes” you can choose and use for your video site. Just select the theme that looks right for you, then customize it as much — or little — as you like.

The newest theme is our grid theme — you can see it in action here.

Just click the “design” tab to set up the theme you like.

Promoting Your Vodspot from Your Main Site or Blog

We expect a lot of folks will want to use Vodspot to build a video section for their blog or website.

We’ve provided two main ways for you to integrate your Vodspot into your site:

1. If you have a “header” for your blog or website, you can include cross-links or tabs or other forms of navigation in your header that enable people to go to your new videos section or site (powered by Vodspot). You can use the same navigation, look and feel on the Vodspot site, by adding custom HTML to the header and footer of your site, so that you have consistent navigation and cross-links.

2. We also provide widgets for your Vodspot site that you can incorporate into your website or blog. Unlike our regular widgets, the thumbnails on the widget take you to the Vodspot site.

If you have other suggestions for how we could provide better integration with your blog or website, let us know.