Guide to Video Hosting on Static Websites

Webweaving
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I give thanks to this forum’s resources list, and others’ recommendations for being beneficial to the guide.

This can also be read here on my website
https://sgtcharlynne.neocities.org/videosharing

Available as a .PDF to download this tutorial for offline reading.

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.

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:

  • Internet Archive
    • What it says on the tin can. Has a lot of music, applications, literature, and even videos people can upload for preservation. You can even add multiple videos and other files in an item, almost like a playlist.
  • Abyss
    • Free video hosting service. Though the compression on videos under 1080p is pretty bad.
  • PeerTube
    • Actually improved a lot more than I expected, even got rid of the bad instances. Now includes mobile apps. Can be hosted by yourself or Fedihost.
    • Yes, this can make platforms for others to upload, but it can also just be for only you and only your videos.

Paid services:

  • DigitalOcean Spaces
    • CDN for video streaming + 250gb for $5 a month, and 2 cents per additional GB.
  • Hetzner
    • 1 TB for $4/mo. Is slow since it’s mainly for backup storage, but it does work well. Make sure to pay before the monthly deadlines.
  • Backblaze B2
    • Cloud storage offering $6/TB/mo.
  • Contabo
    • 250 GB for $2.99 / month. Has worse contact service though.

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>

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.

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:

Another cool thing you can setup

If you really need to make your website look like YouTube, MediaCMS does the job very well where it gives you the familiar UI you need along with support for video, audio, image, and PDF. It even allows subtitles and much more.

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

13 Likes
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Thank you for the guide! I would also add MediaCMS as an alternative, overkill option

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i’ve been thinking about this in my head for weeks. thank you for this detailed post!

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Thanks for the suggestion! I really love how this manages to mimic YouTube’s UI well, so this seem promising for those who want to make their own sites to share videos but also make it look like a familiar platform. I’ve just updated the guide.

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This is great! I appreciate the different levels of complexity you have in the guide. I thought self-hosting video would be a big project / need a dynamic website, but it looks easy to start small and scale up if I need to. Thanks for sharing!

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I’d still mention / consider:

https://www.bitview.net/

Even despite the 720p limitation, and also time limit I think? There’s tons of content / videos that operate 100% under those conditions.

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I was going to consider it when writing this guide, but with BitView’s data breach and its recent controversy according to the blog, I had to decline. Also, I wanted people to host their own videos.

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Excellent writeup, thank you for sharing!

1 Like