Using videos is a great way to grab a website visitor’s attention, promote a brand, and boost your conversion rates. However, if you want to host the video yourself and upload videos directly to your WordPress site, you can experience a number of difficulties.
Should I upload a video directly to WordPress?
WordPress offers it users the opportunity to upload videos directly to WordPress webpages, however, with limited space and low-quality bandwidth it is advisable not to use WordPress to upload videos to your pages.
Adding videos to your website can help to capture the attention of your visitors and boost your conversions but videos can take up a great deal of storage space and bandwidth. This can slow down your site and lead to a negative viewer user experience.
There is a difference between uploading videos and embedding videos on a webpage.
You can use the WordPress media library to upload videos like you would upload other media files like images. While stating that, it is better to upload your videos to a third-party video hosting site and embed the video code on your site.
Embedding takes two steps with you uploading video file to a third-party video hosting service and then copy the embed code of the video and paste it on your own WordPress site.
The video appears on your site where you paste the embed code but instead of streaming from the server where your site is hosted, it is streamed from the server of a video hosting platform.
7 Reasons NOT to host videos on WordPress
There are many reasons why it is not advisable to self-host videos by uploading them directly to your own WordPress site. Here are 7 top reasons below:
1. Limited server bandwidth
Video files are often large and when many viewers try to watch them at the same time, this puts stress on a shared hosting server of the provider.
Your web hosting provider allocates bandwidth and other resources for servers on a network based on average traffic rates. Too many requests on a single server will quickly exceed the limits. This usually happens if you upload videos directly to WordPress.
When your video file lives on a single server with limited bandwidth, your web visitors may experience annoying delays. Website visitors may have to wait for a file to download or stream and this is worse if they have a slow internet connection.
If you plan to display many high-quality or high-definition videos, your server’s storage limit can fill up very quickly and it’s better to host your videos elsewhere if you don’t want them to load slowly or freeze.
2. No single file standard format
Most viewers watch videos from a desktop or laptop with a high-speed internet connection but there are plenty who watch from mobile devices like phones or tablets.
Browsers and mobile devices have different requirements when it comes to displaying video compression methods. Major browsers all support different video formats and to ensure a video plays back on all major web browsers. This means you have to convert video into multiple formats.
If you host your videos on your WordPress website, you have to convert them yourself as it is not done automatically. If you upload large videos you website will not only use more bandwidth but ruin the user experience on your site.
A video hosting platform provides a responsive code/format for your videos. Videos are automatically converted to multiple video formats providing a hassle free user experience.
3. Cumbersome video player code
A video player is a small piece of web software you install on your site. It automatically detects the device requesting a video and its connection speed to deliver the appropriate version to the user.
WordPress does include a built-in video player so you don’t have to use a third-party plugin but the code you need to create is cumbersome. It has to tell the video player which formats you’ve created and where they are located on the server.
4. Video management and creating personalized templates is difficult
It is not easy to create a video section in WordPress that separates your videos from your images and other uploads.
Videos are simply mixed in with all other media library content. This makes it difficult to manage them properly and manage all your digital assets on WordPress.
5. You don’t have access to in-depth video analytics
Access to video analytics is vital if you want to know how your videos are performing.
This means more than just how many people view, share or comment on your video but in-depth analytics such as how much of a video a viewer watches and which parts are watched most.
6. Loss of visibility and traffic: Video SEO
People may not know that your WordPress site exists and won’t discover the videos you host on it.
When you host your video on a well-known third-party video hosting platform, you can benefit from their added features of optimizing your video with enhanced features like Video SEO and Video Branding.
Video hosting solutions often provide robust solutions so that your videos are discoverable on Google and enhance the quality of your videos.
7. Security issues
There are various security measures you can employ on video hosting websites that are not an option when you host videos on your WordPress site.
With video being one of the most expensive investments for an organization, it is important for enterprises to protect their intellectual property with video security and protection.
How to host a video
If you first upload your video to a video hosting service, you can then embed it into your WordPress post or page.
Once you’ve uploaded your video to the video hosting service, copy the embed code of your video, return to your WordPress site and paste it into your post or page where you want the video to appear.
Uploading your videos to a video hosting platform instead of directly to your WordPress site offers you numerous advantages like:
One-stop management platform: Digital Asset Management (DAM)
Video hosting solutions offer you the opportunity to organize videos and manage users with a robust centralized digital asset management solution.
Videos are searchable and accessible with control over who has permission to access them. There are various methods used to enhance search so people can find what they’re looking for without difficulty.
Quality optimization
Using a video hosting platform makes it possible to convert video into all the necessary formats and the embedded video player automatically detects a user’s device, browser and internet speed, serving the appropriate video file to them.
A Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A video hosting platform has networks of web servers all over the world so when you upload a video. It is automatically replicated on each server in their content delivery network (CDN).
When a visitor to your site requests a video, it is served from the CDN server nearest to their location, which ensures that it plays smoothly.
Video Analytics
When you use a video hosting platform, you have access to detailed video analytics such as full viewer histories, trending graphs and which CTA buttons convert the most can show how visitors interact with your videos and help you to improve them for better marketing.
Added video security
Once you decide on which hosting is best for you, a compatible WordPress protection plugin can secure your videos. Using the right video hosting platform gives you access to a number of very useful security features.
For example, you can restrict user access and make videos only available to a select audience. You can even specify the domain or domains on which your video may be embedded.
Conclusion
Uploading videos directly to your WordPress site can have a negative impact on the performance of your website, user experience and affect your bottom line.
You have more to lose than to gain, not only because it takes space and slows down your site but because of the complexity and inconvenience of uploading a video.
It is best to upload videos to a video hosting platform and use a video embed code to embed videos on your website. Video hosting platform offer you many advantages, from better management of your videos and great quality to in-depth analytics and excellent security.
