Hosting Video on Amazon S3

Video hosting on Amazon S# is both fantastic and a headache for non-technical busy people.  It is a great service but you have to understand what the service is.  There is NO way to upload your video to Amazon S3 from any interface they provide.  Amazon is simply scalable storage and bandwidth for steaming them out.

So you either need someone that understands how to work with Amazon S3 or you need to take some time to figure out how to use the tools.

Info about how to  embed video hosted on the Amazon S3 Web Service.

First, why Amazon S3?

Amazon S3 offers storage of files at a very low cost and provides very scalable and reliable storage and backup at unbeatable prices.  Its the best 50 cents I spend each month.

How to Embed a Video stored on Amazon S3

Lots of websites are offering courses and membership areas to help you embed video into your blog or membership website which are stored on Amazon S3.  I did not want to pay and I am fairly technical and  I knew I could figure it out.   But I was pulling my hair out because I kept almost getting it to work, but not quit.

After a lot of testing and effort  I downloaded JW FLV Media Player, posted the files in the root directory of my website and used the site setup wizard to get the code just right.

Finally, I found that this works with FLV files which is one video format.  So now I am making all my videos in the FLV format.

The great thing is that with this code and wizard I can now embed video into my private membership sites that are hosted on Amazon S3.

Eventually I hit another problem.  The embed code did not work well in WordPress.   I found that WordPress has disabled the embed tag because of security issues.  Luckily, I found the Wordoress Plugin pb-embedFlash – The documentation was not great because it lacked the basic examples in a clear way.  However, I experimented with it a bit and found I could simply type [flash url] and it would replace the tag with the flash player and play the FLV file.  Like most things in WordPress, once you get used to it, it works very well.

If you are looking for the best video hosting solution that will allow you to embed video into your blogs and websites, I assure you the above solution using Amazon S3 and the Free Video Player are great options.  Remember that if you are using the video player to make money, you need to buy a license.

Hosting Video on Amazon S3 is the professional option – just be ready to put some time into figuring out the details.

Free Membership Site Templates vs Paid

With thousands of WordPress Templates available for free to use on your WordPress Membership Site, why would you pay for one?

There are several reasons to pay for a membership site template.  I will warn you that these things will not be fun if you are not at least slightly technical in nature.

#1 A purchased WordPress theme is going to have fewer users so your site will look more distinct.

#2 Support – Some WordPress themes that you purchase have a degree of support.  If there is a message board and a develop to ask questions from, that is great.

#3 Tools – Many new templates not only have a great look and feel, but they also have great tools built into them.

#4 SEO – Some professional templates are highly designed to get maximum seo results.

#5 Features – Many WordPress Themes will have wonderful features built in.

#6 Time Savings – Because of all the extras, purchasing a WordPress theme can save you a lot of money.

Here is the bad new.  Anyone can build a WordPress theme and you can use it for your membership site template – but you have to know what you are looking for and how to evaluate the tools and features to make a good buying decision.  You could do searches on Google to find WordPress Themes that people are using as membership site templates and contact the person using it.  You can ask them if they like the WordPress Theme, if they found it easy to set up, etc.

Carefully evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of purchasing a wordpress theme for your membership site template.

WP Wishlist Upgrade

Below is an email I got from the Wishlist Member Team. (As of January 20th, 2009)

I highly recommend their plugin for membership sites.  It is much more robust than those free membership site software options that are out there.  I have also used their support (excellent) and they are continuing to improve the product.  Purchase here

————————-

Over the last two months the WishList Member
team has been working extremely hard on
adding some MAJOR features.

These new features will not only make running
your membership site easier but they will
also save you a lot of time.

We’ll go into more detail with some upcoming
videos but here’s a sneak peak of what’s
coming on Thursday (Jan.22)…

———————————————
1)  Full PayPal and Clickbank Integration
———————————————

With the Full Integration, you can now have
two-way communication between WL Member and
these payment processors.

So if one of your members were to cancel
their subscription or their payment doesn’t
go through, they will be automatically
blocked from accessing your site

———————————————
2)  Email Broadcasting
———————————————

If you’ve ever wanted to email your members
right from within WordPress, now you can!

The Email Broadcasting feature now gives you
the ability to send an email boradcast
message straight to your members.

The best part is, your messages don’t have to
be generic because you can specify which
membership levels you want to send them to.

———————————————
3)  Autoresponder Intrgation
———————————————

We know many of our customers use various 3rd
party autoresponders (we do too).

So what we wanted to provide was an easy way
to send the registration info directly to
your autoresponder once someone registers for
your site.

That way you can design a follow up sequence
to keep them excited about your site.

Now that’s possible as major services like
Aweber and AutoResponse Plus have just been
added.  Plus we are working to add others as
we speak!

———————————————
4)  Email and IP Blocking
———————————————

If you have troublesome customers well now
you can keep them away from your site!

We’ve beefed up the security of WL Member by
adding email and ip blocking which means you
can keep those pests away for good

———————————————
5)  IP Login Security
———————————————

Along the same lines, we’ve also increased
the member security by giving you the option
to limit the number of logins per ip address.

That means people won’t be able to share
their login and password info to your site
with all their friends.

And if they do reach the limit, they will be
automatically blocked and you’ll be notified.
How you handle them is up to you

—–

That’s just a quick look at some of the
upcoming features but there are also a lot of
other modifications that we’ll share later
this week.

The good news is, you’ll get the upgrade to
WL Member v2.0 absolutely free (If you already have a purchased copy)

——————————-

Again, we use this product and highly recommend it.  The new upgrade makes it even better.

Buy Wishlist Member if you want to do a membership website.

Membership Site Software – Moodle

Moodle is an open source online learning tool that you can use to create membership sites.

If you get a hosting account at Bluehost, you can use Fantastico to automatically create a Moodle website.

As you know if you are a regular reader of this website, I prefer the wordpress plugin  wishlist, which can also be set up on that same bluehost account.

Here is why my Moodle Membership Site failed:

1. Too many options – and I did not ignore them – I had to play.  Too many things will kill a membership site.
2. Poor integrating with eCommerce. Wishlist auto-builds your membership accounts if you use 1ShoppingCart.  How many people want to wait 24 to 48 hours for access to a membership site when they sign up.  Please note that with enough effort I am sure you can figure out how to do it with Moodle, but I could never get it to work and I have a technical background.
3. Basic templates were terrible. To make it look nice you have to do a lot of customization and design.  On the other end, with wordpress you have 1,000′s of great, free blog templates that make great, free membership sites.
4. Confusing courses - Moodle is probably very good for a department or even a full school to manage learning materials.  However, when you are trying to set up a streamlines membership site you do not want software that requires people to enroll in different courses and such.  The whole thing simply made it more difficult to manage.

Where there some good things using Moodle as our Membership Site Software?

Absolutely.  Moodle as membership site software has some advantages, such as if you want to do assessments, quizes, have discussion boards on each course, a glossary and many other real classroom kind of features.  That said, I have found that the cleaner and simpler a membership site is, the more likely people will use it and stay in the program.