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Steps to create your own Video Blog

April 3, 2017

What is a video blog?

Video blog is becoming more and more popular on the internet. In fact, almost authors of video blogs are making a living through them. If you think about a video community or a business idea on video, you should create your own video blog immediately.

A video blog is a website includes a collection of videos with the intention of getting a response from viewers. Creating a video blog is the easiest way to share your own your ideas and expertise with the world.

How to create your own video blog?

Creating a video blog is easy once you dive in and give it a try. It can also be a lot of fun.

Follow the 5 easy steps below to create a video blog, CactusThemes believes you can have your blog ready to go in less than 30 minutes.

STEP 1: Identify the purpose/ reason of your video site.

Video blogs can be created for various personal and professional purposes.

For example:

STEP 2: Find a domain name and hosting

You need two things to get the site online:

  • A domain name (the address people use to get to your site like name.com). Actually, you have to pay an annual fee to use that web address. If you stop paying, someone else can use the domain instead.
  • Hosting (a service connects your site to the internet). If you have your own hosting, your website will load quickly and won’t go down for hours at a time. It’s convenient for everyone visit your website.

The thing that you should concentrate is choosing a perfect domaine name. It might be difficult, especially considering to choose domains which is short, easy to type and represents your brand.

Here are our recommendation for domains and hosting

  • Namecheap: the website for domain registration. This website is amazing and has a great search feature which will suggest alternate domain names if the one you want is taken.
  • Cloudways: the website for hosting that requires a bit of technical know about how to get your cloud server configured correctly.
  • SiteGround: another website for hosting.

STEP 3: Install WordPress

Download wordpress here: DOWNLOAD

STEP 4: Choose a theme and customize

You can choose a free theme or premium theme depends on your purposes.

  • If you started your video blog for a business purpose. You need it to grow your offline business, attract clients for your services or build a platform towards the launch of your book. A premium theme is the perfect choice. It’s so much more professional than a free theme that makes you come off as serious and credible. We highly recommend you to choose a premium theme in A collection of themed marketplaces of Envato.
  • However, if you started your blog as an online diary to share your experiences as a hobby or a temporary project, you might need a free theme to save some money. There are thousands of free themes for you in the Themes Directory of WordPress.

As you want to start video blog, you should choose a video wordpress theme with full video features. And now, we suggest you VideoPro and True Mag which are powerful video wordpress themes.

The premium theme will go with online documentation and online support that help you very much on theme customization. Well not all helpful tutorials are videos after all. Besides, there are TONS of tips on the WP Explorer WordPress blog that are very helpful for you.

STEP 5: Post video and create a successful video blog

Prepare contents with some equipment: a camcorder and a computer with video editing software installed onto it. Popular video editing softwares are Final Cut Pro, iMovie, and Windows Movie Maker. For example:

Post your videos. Now you can post your prepared videos to your video site. You can also improve the visibility of your videos by adding amazing titles, tags and description.

To have a successful video blog. You need to continuously create and update your content. In fact, videos about a topic you love, keeping an up to date video blog should be a joy and not a chore. The last but not least, to gain audiences for your video blog, you need to let the world know its exist! Through search engine optimization and blog aggregation sites, you can promotion your video site.

 

 

WordPress Tips

Add link to title of widget text, or any widgets

December 28, 2016

Sometimes you want to add link to the Widget Title. Using “widget_title” filter you want do that. Below is a simple way to do that. Let’s start with the code

add_filter('widget_title', 'my_widget_title_filter', 10, 3);
function my_widget_title_filter( $title, $instance, $id_base){
if($id_base == 'text'){
// so we only want to apply on Text Widget
if($title == 'Widget Text'){
$title = '<a href="#">' . $title . '</a>';
}
}

return $title;
}

So the “widget_title” filter accepts 3 parameters. The first one is the current title, the second one contains all parameters of the widget. The last one helps us to recognize what type of widget it is. So, we check

$id_base == 'text'

to make sure you only want to apply on Text Widget. Actually this check is not necessary if you don’t care about this. Next, we check which title should be added link. This will be tricky if you have different widgets having same title. Make sure widgets have different titles, so the link only be added to one widget.

Finally, we add link to the title. This solution is not perfect, but simple and fast enough to be used.

News, WordPress Tips

Bulk videos import for Video Themes

April 12, 2016

One of the most common questions for us when customers use our best video themes True Mag and NewsTube is to import multiple videos from YouTube into their database. The good news is that it is possible! If you read the description for the two themes, we listed 2 plugins which can help you to bulk import videos for a YouTube channel. Here are the detail

  1. YouTube WordPress plugin Video Import

    inline-preview
    YouTube videos to WordPress posts plugin that allows quick and easy video import into WordPress to create a video blog in a matter of minutes. Compatible by default with 2 video themes True Mag and NewsTube. Here is the tutorial for this plugin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opq9PzhY1go YouTube videos can be imported from YouTube playlists, user uploads or from search queries. You can retrieve any number of videos from YouTube when doing bulk import. Bulk import settings can be controlled to insert all or only some details: ie. description pulled from YouTube can be imported as excerpt, post text or can be skipped altogether. Also, when doing bulk imports, the posts created can have status published, draft or pending, depending on your option.

  2. WordPress Automatic Plugin

    preview-v3.16This plugin for video themes is quite powerful while it can get data from various sourses including Amazon, eBay, and Youtube. Well yes, we only care about video import feature, so here are the full features list

    Auto post Youtube videos to wordpress. wordpress automatic can searchyoutube.com for videos matching your keywords and post them to your wordpress blog
    * (all languages now supported)

    Specific channel support. you can post from any youtube channel by keyword or without filtering.

    Specific playlist support. wordpress automatic can post from any specific playlist.

    Full video description support. wordpress automatic can grab the full description from youtube for the posted video.

    Post Youtube Tags as Tags. wordpress automatic can fetch the tags for the video and set these tags as wordpress tags.

    Post Youtube Comments as Comments. The plugin can grab the video comments and post them as wordpress comments.

    Relivance to specific language and country. Videos relivance can be set to a specific language and also to a specific country.

    Auto play videos. posted videos can be auto-played.

    Various Filters. Lot’s of filters like order,category,license,type,duration and definition.

    Disable suggestions. wordpress automatic can disable video suggestions at the end of the video.

    Skip non-embeddable videos. wordpress automatic can skip videos that are not allowed to be embeded.

    Date control. wordpress automatic can skip videos older than a specific date, post videos with it’s original date or post older items firstly.

News, WordPress Tips

WooCommerce 2.5.5 slows your site dramatically?

March 31, 2016

WooCommerce 2.5.5 slows your site, doesn’t it?

If you recently update WooCommerce 2.5.5 and you see that your site loads super slow, here’s what to check. The phenomenon is when you visit the site as guests, it loads slowly. If you login and try again, it works normally.

Go to WooCommerce Settings page > tag General > General Options > Default Custom Address
2016-03-31_095938

 

Check if this setting is set to Geolocate. When users (mostly guests) do checkout, WooCommerce will try to detect customer’s location using MaxMind GeoLite Database. If this feature doesn’t work well, it will effect your site response. So, try to change Default Custom Address to “No Address”.

Featured, WordPress Themes, WordPress Tips

How to speed up your education WordPress theme

October 22, 2015

The article is a list of methods that will help you speed up your education WordPress theme. This doesn’t include server side optimization or WordPress optimization. This is to ensure your theme is well optimized.

Tips to speed up your education WordPress theme

Use custom fonts in the right way

Today, all people tend to use custom fonts on their sites. Fonts like Google fonts should be used for headings and small pieces of text and not throughout your theme’s content. The body content should be standard web font while you can make use of custom fonts for headings and sub headings.

Check for broken links or missing files

education WordPress theme 2

When you try to optimize the performance of your online education WordPress theme, you should make sure that there is no missing images or broken links. When the browser finds a broken link or missing image, it will look for the missing files resulting in extra CPU usage that makes your site slow. You just need to use the developer tools inside most browsers by pressing the F12 key. You also can monitor the browsers activity when the page is loaded to spot all the missing files or broken links.

Avoid utilizing unnecessary plugins

This is a common problem that relies on WordPress plugins to handle some of the functionality of your education WordPress theme. They are social sharing, image sliders and related post carousels that could bring down your website’s performance. So you should code it as most plugins rely on extra CSS and JS files.

education WordPress theme 3

Combine multiple CSS files

The purpose of combining multiple CSS files is to reduce the number of HTTP requests sent by the server. This means that with each CSS file used by your online education WordPress theme, a server request will be sent and we should avoid this. In order to reduce the number of HTTP requests, we should reduce the number of CSS files used inside the theme. By combining two or three CSS files into a single larger CSS file, you can reduce the number of CSS files.

Use image sprites

Another form of reducing server requests is using image sprites. Each image sprite is a collection of images out into a single larger image.  So you should use image spites if there are a lot of different icons throughout your education WordPress theme. When there are too many images in a web page, it may take a long time to load and multiple server requests.

Place JS & CSS files in the right locations

Moving its JavaScript and CSS files to the right locations is an important way to improve the loading time of your WordPress education theme. That is because when you place JavaScript files in the head section of the theme’s HTML document, it will delay the rendering of the page until all those JavaScript files are loaded, which means that the page may take more time to load.

Normally the WordPress theme’s CSS and JS files are loaded automatically into the right locations only when it makes use of the enqueue and register functions to include the needed JavaScript files and style-sheets. If the files are in the wrong location, you should modify your education WordPress theme to specify where the files need to be placed: header or footer of the document.

Featured, WordPress Themes, WordPress Tips

How Should We Develop Specialty WordPress Themes for Education?

October 20, 2015

Accompany with the popularity of WordPress platform, the number of WordPress themes and plugin also gain considerable fame in the market. The theme purchasers now have various choices for their websites. However, sometimes a general or multipurpose theme will not work for your project. In that case, you need a specialty theme whose design and functionality work together and fit your specific purpose.

There are a lot of different specialty themes for WordPress. But in the scope of this writing, we only take a look at WordPress themes for education. In particular, we will point out a few things you should consider when making specialty WordPress themes for education website. Hopefully it will help you who are new in the theme development.

WordPress Themes for Education 1

How should we build specialty WordPress themes for education?

If you decide to develop a specialty theme for education field, you might want to consider the following things.

Use Actions and Filters to Make Your Education Theme Extendable

Filters and actions are part of the WordPress Plugin API; however, it does not mean that WordPress themes for education website cannot benefit from them. Currently, most of the popular WordPress theme frameworks use filters and actions in order that other developers are able to extend the frameworks. You can also follow their guidelines and make your education theme extendable with those hooks.

Make Your Education Theme Ready for Child Themes

If you want to diversify your theme’s design options, then make it ready for child themes. Build your base education theme and create child themes to provide users with different designs.

Use a PHP Library

If you feel that other WordPress themes for education are able to benefit from a part of your theme’s functionality, you should offer it as a plugin and require your users to install by using a PHP library. Though in most cases, the functionalities of specialty themes cannot be used with any other theme, you should keep in mind that other developers may build themes after you release your specialty theme. So, it is necessary to separate your theme’s functionality from its design.

Some Examples of Specialty WordPress Themes for Education

WordPress Themes for Education

There are many popular specialty WordPress themes for education website on the Internet. And the following are some of them. You can easily find out these WordPress themes for education by visiting ThemeForest marketplace and go for WordPress > Education category.

  • WPLMS – Learning Management System Theme
  • Pekaboo – WordPress Theme for Child Education
  • Academy – Learning Management System Theme
  • Grand College – WordPress Theme for Education
  • University – WordPress Education, Event and Course Theme

If you have any question about this topic, please leave your comments below. Also, share this post with your friends if you like it.

Featured, WordPress Themes, WordPress Tips

Top useful tips to choose a mobile friendly WordPress university theme

October 19, 2015

Smartphones are playing a more and more important role in our everyday life. Approximately one in two adults now owns a smartphone and by 2018, the worldwide smartphone shipments are predicted to reach 1.7 billion.  One of the most significant advantages brought to our life by smartphones is the convenient option to go online thanks to their mobility and capability of connecting to the Internet. Thus, there are a more considerable number of people who access educational websites with their smartphones to acquire knowledge anywhere, any minute.

Because of the upturn in students’ using smartphones, using a university theme WordPress that lets people create a mobile friendly site is of the essence. Below are some tips to follow when selecting such a university theme for WordPress.

Tips to choose a mobile friendly university theme WordPress

University theme WordPress 1

Responsive Layout

The first must-have of an online university WordPress theme to make educational sites mobile-friendly is a responsive design. It helps the sites adapt well to any screen size so site owners are guaranteed that their content will be displayed correctly on smartphones despite the fact that a smartphone has a smaller screen compared to a PC. Moreover, it is obvious that a lot of smartphones now have high-definition displays. Therefore, site owners ought to choose a university theme WordPress that can support such displays to make sure their site look good on high-quality mobile devices.

Optimized for Speed

Besides, in order to create mobile-friendly sites for educational purposes, it is worth considering university theme WordPress that allow sites to load fast. Such themes often provide site owners enough features to run their sites effectively rather than offer a ton of features, many of which will probably never be used. In general, staples of a WordPress theme and three plugins, including a learning management plugin, a translation plugin and an e-commerce plugin, are necessities for an educational site. Additionally, each site owner should think carefully about their purposes to choose a university theme for WordPress with a sufficient number of features.

University theme WordPress

Mobile-friendly Theme Elements

Also, even though the screen sizes of smartphones are becoming larger and larger, they are much smaller in comparison to those of PCs. Thus, users should choose to use a university theme WordPress having features that make it easy for students to complete all task on a small screen. For example, site owners should select themes with fonts that are elegant and legible enough for smartphones’ screen. Besides, themes having big buttons; simple and vertical-layout menus are perfect choices to increase the mobile-friendliness of educational sites.

University theme WordPress 3

High Security

Last but not least, it is necessary for educational site owners to choose themes which are highly protected in order to ensure that their mobile-friendly websites run successfully. There is a lot of personal information stored on smartphones, for example, the credit-card information that students have to provide when buying courses on educational websites. Therefore, site owners have to use a university theme WordPress which are updated regularly and offer safe ways to complete tasks requiring sensitive information. This will protect the smartphone users while accessing their websites.

Conclusion

The tips mentioned above are the fundamental ones to help those who want to get a good university theme WordPress to run their mobile-friendly education sites. Moreover, site owners should consider many other aspects to choose suitable themes that let them create unique and impressive sites.

Featured, WordPress Themes, WordPress Tips

5 tips to find the perfect WordPress video blog themes

October 14, 2015

 

While the number of premium and free WordPress video blog themes constantly increase, have you ever been so tired of searching for a design that meets your requirements?

So, how to find a suitable one among various WordPress video blog themes available on the Internet? This article will give you five tips to find out how and where to look for your ideal theme.

How to find the perfect WordPress video blog themes

1. Decide what you want and need

Never be in a hurry to find a nice theme. Decide exactly what you need. Do you want to start with a video portfolio, a video-related blog with lots of static information, a great video channel or just a combination? All small details you should have thought about before. Draw broadly on paper how you see the layout of your homepage. Common elements are a clear header, a menu, sidebar and footer.

2. Filter if you search within WordPress Dashboard

Within the WordPress Dashboard, you can use the filter function to specifically look for WordPress video blog themes. The effect is very much like the way you’re looking for hotel accommodation on websites of travel companies. For example you can specify which color the theme should have, choose the number of columns and requirements that you can simply adjust the header or background. WordPress then collects the themes that fit the needs established by you. These are usually fairly basic, but free.

3. Search by category and keywords on ThemeForest

ThemeForest is a huge resource for WordPress video blog themes. Therefore, always go straight towards your goal. In the corresponding submenu shows a useful categorization. If you want to start a video blog, firstly search within the Blog/Magazine category. Here you can search by keyword, such as “video”, or filter by tags. Next, you may want to visit other categories, such as eCommerce and Entertainment, for more video themes.

4. Check the ratings, live preview, comments and descriptions

WordPress video blog themes 1

You can control the order of the offering themes on ThemeForest by yourself. For example, you choose from the dropdown menu at the top for ‘Rating’; then all themes with a high evaluation will come to you. This evaluation is given by users. If a theme has tens or hundreds of ratings and four or five stars, then you do not have much to worry.

WordPress video blog themes 2

After make a short list of ThemeForest WordPress video blog themes, you should view their live preview by hover your mouse over their thumbnail. So you are able to see a photo and the summarized information of the theme. Then you can see whether the theme is suitable for mobile and tablet or not and its listed main functions.

In the comments tab on the theme’s product page, you can ask questions to the developers, as well as see the problems that purchasers or other users encounter when using theme and the answers of the developers.

Furthermore, it is of course very important that you read the description of the theme. This description is often clearly described the possibilities of the theme, which updates were performed, which browsers are supported and how many columns the theme have.

5. Search via Google

Perhaps an obvious tip: searching for WordPress video blog themes on Google. But remember to search the latest result, otherwise, you’re overloaded with suggestions and download links which many of them are not available.

Hope you find the most suitable video blog themes for WordPress!

About CactusThemes

About CactusThemes

We are Power Elite Author on Envato. We specialized in WordPress Themes and Plugins development. Our products focus on User Experience and Business Solution, in many categories such as Video, Sport, Magazine, University, Blog...

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