Wordpress Add ons

Have you started using video a lot on your site? It is indeed the current trend on most news based sites and usage is set to increase tenfold in the year ahead. But with the multiple platforms that are used to access your site it is important to check that ALL your visitors can not only read but also VIEW your content. Take for example the new wave of Ipod, Iphone and Ipad users who do not have flash enabled browsers. How do they fair when arriving at your video enabled site?

It was one of my biggest challenges when looking to serve video across my WordPress sites. Of course YouTube is always an option but the limitations there are that your content becomes freely available for all  without generating link/trackbacks to your own site (essential for gaining search engine ranking) and you cannot include videos longer than 10 minutes in length. Hosting your own videos is clearly a better option as you can embed your own watermarks and control when and where your content can be used.

However, the  common Adobe Flash video players are not compatible with Safari on Apple devices and so visitors using those apps will not be able to view your video content. So, how do you get round this and make sure that PC based, Flash enabled browsers get the quickest access to your video content while at the same time serving Quicktime video alternatives to visitors on Iphones and Ipads.

At first I thought this was going to be an impossible (or expensive task),  finding a video server that would be able to identify the user’s browser and operating system at load time and serve them the site video in the correct format. But then I discovered that there is an easy and cost effective solution. Cincopa not only provides easy to use embedding solutions that integrate with WordPress (and many other CMS solutions) but also ensures that your original video content is delivered in the correct format for the visitor.

I uploaded a Windows Media Video file to my Cincopa account and embedded it into a WordPress post using the standard Flash video player. When I visit the page on my Iphone the Flash video is automatically replaced by a Quicktime video file and is fully available in Safari. No converting, no duplicate uploads – it is all done on the fly by the multimedia magic at Cincopa. And I couldn’t be happier.

If you are using Multimedia in your site – make sure that it works cross platform. Apple has a healthy market share of web traffic today across its multiple devices and so offering alternatives for any Adobe Flash enabled content on your site is essential. Check out the FREE services from Cincopa to see just how easy serving cross platform compatible video really is.

Apple Iphone or Ipad Video on your blog is no longer a headache. And for that I for one am a happy camper!