Diversify your website video content with Dailymotion

On 03/06/2010

Get videos, get visitors It's been a few weeks since we released the new doomby video gallery, making it even easier to make a website that rocks, complete with your choice of video content. But if you were thinking it just couldn't possibly get any simpler to publish your video content with your favorite free website builder, you're in for a big surprise. Yes, we've got some great news for those of you who aren't fans of YouTube, or are looking to extend their search for jedi cats beyond Google's immediate sphere of influence. You can now import videos and expand your video gallery with content from Dailymotion as well. And if that isn't enough, we've also added a few extras and tweaked some existing elements to make what was already amazing … truly magical.

In spite of the pretty major hurdle represented by a missing API (apparently it's important), Sid* has came up trumps yet again. The resulting technical triumph means you can now search for and import Dailymotion videos to add to your website, without leaving your site manager.

Web video content is a great way to encourage visitors to stay a while and visit the rest of your site (the less animated, more wordy bits). Long gone are the dark days of the 1990s when an animated GIF was about as exciting as the web got. If you want to give your visitors a compelling reason to visit (and to keep coming back), videos are a simple way to create a website that sells itself to your visitors, by providing them with fun and entertaining content. Web video, after all, is the new TV so finding a place for a video gallery on your site is not only a logical step in your website development process, but increasingly a necessity.

Aside from doubling the potential size of your video library, Sid's also been busy tweaking some of the existing online video features for your websites, and has even found the time to come up with some new ones as well.

You can now personalize your video menu widget and get it to display whatever content you'd like. Choose from video snapshots, text desciptions, titles, dates and miscellaneous information, in any combination you'd like. Having total control over which elements you want to display in the video menu widget means you can add multiple instances and ensure that no two look the same.

To give your visitors a better idea of the kind of videos you have in your online video gallery, you can add a video tag cloud to your menu. Using a tag cloud is an increadibly easy, visual way of quickly displaying an overview of your site video content. At a glace, your visitor's will be able to get an idea of the themes of your videos and click a tag to access a list of related video content. And when they stumble upon something that catches their eye, they can now share it with their friends using the Facebook and Twitter links added to your videos. It's an easy way to provide interactivity for your visitors, and get free publicity for your site as well.

See? I told you it was magical. Now with two integrated online video sources to search and choose from, you'll be spoiled for choice when adding videos to your free website. And with a host of great new extras and improved features, we know you're going to love to make a free website - complete with it's very own movie theatre – as much as we love Dailymotion, YouTube ... and building you the best best free website maker we can.

* Not his real name. "Sid" (as in The Ice Age) however, suited him so well he decided to keep it