1. They don’t showcase their address on the website.
2. Their website design is very tacky. The loud flash sound when I go to the front page? The lack of font/sentence/paragraph structure?
3. The forums are next to empty. Even a company that has no problems should have *someone* talking in the forums.
4. They give you $40 to become an affiliate? That is a lot of money.
5. Their WHOIS record is private. A public company hosting important sites shouldn’t have a private domain name.

They may be a good host, but I would want to know how accountable they are to their clients, and to their affiliates. Until there is a physical name/address/someone that is accountable that I can see on their website, I would say hold off until reviews of their client/affiliate service comes out.

Many people are now encouraged by sites like ChatRoulette and Ustream to make their own video sites. But how easy can it be? How much would it cost? And how much work will it take to manage a website? We have made a guide on how to make your own Chatroulette video webiste.

1. Requirements.

• Hosting: You need a host that can provide an RTMP (Real-Time Message Protocol) program. We have a list of recommended hosts you can use. You can also use non-RTMP hosting, but we will talk more about it later.
• PHP/Web Developer: You will need to know a tiny bit of PHP, or find a web-developer who can help you out. This is optional, but it could save a lot of time.
• Money: You will need it since most of what we recommend cost money. There are “free” Chatroulette apps out there, as well as free/cheap hosting. 99.9% sure your website won’t survive with either.
• Marketing/Adsapce Mojo: You need to know how to spread the word about your site through social media, flyers, and networking. .01% of sites, even the good ones, thrive just off word-of-mouth. You also need to know how to make money off the people that come to your site. If you don’t, you will lose money very quickly.

2.  The ChatRoulette Program

WhisperVideo has a 2-Way Video Application that allows you to make your own ChatRoulette website. This application, and also others on the internet, uses Peer-2-Peer (P2P) as the primary function of the program. What this means, is that the only thing your website does is connect to people together to video chat. So you don’t have to pay for a lot of bandwidth.

There are other scripts that are out there, but we picked this application because it is customizable, and you can set-up your own site on WhisperVideo’s servers with the Chatroulette application for just $80 per month. This is the cheapest you will find to be able to get a video site, installation, and hosting without weeks of work, stress, and forking out money for the program.

But if you want to, you can get the application, find your own host, an set it up as well. Make sure to use the trial version first; if it is something you don’t like, it won’t make sense to fork over the money. You can take a look at the demo here.

We half-recommend this Chatroulette Clone Theme script; it seems to work wonders for those using it, and you can host this on ANY host. But the con is that is uses Adobe Stratus, which is a free hosting service that manages video applications. Since so many people are downloading Chatroulette Clone scripts, the service is up&down. But it is a much cheaper way to go if you don’t want to use a RTMP host.

Also, the Chatroulette Clone Theme is planning to make it’s application compatible for Red5 hosting ( a type of RTMP server ). So this could be very good.

3. PHP Knowledge/Web Designer

The scripts above, if you follow directions and there are no bugs, are easy to install. But it would be safe to find someone who knows a little about PHP/MySQL who can help you out.

You can download the trial version and take it for a spin. But if you don’t know much about computers, you will need a web designer to help you out.

Most of these Video Chat plugins can be installed in a few minutes, regardless of how much web knowledge you have. But some people might also want to “customize” their website to look different, or better. You will need a developer to do this ( maybe we can help? )

4. Flash Media Servers / RTMP Servers

In order for this to work, you need to have this application installed on a RTMP server. These are servers that serve flash media (such as videos, streaming videos etc.), You CANNOT use normal shared hosting like Hostgator or GoDaddy since these hosts don’t have those types of servers. They usually don’t even carry these types of servers, and will charge you to install RTMP software. It is easier to go to a RTMP hosting company that provides these servers.

RTMP hosting can be cheap or expensive. If you plan to have a nice little site with about 200-400 people per day video chatting, You can be safe with hosting plans around $20-40. But if you want to make that next “big” site, you will need to utilize something more expensive. Adobe Flash Media Server (FMS) seems to be the most superior server software out there, so hosting isn’t cheap. Other RTMP software that are still good are Wowza Flash Servers and Red5 Servers.

Think of the cost of the hosting like the cost of a party. If you don’t buy enough food, drink, and entertaining, the more likely your party is going to suck. So make sure you have a good server ( preferably a dedicated server) that can keep your site running smoothly.

Some recommended RTMP hosts:

• Onyx Servers
• Influxis Servers
• Cirtex Hosting (HostV)(Look under VPS/Dedicated)

5. Install and you are Ready to Party!

Not yet. Once you have a site out there, regardless if it’s the next greatest video site, make sure you take time to learn how to build an audience to come to your site, and how you can advertise to them when they get there.

Ways to advertise is to use press releases, speak with local and web businesses, post on blogs and connect with people in social forums. Once you have some way to spread the word, make sure to keep up on the best ways to make money on your site once you have a decent audience.

If you need recommendations on getting an audience, making money off of your new site, or web customizations, feel free to contact me at contact AT wpjudge DOT com.

The goal of the index is to organize simple Wordpress information more, and try to consolidate issues into a format where they can be found a lot more quickly than doing a Google or Wordpress forum search. This is an information site, so you don’t have to be an expert to become a part.

You just need to have a passion for Wordpress, and the ability to find information so that we can organize it better for the community. The site will be called wordpressindex.com. The function of the main page will utilize an auto-suggest method fetching pages within the site and throughout the web, making it easy for the user to find what they need.

If you want to become a part, please email me at contact AT wpjudge DOT com. I do plan to have some type of ad revenue or donation method on the site; an incentive for people if they want to help out.

“Yes, it’s absolutely okay to have a self-referential rel=”canonical”. It won’t harm the system and additionally, by including a self-reference you better ensure that your mirrors have a rel=”canonical” to you.”

DISCLAIMER: This is for people who use Wordpress for their blogs, not people who have received blogs from Wordpress.com

I looked through the repository and found some plugins that were either outdated or were a little too complicated in terms of restructuring the embed codes ( ME likey cut and paste. ME no likey cut, paste, change bracket symbol, add an equal sign, and video size dimensions etc. )

But without showcasing the contenders, the best Iframe plugin that allowed me to embed videos was:

EMBEDIT WORDPRESS PLUGIN

If The Website Doesn’t Work, Download Here:

I didn’t find this in the Wordpress plugin repository, but it looks legit, and works like a charm.

How to use the plugin:

1. Once you have installed it, all you have to do is go get the IFRAME/EMBED code.
2. In the post, write the shortcode in the visual section “HTML1″ —> instead of quotes, use brackets []. If I put brackets around HTML1, you won’t see it.
3. In custom fields, add the name “HTML1″ —–> no quotes, no brackets
4. In the value section, add the embed code.
5. Publish the darn thing!
6. If you have a second video, you can write the shortcode and add HTML2 in the custom field along with the video embed code.
7. You can do this for up to 9 embeds per post! ( eg: ["HTML1"], ["HTML2]“, ["HTML3"], ["HTML4"], etc. )
8. Not sure if it is supposed to be capitalized, but I do it since the plugin has it capitalized.

Try it out. If anyone has any issues, or has a better Embed plugin ( or other plugins that are related ), let me know.

Here is an exmaple of an embed for you. Great song. Enjoy!

The Future Of Music in The 20th Century by thewham

Now, there is what many category-based themes and CMS websites are looking for:

The Wordpress WTA Category Redirect Plugin

Now, you can redirect any category in Wordpress to any post,page or URL. It is very easy to use, and the function is much needed for the Wordpress community.

We’ll add some screenshots, but once you download and use it, you will love what it does, love how simple it is, and give us suggestions to make it better & work for you.

Also, a donation wouldn’t hurt either:)

Download Wordpress WTA Category Redirect Plugin Version 1.1

Download 1.5 (for 3.0 & Above) here.

Version changes:

Version 1.5

Support for the Monk

Version 1.1

• Took away the php short-tags

FAQ:

Is this compatible with Wordpress 2.9?

We have tested this plugin with 2.9.1 and it works. We have tested this with the Danvers Theme and the Mimbo Theme. Category links in navigation and in the sidebar are affected.

The Plugin doesn’t work for some reason.

It is my fault for this situation. I am a little fresh to plugin building, and I used short-tags for this plugin. I forget some hosts don’t use short-tags and most likely will be phased out in the next php release. I will have a non-short-tag version shortly ( probably around St. Patty’s)

Wordpress Upload Submission Theme Page

For some odd reason, this was the hardest link to find:(