The best way to add any flare to your website is by using media. The thing with media on blogs though is that not every site is optimized for hosting media, whether it’s video or photo. Luckily, there are plenty of sites that do host media. The thing about looking for sites that host your videos or photos is that you want it to look good and integrated into your web design. There are plenty of sites and services that can help you fulfill any media need you have for your website, and below is a short list of the best places for video and photo hosting, and each one’s unique features.
1. Vimeo
Vimeo is possibly the best site for hosting video on the internet. This has to do with a couple of reasons, but ultimately comes down to aesthetics. The Vimeo player is clean in design and functionality. When your video starts to play, the Vimeo players seems to drop back, as its design is very subtle, and your video take front stage. This is the consensus between most filmmakers, such as myself. Youtube falls short even when embedded on your website, but if people follow the link back to Youtube, it’s a huge mess of a video player that distracts from your work, whereas Vimeo is designed for you to showcase your work. Youtube might be good for viral sensations, but Vimeo takes the cake.
2. Flickr
Flickr is one of the best places for photo sharing on the internet. What is good about Flickr is that you can host your images on Flickr that you can then select to embed on your site at different sizes instead of having to change the code. What is also nice is that if your media is followed back to Flickr, like Vimeo, it’s an easy site to navigate through your media. You can also group your images together to make it easier for visitors to navigate through your work. What is also great about that Flickr is that if you need media for your blog that you don’t have, you can go to the Creative Commons area to find some work that you can use on your blog.
3. WordPress
Although this is not what most people think of when they think of media sharing, WordPress does host photos. Users can upload their own media and have access to insert them into posts at different sizes, as well as making the photo a featured image. Also with the latest WordPress plugin, hosted blogs’ pictures are HiDPI (high dots per pixel) ready for high resolution screens like Apple’s Retina display. This means that not only is it easy for you to use your photos in your blog, but they are of amazingly high quality for your audience.
So this is what I have found to be my favorite places to host media, either for later use on my blog or social sharing on Facebook and Twitter. This is by no means an extensive list, but it’s what I have found to be the easiest to use, and are the most aesthetically pleasing. All of these sites are very easy to use, and will yield great quality.
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