Thinking about hosting a Flash-based web site

LOFA · Post by **LOFA** » Wed Jul 09, 2008 8:08 pm

Hi,

I have been working on a website to promote my music and art, but I am realizing that there are technical challenges that I am not very knowledgeable of. I know that many people on this board have some very impressive sites and was wondering if anyone cared to share some of their knowledge.

Curiosities:

1) I am not sure how to proxy for direct links to youtube videos. I thought this might be a good way of cutting down on bandwidth and hosting fees, though it's possible that I would have to if there was a cheap means of hosting them.

2) I thought that I could also use Flickr to hold my images and link to them, but then I thought I would probably have to support the preview images anyway, so I might as well bite the cost of a host.

3) I have no idea on what would be good for holding music. I am in the process of designing a user interface that I like a lot but I am not sure how best to direct content to it.

Any insight at all would be most appreciated. I am a total noob at this, having just started learning Flash about a month ago, but I love it very much and I am fairly addicted!

Thanks!

Ian

frahnque · Post by **frahnque** » Wed Jul 09, 2008 8:49 pm

LOFA wrote:Hi,

I have been working on a website to promote my music and art, but I am realizing that there are technical challenges that I am not very knowledgeable of. I know that many people on this board have some very impressive sites and was wondering if anyone cared to share some of their knowledge.

Curiosities:

1) I am not sure how to proxy for direct links to youtube videos. I thought this might be a good way of cutting down on bandwidth and hosting fees, though it's possible that I would have to if there was a cheap means of hosting them.

2) I thought that I could also use Flickr to hold my images and link to them, but then I thought I would probably have to support the preview images anyway, so I might as well bite the cost of a host.

3) I have no idea on what would be good for holding music. I am in the process of designing a user interface that I like a lot but I am not sure how best to direct content to it.

Any insight at all would be most appreciated. I am a total noob at this, having just started learning Flash about a month ago, but I love it very much and I am fairly addicted!

Thanks!

Ian

Having used about 10 different shared hosting companies (think thousands of clients sharing the same server at the same time, each client affecting the other in terms of CPU & RAM and so on), and some 3 or 4 virtual private servers (think of virtual servers, one physical server hosting several virtual servers independent of each others).

1. Any youtube video would have code for EMBEDDING it. Look at the youtube page for the video you want to embed and use that code in the HTML and you should be on your way.

2. I'd say that for the picture hosting part, you'd go a LONG way with ordinary hosting, unless you expect hoards of people using your site. Most shared servers usually allow for 20-30 Gb traffic per month.

3. If you would want to use your own Flash player, you would probably host the music yourself, or if it is a site with loads of traffic use something like Amazon S3 ( http://aws.amazon.com/s3 ). OR, you could host your music at Last.FM and use their embeddable player.

Also, stay clear of anything that says UNLIMITED traffic - there's just no such thing, period. And if you are new to this game, and want an easy start - look for anything that says managed hosting. If you don't mind reading up a lot and learning, go for unmanaged hosting - and be ready to learn the hard way.

EDIT: Should you find a VPS a viable option, and you are not - in any way- afraid of getting dirty with Linux commands, configuring web-servers and the likes, then I'd happily recommend you to Slicehost. It's incredibly cheap and they have a great community going. Situated in America, I'm sure you'll find that the speed is excellent, overseas it's not the best, but definitely not the worst either (i'd say it's in the middle some place). Here's a referrer link if you'd be feeling up for it: Slicehost

If you have more questions, just shoot and I'll try my best to answer them.

synnack · Post by **synnack** » Wed Jul 09, 2008 9:33 pm

As for free flash players I use this:

http://musicplayer.sourceforge.net/

The url I use for the mp3's are passed to it via php.

So mp3/playlist.php?file=blahblah.mp3

Then playlist.php can get the file from anywhere and pass it. So i can spread the mp3's out on a bunch of different free hosts and use a static config on the site.

The added advantage is that since i proxy the request through php, i can also update a counter in a database that the file was played. So i can track stats.

http://synnack.com/stats.php

Akshara · Post by **Akshara** » Wed Jul 09, 2008 9:45 pm

With virtual hosting VPS, make sure that the host allows media files on their servers (many don't), and verify that they have the installed server requirments to allow for flash video streaming (again, many don't).

And go here...

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/

LOFA · Post by **LOFA** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 3:19 am

So much useful feedback. Thank you all very much. I will certainly check out this forum that you suggested as well.

This will keep me busy!

idaba · Post by **idaba** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 5:04 am

just sharing,

flash is good for animation, i think you can build website with flash, but dont full content with flash, use HTML. Becarefull about size, if you can't manage your website will to heavy so anyone can't open your site.

mdk · Post by **mdk** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 5:52 am

for the youtube part you can either just embed the video in your page or for a tighter integration you might want to look at using the youtube api :

http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/overview.html

koneko · Post by **koneko** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 5:59 am

for video content (and audio too, although i havent tried that yet) www.vimeo.com is very recommended.
hi quality conversion / fast stream and great user interface.
and the original media is stored on their server and always available to download!

Noel · Post by **Noel** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 8:11 am

I'd advise to only use flash for things you can't do without it. Use HTML with CSS for most of the layout and the textual content, otherwise you'll be hiding important content from search engines.

I always use jw_flv_player for audio and video playback ->> http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=JW_FLV_Media_Player.

spkey · Post by **spkey** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 8:53 am

If you are not familiar with .NET and/or coding in general then choose Joomla! for your design.

I believe this is what most people here use for their websites. Joomla! gives you all the components you need to design a fully professional website. Even a shopping cart.

http://www.joomla.org/

sp

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 9:25 am

yep, joomla or wordpress - those two will get you going REALLY quickly.

j2j · Post by **j2j** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 2:41 pm

+ 1

for being wicked careful with your host. I don't think my shared hosting is going to allow flash stream and I am wicked pissed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

also, check this bad boy out www.drupal.org

joomla, I hear gets hacked left and right.

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 3:54 pm

j2j wrote: joomla, I hear gets hacked left and right.

source?

knotkranky · Post by **knotkranky** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 4:04 pm

I went through a few before I settled on Wordpress. It's getting some work over the next few weeks, but you can check mine through my sig.

It can use lots of third party widgets and plugins. Thousands to choose from.

Use wordpress.org on your own host server.

not wordpress.com being the simple WP hosted version.

.org

j2j · Post by **j2j** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 4:16 pm

Machinate wrote:
j2j wrote: joomla, I hear gets hacked left and right.
source?

I don't have an exact source. I totally can't remember where I first heard about it. But, I am pretty sure that there is a joomla hack trend... I don't know why....

http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=267&t=265808

Thinking about hosting a Flash-based web site

Thinking about hosting a Flash-based web site

Re: Thinking about hosting a Flash-based web site