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The Ultimate Beginners Guide to Building a Video Sharing Website

An easy to follow, in depth step by step tutorial. Our aim is to help absolute beginners build a video sharing website like Youtube. Without the need to Learn any Code.

Follow each of the steps in this FREE guide and you will be able to create a website like Youtube. You will even be able to make money from the finished results.

The tutorial consists of 3 easy to follow steps:

Step 1 . Choosing a Website Platform (CMS)

. Choosing a Website Platform (CMS) Step 2 . How to select the best Domain name & Hosting provider

. How to select the best Domain name & Hosting provider Step 3. Installing the Website Platform, Themes & Basic customizations

Once completed, you’ll own a sophisticated video sharing site ready for people to use.

Follow the steps below and a website like that could be yours!

Step 1: Choosing the Website Platform (CMS)

One of the most beginner friendly ways of building a video sharing website in 2018 is to use an already established platform, also known as a “Content Management System (CMS)”.

Why using a CMS is the natural choice

There’s many good reasons to opt for a Content Management System as the backbone of your website; the main ones being, speed, efficiency and security.

For many years building a website involved at least some knowledge of code. If you didn’t know any HTML, CSS, and JavaScript your options were very limited.

Fast forward to 2018 and now anyone can make a sophisticated website by simply using a content management systems (CMS). Spending years learning how to write code is a thing of the past.

Furthermore, the world’s most popular CMS, a system called WordPress, is absolutely free.

Before we get on to that however, let’s take a look at what a CMS actually does.

So what does the CMS do?

A content management system allows you to create and manage all of the content that goes on to your website, from an easy to use, dashboard.

Much like you login to your Facebook account to post pictures and updates, you can use a CMS to login to your website to add pages, posts and images. You can also impact the whole look of your site by choosing one of the many ‘Themes’ that are readily available.

In the case of a video sharing website, you can use the CMS to manage videos, user submissions, categories, payment methods and much, much more.

So, why is WordPress the best platform to build a video sharing website in 2018?

WordPress is the best CMS for your Youtube style streaming website. Here’s why:

It is free and easy to use.

There are literally thousands of designs you can add to WordPress to create the look of your site (more on that below).

Customize to your heart’s content

There are thousands of WordPress plugins available which allow you to increase the functionality of your website as you progress.

Your site will be responsive (i.e will adapt its look to suit the screen size it is being viewed on)

WordPress provides superior website performance and security

For this tutorial, we will be showing you exactly how to create a website like Youtube using WordPress

These are the details we are going to cover:

What the best Web Hosting for beginners is in 2018

How to register a Domain Name, (and get a year’s free registration on it)

The steps involved when installing WordPress

Where to buy (and how to install) the best Video sharing Theme onto your site

Steps to take before launch

Step 2: Hosting & Domain Name

Now that we’ve talked about the benefits of using Wordprwss for our video sharing site, the next step so we can start building, is to purchase our hosting and to buy a Domain name.

For absolute beginners, here’s what we mean by that:

Domain Name – This is the web address that people type to get to your website, Take Facebook.com for example.

– This is the web address that people type to get to your website, Take for example. Hosting – This is the service that you use to store all the content of your website online. Every website needs to have Hosting.

“We love iPage, in our recent ‘best web hosting for beginners review, these guys on top. So, we have gone and partnered with them to bring you the ultimate web hosting deal. Sign up using the link below you will receive a WHOPPING 75% Discount on your hosting plan & a FREE Domain Name“ CLAIM YOUR 75% HOSTING DISCOUNT + FREE DOMAIN

Note: The links on this page do mean we will receive a small commission if you click through and purchase this wonderful iPage deal. However the sale will be at no extra cost to you. We use those funds to run Buildasitelike.com as a completly free resource, full of in depth guides and helpful tips.

iPage is our number once choice for good reason, (you can read the full review here). In a nutshell, they provides feature-rich web hosting backed up with excellent live support at only $1.99/month.

Ideal for beginners their lowest price plan includes free first year domain registration as well as $500 worth of extras. It really is the best value hosting deal on the market today.

In order to continue, let’s head over to iPage to get 75% of our Hosting plan and register our FREE Domain Name.

Click this link to open the iPage Website in a new window

Once there, click the Get Started Now Button.

The next screen you see will give you the option of choosing your free domain name.

As an example I have chosen MyVideoShares.com and then pressed search to see if it is available.

We’re in luck, the results page shows me that the domain is available. (Remember, you can try anything you want as your domain name, however popular terms will often be taken.)

Note, alternative domains will be suggested in the results. If the .com version is already taken, you can always opt for a .net version or something similar instead.

Once you are happy with the name you have chosen and seen that it is available, it is time to press Next, choose my term.

This will take you to a screen that gives you the option of choosing a 1, 2 or 3 year term for your hosting plan.

The choice you make here is entirely up to you, your budget and how long you plan on running the website for.

In the example above we have chosen a two year plan. The amount is calculated within the box on the right side of the screen.

Once you are happy with the hosting duration you can press Next, customize my plan.

This will take you to a page where you can select or deselect various options for your plan.

The options you can add are as follows:

Domain Privacy – We recommend you select yes as this will stop you from being hounded by phone calls and texts from various design agencies that have managed to get your details from the register.

– We recommend you select yes as this will stop you from being hounded by phone calls and texts from various design agencies that have managed to get your details from the register. Website Security & Daily Backup – It is a good idea to select these to make sure your website remains secure and that daily backups are made. However, if you are on a budget, both of these tasks can also be done using WordPress Plugins.

– It is a good idea to select these to make sure your website remains secure and that daily backups are made. However, if you are on a budget, both of these tasks can also be done using WordPress Plugins. All in One WordPress Bundle – This unneccessary, we are going to show you everything you need in this very tutorial.

– This unneccessary, we are going to show you everything you need in this very tutorial. SSL Certificate – We recommend you buy this. From July 2018 Google will penalise websites in search that do not have valid security certificates. To have one is important.

Once you have finished on this page, click Continue to Payment.

(Note, you can skip through the various offers iPage suggests. Click until you reach the payment confirmation page).

Well done, we’re nearly finished with step number 2

After receiving a success message, you will be asked to create your hosting plan login details.

After completing this it will be time to log into your iPage hosting account to begin installing WordPress and your video sharing website theme.

Step 3: Installing WordPress & a Video Sharing Theme

i. Installing WordPress Using iPage SimpleScripts

Once logged into iPage you will see a screen like this…

The My Installs (SimpleScripts) is where you need to head to first.

Click My Installs, and the screen below will appear. Click WordPress from the list.

Leave all the settings as they are on the following page.

Click Install.

After that, click complete and…

Success!

Your WordPress Installation is now ready.

The front page of your site will now show the default WordPress theme. Without any content it will look very basic.

Don’t worry, in the next step we’re going to shake things up and show you how to add your theme. This is where your new Youtube video sharing site will start to come alive.

ii. Installing a Video Sharing Theme

So now that you’ve got your WordPress installation up and running, it’s time to change the default theme to a video sharing Theme, so that your website can take on Youtube. 🙂

First you will need to login to the WordPress admin panel. (Type mywebsite.com/wp-admin into your browser address bar and enter your username and password.

A screenshot of the WordPress admin dashboard.Once you are logged in you will see the WordPress Dashboard.

The first step for us will be getting the new theme up and running.

But first we need to buy it!

The Best Place to Buy Premium WordPress Themes

[Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you, we will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase.]

There are countless Premium WordPress marketplaces online.

However, the quality does vary. When looking to buy a premium wordpress theme, you should choose a Marketplace that has strict content quality review processes, adequate after sales support and a wide range of themes to choose from. This last point is especially important if you have to pay a yearly subscription to access a provider’s themes.

In our opinion, the best Premium Themes marketplaces can be found here:

What’s the best Video Sharing (Youtube) WordPress Theme?

For the purpose of this tutorial, we will be using a theme called KickCube which can be bought from the ThemeForest marketplace.

We’ve test driven a number of Video Sharing Themes available and KickCube came out on top for a number of reasons; not only does it allow your users to login and easily publish their own video links, the theme is consistently kept up to date by it’s author, is superbly designed and offers great speed and functionality.

First we need to go ahead and purchase our theme. This can be easily done from the ThemeForest website.

Click here to open the ThemeForest website in a new tab.

You should now be on the main KickCube sales page.

Click the Buy Now button and you will be redirected to the checkout page.

Fill in your First name, last name & email address then click Next.

You will be asked to choose your ThemeForest username and password, (it might be a good idea to keep all of these login details you now have in a safe place)

Verify the captcha, click the Create account & Continue Button.

After filling in your billing details, click the Save and continue button.

Available Payment Methods

ThemeForest and the Envato Marketplace offer secure payment options via 3 main methods.

The first two methods are Debit/Credit card and PayPal. Each of these has a 2$ surcharge, however the convenience is more than worth it.

The 3rd option is the Envato Credit. You do avoid the surcharge with this, but you will need add credit to your Envato account.

Whichever method you choose, after recieving the payment success message, you should hover over your username in the top right corner of the screen and click on downloads.

Here you will find the KickCube theme in your downloads area (much like the screenshot below).

Click the green download button.

This will reveal two options:

All files and Documentation – You won’t need all of these right now

You won’t need all of these right now Installable WordPress files only – as the title suggests, this is just one .zip file containing your theme.

At this stage, we are only interested in option number two; the installable WordPress files only.

Click this and download the file to your desktop.

Once that’s done, head to your main WordPress dashboard again (mywebsite.com/wp-admin).

Our next step is to visit the theme selection page: (hover over Appearance and then click on Themes).

Installing the theme in WordPress

This is where it all get’s very exciting. We are now in the final stages of setting up our video sharing website like Youtube.

And to make it even easier, the KickCube theme author’s have created a simple install method, as well as a video explaining how to do it.

With your downloaded theme at the ready, you only need follow the video above to quickly and easily, install the theme.

Here’s a quick overview of what you will be doing:

Installing the theme with a one-click install process

The video will then show you how to quickly install all the neccessary plugins to make the theme work

You will then upload all the demo content that came with the theme, so that you have a finished result exactly the same as our demo site at the start of this guide

You will finish with a few final tweaks to customize your site.

After that you’re finished.

Congratulations you’ve just built your very own video sharing website!

How was your experience building this Youtube style website? Was this guide easy to follow? Do you have any questions? Post your comments below as we would love to hear your feedback. We answer every single one.

And if like what you found here please Share it with friends; we want to get the word out so that everyone can understand how to get started online and build a successful website just like… 🙂