How to create a video sharing website like YouTube?

I few months ago started a video sharing website now may be accessed at “Tuts2Learn.com”, which has been of course one of the hedaches for me to do :). However, I managed all the things and kicked it up within few days since I thought the idea of creating such website. Since, I started T2L, many people requested me to share the steps I took while creating that website or I should make a video tutorial on it. But to be really honest, I didn’t get time to make video tutorials on it, but I just thought I should share the steps with you which are must in order to create a video sharing website same like YouTube, where users will be able to create an account and upload media files such as Videos, images and etc. While, all video sharing sites have social networking features as well, because users need to send messages to one another and can make discussions with the video producers, so this is actually called Social media network as well as video sharing platform.

I must remind you one thing that, if you want to create such website by yourself then you must be a higher level web developer who knows how to code in PHP with itsadvance level programming and OOP. And a single developer can not  do it alone, there must be a team of developers to create such websites/scripts, because there are many parts in a script to be coded in PHP. However, average developers always try to find already existing scripts to create such websites. There are some well-known scripts which are used to create video sharing websites which look like YouTube, dailymotion and metacafe etc. Here we’ll discuss everything you need to know in order to create a VS website.

What are the requirements to create a Video sharing website?

Now lets have a look at the steps and requirements you need to create a video sharing website having social media networking features and a lot more. Please keep in mind that, video sharing sites are not normal sites, they are created by using some advanced technologies, and unlike other sites, they need more bandwidth, more desk space, more plugins and utilities to be installed before a video is rendered or uploaded. So make sure your concept is cleared before starting this kind of thing.

Requirement # 1: 

The first and initial thing for video sharing website is “Web Hosting“, you can’t start your VS site with normal shared web hosting, you’ll have to buy a VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting for your video sharing site. This is necessary, because the shared hosting can’t handle all the tasks at once such as uploading videos, encoding those videos in the background, Multiple uploads at once, playing the videos in the player to many users at once and there are many more tasks the server does at the same time. So the normal shared web hosting will get down automatically when it fails to manage the operations going on at different sides of the whole content management system. So finally, this is very necessary to buy a VPS or dedicated server for your video site which can handle of all the operations easily without going the server down for every single day.

Requirement # 2: 

The second thing to start a VS site is to have the appropriate script for it, there are many built-in scripts for video sharing websites which you can install over your server to create a YouTube clone website or you can create even a unique one with your own IDEA. In all cases, you must have a video sharing script to start the website with. There are PAID scripts  as well as free scripts, but I’ll recommend you to use Paid Scripts, because they can provide you support and help if you need it later. The list of the free and paid scripts will be shared in this post later.

Requirement # 3: 

The third requirement for creating a VS site is; Your hosting server must have some additional features which are must for video sharing script, because the video sharing script actually doesn’t work if some of the plugins are not installed and some of the PHP configurations are not set up. The list of the plugins (Must be installed to run your VS site properly) are these but not limited to i.e ( I used these one actually):

• FFMPEG – Used to convert videos from different format to FLV when they are uploaded
• PHP CLI – Used to convert the videos in background which doesn’t affect the site
• FLVTool2 – Used to repair FLV videos for better streaming in the media player
• MP4Box – Used to convert MP4 videos for better streaming in the media Player

These are some PHP configurations in the server you must make in order for the video script to work properly:

• safe_mode = off
• max_execution_time = 1000 (recommended to prevent timeouts during video upload/conversion)
• session.gc_maxlifetime = 14000 (recommended to prevent session expires during video upload)
• open_basedir = (no value)
• output_buffering = on
• upload_max_filesize = 500M (recommended maximum video upload size in MB)
• post_max_size = 500M (recommended maximum video upload size in MB)

So after you make the above configurations in your server (usually Cpanel) then the video script will properly work and the videos will be uploaded by the users and will be played by others.

After the above explanation, now we can make a summary for what we actually need to start a video sharing website very easily and quickly if we want, here is everything together you need to have before starting the website:

• Web Hosting (Must be VPS = Virtual Private Server) 
• Video Sharing script (Must be installed after you purchase VPS) 
• Install Necessary Plugins (FFMPEG, PHP CLI, FLVTool2, MP4Box etc) 
• PHP Configuration in the Server (As Mentioned above) 

Some web hosting companies provide you built-in setting for starting a video sharing website, after getting the web hosting you’ll just have to install the video sharing script and the website will be working instantly. But these companies are rare.

The List of Web Hosting Providers for Video sharing sites:

Here are some websites which I think are the best for you if you ever wanted to start your first video sharing website, these are actually considered the best for VPS hosting, so you can check their packages and plans:

• Arivxe.com (Best for VPS hosting)
• Controlweb.com (Best for Dedacted & VPS)
• BlueHost.com (For both)
• VideoBam.com (Particular for Video sharing hosting)

You can choose any of the above web hosting providers for starting up your own YouTube clone website within few days. The first two companies are recommended by me for Video sharing websites.

The List of the Free & Paid Video sharing scripts:

Now after you bought a web hosting, you’ll need to have a Video Sharing script ready to start your website, There are many scripts available online on the web for starting a VS site, but some of them are paid, while few others are free to use. Here is the list of some:

• Clip-bucket.com & .net (The most used free VS Script)
• PhpMotion.com (The second most used free VS Script)
• Clip-share.com (A paid script but great script)

There are many other free scripts out there in the market, but I’d only recommend you to use the above three ones, because the rest scripts have a lot of bugs and errors which can not be resolved by an average developer easily.

How I created Tuts2Learn.com?

First of all I thought to create a video sharing website for Pakistani users, due to YouTube was blocked in Pakistan by the Government (Which is still blocked), and after seven days of the idea, I implemented it in the shape of (Tuts2learn.com). I just searched on the internet to find the script, but finally I came to know about a website called (controlweb.com) which is actually owned by (Clip-bucket.com) and CB is owned by (Tune.PK), so I just purchased the web hosting (VPS) from them and they installed everything for me. That’s how, I easily created this website. However, later on, I changed some of the files according to my requirements and I got a Dashboard for managing the website after the installation had been completed. I’m using (Tune.PK) script on this website which is freely available at (clip-bucket.com).

Over to You: 

I’ve tried to give you each and everything for creating a video sharing website, this is now up to you, how and when you want to start your own video sharing website. However, if you got any question or have some suggestions then you are always welcomed to start a discussion below the post in the comment section. Thank you for reading this long post!