In order to have a successful vlog, you need to find a WordPress theme that is designed for this purpose. The reason for this is that you want to be able to customize your layout, and have the best possible support for your videos. It needs to be fast, reliable and truly video focused. There are lots of quality WordPress themes for vlogs, but I want to take you through one that I believe has all of the essentials, and is easy to use.
Following the example from Meks and their Vlog WordPress theme, we can cover what you need to look for in a quality theme that is designed for video-centric content.
Show off your video with great UI design
Okay so you need a WordPress theme with a great UI that will make your videos stand out. Vlog has a “video carousel” that will display your latest and most popular videos.
As soon as someone comes to your website they will be able to see your best work with one click. If it’s your personal blog that can be your latest clip, otherwise for businesses it can be your most popular tutorial. The best part about having this is that if you use the demo importer, you can get the layout with no hassle at all.
Don’t let your visitors be distracted by anything else while they are watching your content. Yes, that is possible, just select “cinema mode” on Vlog and enjoy videos in their full potential. Want to watch one clip after another or save something for later. Vlog lets you do that as well, by selecting “watch later”.
Having a UI that supports your video content can also allow your viewers to browse through categories, and latest videos. Just create featured playlists. Group all of your videos to make them more accessible, so if you are a nature vlogger you can group videos by animals, breeds, habitats. The choice is yours.
This is all just on the home page. Don’t forget you need to focus your individual posts on your videos too. The Vlog theme showcases your videos within each post, making them easily sharable, available and elegant.
The above is what I think of as absolutely necessary for any vlogger to have on their website.
Customize every pixel of your Vlog
For those who are happy with keeping it simple and sticking to the demo, you won’t go wrong, but for those who like to polish every last corner of their website, Vlog by Meks gives you that opportunity too. Important to remember, select a theme that matches your WordPress ability that way you can make the most out of it.
Looking at the Vlog theme by Meks, the magic happens in the Admin section of your website, which can be found under the theme’s WordPress options. Here you can do a number of things like customize your header, adjust your social menu, and select your background color, just to name a few.
Vlog also offers you the option of playing with website typography, translating the website, and monetizing it by adding different advertising.
Under the hood of your Vlog theme
So far we have covered why it’s important to have a WordPress Vlog theme that will look great, and how to make it just the way you like it. But, for video content especially you need to focus on performance as well.
WordPress supports plenty of video sources on its own, making it very easy for you to embed it into a page or a post by simply pasting the URL to a video. Vlog theme goes one step beyond.
Whether you host your videos on YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, JWPlatform, Facebook, Wistia, Twitch, just to name a few, the theme will automatically detect it and display it properly to fit all of the layouts. There is no need for custom fields to enter video sources, IDs, API keys, or to define custom post types for videos. Simply paste the video URL into your post content editor and the Vlog theme will know what to do next.
This is great for many reasons, but especially because you can be sure you won’t lose any content after you switch to another theme, or the other way around, switching your old theme to Vlog. Once you make the switch to Vlog you will have everything in place, with no need to go through each existing post providing additional detail to make it work. Easy, right?
Also, it’s a well known fact how much iframes may slow down page loading, not to mention what happens if there is more than one iframe on a single page. Vlog takes care of that as well. Video iframe will be loaded only after you click to play a video, making your website way faster than the average.
Conclusion
To create a modern, clean, video centric website you need to invest in a quality theme. It needs to support different video formats, and have easy video integration. Add to that multiple layout options, and total control of the look of your website. Not to forget how important it is to have easy content migration and website performance. Okay so it’s a lot, but a great vlog theme will get you there.
Get yourself a WordPress theme focused on vlogging and enter the age of vlogs!
This is a guest post by Nevena Tomovic.