Creating a Private Vlog

Do you want to create a vlog, but you’re worried about privacy? You’re not alone.

Limiting access to your vlog isn’t too difficult, as long as you use the right tools. In this blog, we’ll walk you through how to lock down access to your vlog as using a white label video hosting platform.

• Options for Private Vlogging
• White Label Video Hosting
• Password-Protected Video
• Pay-Per-View Video Access
• Extended Video Protection
• Locking Down Access to Your Blog / Website
• Making Some Videos Public

Options for Private Vlogging

There are many reasons for creating a private vlog, or video blog. Perhaps you’re going to live-stream an ongoing event or series of events, but want to make the video available only to paying customers. Maybe you’re creating sensitive content for a client and need to make sure it’s confidential. Or maybe you’d just rather the videos you make are available only on your website. There are various options available to you to achieve this goal. Some more labor-intensive than others, and also dependent on how you want to share your content.

Most popular video upload services, like YouTube, allow you to restrict access to videos that you upload. You can make a video “invite-only” and type in the email addresses of people who are allowed to see it, or you can make the video private and get a shareable link that you can send to anyone. Either way, your video won’t show up in search results.

This isn’t a great option. The first method is labor-intensive and doesn’t allow you much control, and the second method isn’t very secure — after you’ve sent out the link, it could end up anywhere.

Another danger of using sites like YouTube is that clicking the wrong button by mistake could make your content available to the whole world. That sort of mistake can’t be easily rectified in today’s world. Once the content is freely available, it tends to multiply quickly. Piracy is shifting towards streaming content, so even live-streams aren’t safe like they once were.

White Label Video Hosting

The best way to make a private vlog that you control is to use a white label video service like Dacast. A white label host allows you to upload your videos and control everything about access to them.

For example, with white label video hosts, you can make your videos available only on your own website. There is no chance of accidentally sharing your content publicly as there would be on YouTube, and the potential that your content might come to the attention of digital pirates is much reduced since it will only appear on your pages.

Another advantage of white label hosting is apparent from the name: there is no branding on the video player, so your content can be front and center without distracting watermarks (unless you choose to include your own).

When you use a white label provider on your own website, you can control every aspect of branding, presentation, and security for your content.

Password-Protected Video

One of the security features that most white-label video hosts offer is the ability to password-protect your videos (both live streams and on-demand videos) so that they’re only available to people you select. In Dacast, for example, you can set a password for your video content via the Publish Settings tab. The procedure is similar for most other white label hosts.

Password-protected streams and videos can be embedded in your website using JS or iframe and will function as you would expect. They can also be shared via Twitter. In either case, when a user clicks on a password protected video, they will be prompted to enter the password before the video will play.

Password-protection continues to work regardless of where the content is being shared, which makes this feature great for increasing security while still making your videos available on a wide variety of websites and platforms. Dacast supports password protection for videos and playlists. (Unfortunately, we don’t support Facebook embeds at this time, but we’re working on it!)

Pay Per View Video Access

If you’re looking to restrict access to your vlog on a pay per view basis, most white-label video hosts offer integrated tools for making sales with no hassles. The ability to handle payments right in the video player window makes it simple to sell embedded videos not only on your own website but on sites belonging to partners and anyone else you choose.

To learn more about the different options for pay per view videos, click here.

Extended Video Protection

If you need the best in security for your videos, you need restrictions for embedded video players that protect against piracy and give you more control of your content. Many white label video hosts have options for extended security. For example, with Dacast you can use two types of restrictions for embedded live stream video.

The first is geographic, which allows you to restrict who can stream your video based on geographical location. For example, if you have a client or audience base in a single country, you can restrict access to IP addresses from that nation and limit your exposure to risk (or simply target your content to different markets).

The second layer of protection is HTTP referrers, which prevent video pirates from taking the embed code for your streaming video and replicating it on other websites. Using the Publish Options menu, referrers allow you to specify a list of websites on which your video streams are allowed to work.

Locking Down Access to Your Blog / Website

Even if your videos are private, you may want to restrict access to your blog or website itself on top of your video security. There are a variety of options available for this purpose. Most blog platforms like WordPress, Tumblr, and Blogger offer settings to restrict visitor access.

For example, WordPress.com allows you to set “site visibility.” With this setting, you can make your blog public, semi-private by discouraging search engines from indexing the site, or completely private by making your site invite-only. With this last setting, only users to whom you specifically grant access will be able to view any of your content.

If you have a public WordPress.com site, you can make your site private by following these instructions. If you use WordPress.org (the self-hosted version of WordPress), your content visibility can be set on a per-post basis, or you can use a plugin to hide the entire site.

Making Some Videos Public

Like YouTube, Dacast does have a public video portal that can be used to view content hosted on our platform without having to visit your own website. However, whether you turn on this feature for your content is completely up to you: the public portal can be disabled for specific videos or for your entire account. This feature will vary depending on which white label video host you use.

By Max Wilbert.