How to Add IncomingVideo Comments Area to Your Blog
1. Overview
This document is intended for users who are using or intend to use such generic blog sites as blogger.com, wordpress.com or the likes. The instruction in this tutorial is illustrating the specific sequence of steps and changes you need to do if you are a blogger on blogger.com. These instructions, with minor variation, would also be applicable to all generic blogs, i.e. sites where the user can get a blog by simply registering on that service.
Fig. 1. IncomingVideo Comments Area.
If you have not used a generic blog site, such as blogger.com or others, and rather have created your blog yourself, please refer to our tutorial: How to Add IncomingVideo to Your Website in the Support section of our website at http://incomingvideo.com. If someone has built your blog for you, please ask them to integrate IncomingVideo Comments Area. It would take no longer than 5 minutes by integrating into your website the snippet of our HTML code which is generated for you in tab Widgets/Comments Area.
2. What Information You Need
To incorporate IncomingVideo Comments Area on your blog, you would need the following information to your blog: login, password and ability to add or change your blog pages. For majority of the blogs you can change the pages by default.
3. How to Add IncomingVideo Comments Area to Your Blog
Part 1. Open your blog and switch to the mode of new blog entry
As the first step, open your blog and switch to the mode of new blog entry. Enter the text (optional) that you would like to show with your IncomingVideo Comments Area. Please see example below - a sample Blogger page in a mode of creating a new blog entry.
Fig. 2. How to Add IncomingVideo Comments Area to Your Blog.
Part 2. Copy and Paste IncomingVideo Comments Area HTML code into Your Blog
After you sign up to IncomingVideo, log into your account. Then go to the Widgets section, and select tab Comments Area (refer to Fig. 3 below). As optional Step 1, populate your Comments Area with messages, videos, etc. by dragging the messages from the left pane labeled Public Messages into your Comments Area. Here you will have some pre-recorded messages, if you are a fist time user, or your message and uploaded videos from the inbox that could be posted for public view. If you would like to customize your Comments Area window, please click on the button Customize, as Step 2 (refer to Fig. 3 below, marked in red arrow). Please refer to Part 4 below describing in detail how to customize your Comments Area. Preview your resulting Comments Area by clicking on button Preview as show in Fig. 3 below as marked in green arrow. And lastly, copy the resulting HTML code from window labeled Step 3 Embed Code.
Fig. 3. How to copy HTML code from IncomingVideo
Part 3. Place HTML code into your blog
Return to your blog and switch to the HTML edit mode by pressing HTML tab. Paste the HTML code, which you copied from IncomingVideo site in Part 2 above, in a place where you would like the IncomingVideo Comments Area to show on your blog see illustrative screenshot below. Save the changes by pressing the Save Now button and press Publish Post button.
Fig. 4. Pasting HTML code of IncomingVideo Comments Area.
Congratulations! Comments Area will now show up on your blog. Now any visitor to your website can play messages that you have posted in your Comments Area widget.
Fig. 5. Ready to use Blog with IncomingVideo Comments Area.
The visitors of your blog can playback any video message in your Comments Area by simply clicking on a specific video message. Once they click on the message, a video player like the one below will appear. You can play the message by clicking on the gray triangle and press the same button to pause it. You can watch your message once more by pressing replay button or you can replay the message from beginning any time during the play back by pressing the same button. To return to Comments Area, please press the Back button. Please see the screenshot below.
Fig. 6. Video Playback Illustration.
You have complete control as to what messages you would like to show in your Comments Area and will generate statistics as to how often your posted messages were viewed. You can populate your Comments Area window as frequently as you would like by logging into IncomingVideo and going to Widgets/Comments Area tab and dragging messages from the left pane of the screen to the right pane. You can also populate the Comments Area from your Inbox. Once you click on the Publish button on any particular message in your Inbox, it will immediately appear in the Comments Area on your web site.
Thank you! Enjoy convenience and all the fun of having IncomingVideo functionality on your blog!
Part 4. How to Customize and Populate Comments Area
4.1. Use Customize button to selecting frame, color and text of IncomingVideo Comments Area
Once you are installing your Comments Area widget, you have many options to customize your Comments Area when you click on the Customize button in the Widgets/Comment Area tab (as shown in Fig. 3 above). You can choose the color of the text in the Comments Area and Comments Area background color by using the color picker palette see Fig. 7 below. Here you can also change the title text for your Comments Area. Click Apply button to save your settings.
Fig. 7. Customizing IncomingVideo Comments Area.
4.2. Populating Comments Area
To populate your Comments Area with messages, please log into IncomingVideo and then to go to Widgets/Comments Area tab and drag messages from the left pane of the window to your Comments Area widget. You will immediately see this message in Comments Area on your blog. Please see Fig. 8 below.
Fig. 8. Populating Comments Area with Messages.
4.3. How to record new video into Comments Area
To record a message or video comments with your web-camera, please login into IncomingVideo and go to Message/Inbox tab or Widgets/Comments Area tab. Then press Record button and you will see the recorder as shown below (Fig. 9). Click on Allow in the Adobe Flash Player Settings window to enable video recording. Use our automated Camera set-up wizard if necessary to turn on your web camera or refer to our Help doc by clicking the link Help with Webcamera or Microphonone.
Click on the Record button to start recording. Click on Stop button to finish the recording. You can also play video after you finish recording by pressing the Play button. Enter the rest of the information in the window. Please note that the only information that is required to submit the message are the Name and Subject fields. Please keep in mind that here you can not only record video messages, but also audio messages, or just text messages (by typing in the Text Feedback window).
Fig. 9. Recording a Message on IncomingVideo.
Then to place it into Comments Area, find your webrecording in the left pane in the Comments Area tab and drag it to the right pane. Or find your videos in your Inbox and click on the Publish button.
4.4. How to upload Video files to Comments Area
In addition to webcam recordings, you can also post your video files in the Comments Area. To do so, please login into IncomingVideo and go to Message/Inbox tab or Widgets/Comments Area tab. Click on the Upload Videọ button and select the file to be uploaded (see Fig. 10 below.)
Fig. 10. Upload video files to Comments Area.
Please note that the upload functionally works with files in the format of FLV currently. If your video files are in a different format, you can easily convert them into FLV format by using a free software, for instance Any Video Converter - www.any-video-converter.com. Enter the rest of the information in the pop-up window to refer to Fig. 11 below. Please note that the only information that is required to submit the message are the Name and Subject fields.
The video file will be uploaded and will show up in your mailbox. To place you videos into Comments Area, find your video in the left pane in the Comments Area tab and drag it to the right pane. Or find your video in your Inbox and click on the Publish button.
Fig. 11. Upload video files to Comments Area.
If you have a WordPress blog you can try our wordpress video comments plugin.
