User blog:CzechOut/Enhancing your Wiki with Video

FANDOM empowers you to add video directly into your articles, bringing them to life in ways that text or even images alone can't always accomplish. And as video becomes a more dominant part of audience expectations online, people will stay on your community longer if they have the right videos to watch.



That's why video is becoming an increasingly important part of FANDOM's content. While Featured Videos have been a major driver behind this shift, communities also have the ability to add additional videos anywhere they want on the page. Communities like Thomas & Friends and Tardis have taken full advantage of this for several years. By now, they have vast numbers of videos all across their content.

These video-rich communities are a great example of how to effectively curate video.

Setting up your library
Here are some tips about how to effectively set up your video library:
 * Where can I find videos? Before anything else, you have to know where to find them. The easiest place to find them is Special:Videos, which you can find under the Explore tab of your community's header.
 * Categorization is key. As you build your video library, looking through Special:Videos will take more of your time. Just like with pages, effectively categorizing videos with clear and relevant categories can help you and others find your videos. Category:Character videos, Category:Trailers, and Category:Clips are all examples of effective categories.
 * Use Search! While establishing your category system, you may find that searching through your existing library will help. On Special:Search, you can look specifically for videos — and even choose only HD videos.

With a well-established library, you'll be able to easily add videos to your pages.

Video best practices
You can find the steps for how to add a video to a wiki page on our video help page. Just as important as the steps to add them, though, are the best practices behind adding them. For example, the higher up on the page your video is, the more audience engagement it will receive. Adding a collection of character videos into a section on the bottom of the page is an often-used example, but a character video or two peppered higher up on the page means more people will be engaging with your content.

On a lot of pages, the highest areas of the page are dominated by an infobox. One solution is to put a video in the infobox itself, if the video gives a strong overview of the character. If there isn't an infobox, a captivating character video could find a great home in the top right of the page. Bonus points if the video thumbnail is particularly illustrative of the character.

A video set to display above 400px can be particularly engaging, and if you set a video at 400px or higher then it will play right there on the page rather than in a lightbox that opens on top of the text on the page.

It's also helpful to add videos directly from a publisher or studio YouTube account, or official accounts on other supported platforms. Videos from random accounts may disappear without notice, whereas official videos are likely to stick around for good.

Of course, these are only some of the best practices for using video. Do you have any insight from using video on your wiki, or any questions about how to do it? Let us know in the comments!