All of our plans include the ability to customize your landing pages, while the Sprout, Tree, and Forest plans include a fully customizable video website. This guide will cover how to personalize your:
- Site Name
- Copyright Name
- Company Logo
- Favicon
- Meta Description
- Open Graph Image
- Video Site URL
- Custom Domain (CNAME)
The video website is an easy way to share your videos with an audience. To personalize your website, select ‘Site Editor’ at the top of your screen, then navigate to the ‘Personalize’ tab.
Site Name
To pick a name for your site, enter your desired site name in the Site Name field.
The Site Name will appear as your site title for search engines, at the top of your browser tab, the copyright at the bottom of the page, and in the header of your site. If you upload a logo, it will appear alongside your Site Name in the site header.
If you only want to use a logo, leave this field blank. If you do not enter a site name and do not upload a logo, we will use the Copyright Name as your site header and in search engine results.
Copyright Name
By default, we will use your Company Name specified in your Account Settings for the copyright label in your site footer. If you’d like to display a different copyright name on your site, you can modify that here.
Company Logo
You can upload an image to use as your company logo. If you’ve added a Site Name, your logo will appear next to it in your site header. Leave the Site Name blank if you only want the logo to be displayed in your header.
To upload a logo, just click the ‘+ Add Site Logo’ button, then select the desired file.
We recommend using a PNG file cropped tightly around your logo with a transparent background, but GIF and JPG files are also accepted. The max file size that we accept is 500KB.
Favicon
A favicon is a small emblem you can design to match your larger company logo. A Favicon will appears in the browser tab at the top of the screen when you are viewing your site. It helps your video site visitors quickly identify which browsing window contains your video site. This is an optional setting for your video site, but helps it look more polished in terms of appearance and branding.
Creating and Formatting Your Favicon
Favicons have to be very small and in a particular file format in order to work. Use any image editing program, like Photoshop, Gimp, or SnagIt, to create a JPG, PNG or GIF file containing the symbol you want to use as a favicon. Then, use any free ICO image converting web tool to create the ICO file for upload. Make sure to export a file containing two sizes: 16 x 16 pixels, and 32 x 32 pixels for optimal results.
Here is a tool that can create the ICO file:
There are certainly other options out there. The right tool to use is entirely up to you.
Uploading Your Favicon
Click the ‘+ Add A Favicon’ button and navigate to the file on your computer. Select the file, then click ‘Open’ and it will upload automatically. Once you are finished editing your site, click ‘Publish Changes’ to finalize the changes to your live video site.
Meta Description
Your site meta description is an HTML tag used by search engines to describe what your page is about. It should be no more than 155 characters long. This meta description is added to every page of your site with the exception of individual content landing pages, which will use the content’s description, when available.
Open Graph Image
An Open Graph image (og:image) is displayed on social networks and apps that utilize rich previews when a link to your website is shared. Landing pages for your content (videos, live streams) hosted by SproutVideo will use the content’s poster frame as the Open Graph image when those links are shared. Links to any other page on your SproutVideo-hosted video website will use this image for rich previews.
Using an image approximately 1200 x 630 pixels in size, or roughly 2:1 aspect ratio, is recommended. The max file size that we accept is 500KB.
Video Site URL
This is the address where your Video Webiste will live. Video Site URL’s must contain only letters, numbers or hyphens, and must be between 3 and 63 characters long. They cannot start or end with a hyphen.
Note: If you have previously shared links to your video site or any video (or live stream) landing page using an old URL, those links will no longer work after changing your site URL.
When you first sign up for a SproutVideo account, you are given an automatically generated URL for your video landing pages and your video website. You can customize your video site URL at anytime, your URL must be unique, but not to worry, we will check that for you when you are updating it.
To change your URL enter your desired URL in the ‘Video Site URL’ field then click ‘Change Video Site URL’.
Custom Domain (CNAME)
You can also set up a custom Canonical Name (CNAME) for your SproutVideo-hosted video website and landing pages if you already own a personal domain hosted outside of SproutVideo. Enter your custom hostname only, no protocol. If you do not have a CNAME, leave this field blank.
Other articles in the Video Websites section:
