Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. Purchasing a product through one of these links generates a commission for us at no additional expense to you.
“Follow the plan outlined here and you can create your own website from scratch without writing any code for less than $300.”
Live streaming is taking over the web!
Twitch, Periscope, Youtube Live – there’s no shortage of platforms to choose from, but they all have the same problem.
When you advertise your live stream on someone else’s website, you’re advertising their website for them.
With your own website, you control the experience and you control the audience.
Now, you’re not going to build the live streaming tech itself. You’ll still rely on services like Youtube for the backbone of the site, but you can embed your live streams on your site and send people there instead of Youtube, for instance.
If you want, you can build your site around a specific niche and attract other live streamers in the industry to broadcast on your site. It can be a platform for your personal brand or a platform for like-minded streamers.
A sneak peek
It’s hard to talk about the site without seeing it.
I have a few designs for you, but here’s a look at the theme I recommend above all others.
The Vlog theme has a clean and media-focused design. It works equally well for posting pre-recorded videos and live streams.
You can click here to see Vlog now, and I’ll cover it in more detail below.
For now, let’s get to the main steps required to create your own live streaming platform.
Create a live streaming website
Creating a website to host your live streams or streams for a small community requires six major steps.
- Find an available domain
- Signup for hosting
- Create a WordPress site
- Choose a WordPress theme
- Customize your site
- Launch your site
I’ll show you precisely which tools you need to do this on your own. By the end of the tutorial, you’ll have all the pieces you need to put this site together.
Let’s start with the domain name.
Find an available domain name
You’re probably familiar with domain names, but in case you’re not, here’s a quick example.
We normally refer to the domain and the top-level domain in conjuction as the domain name. This website’s domain name is competethemes.com.
Coming up with an original domain name is tough, but the real challenge is finding an original and available domain. It’s especially tough if you want a .com domain.
If you’re not a pro at finding domain names yet, follow this guide.
You’ll find a comprehensive strategy for scoring an excellent available domain.
In this next step, you’ll find out how to get your new domain for free.
Signup for hosting
Every website needs hosting.
The thing is, you don’t need anything fancy – even for a live streaming website. For a new website, I recommend using Nexcess.
Nexcess will get your site online and only takes a couple of minutes to get started.
Their hosting is affordable yet much faster than the cheap budget alternatives.
Another benefit to choosing Nexcess is that they auto-install WordPress for you.
Create a WordPress site
If you signup with Nexcess, you’ll have a live WordPress site by the time you’re done creating your account.
In other words, you get to skip this step!
If you’d like more assistance with your site, follow the free video course in my WordPress website creation tutorial.
Why use WordPress?
WordPress powers 30% of the web and has been around for more than a decade.
It’s billion-dollar software that you get for free.
While there are lots of reasons to like WordPress, the best aspect is the community.
Millions of people use WordPress, but there’s also a massive developer community. This means there are endless options available when it comes to choosing a theme for your site’s design or plugins to add amazing new features.
And that brings us to the next step!
Choose a WordPress theme
WordPress themes are used to transform the style of your site. As I mentioned previously, the biggest strength of WP is that the large developer community means a huge variety of plugins and themes.
While WordPress has thousands of themes available, there aren’t that many that work well for live streaming in particular. One that stands out from the rest is Vlog.
Vlog has a clean and beautiful design, and it puts great emphasis on the video content with too many other distractions.
On top of the gorgeous style, Vlog has tons of practical features.
You can automatically import videos from Youtube and Vimeo. This works for existing videos and new videos as you upload them. You can also create custom playlists within your WP dashboard, auto-create thumbnails from the video content, and select from more than 200 different post layout combinations.
You can click here to see more of Vlog if you’d like to use it for your site. Otherwise, I have a few more recommendations.
Alternative themes
If you want more designs to choose from, here’s a collection we previously curated of the best live streaming WordPress themes.
There’s a great variety of both designs and features available in that collection.
Customize your site
Once you have a theme selected, it’s time to customize the site. While a lot of the style options will depend on the theme, there are a few steps that you can always follow.
First, start by following the basic customization steps here. This will familiarize you with the dashboard options that come with WordPress.
Next, you can import the theme demo content. By importing the demo content, you can immediately set your site up just like demo site that you see featured in the screenshots.
If you choose the Vlog theme, you can find dozens of tutorials and FAQ entries in the Vlog documentation.
For even more customization ideas, visit our collection of WordPress customization steps here.
Launch your site
Creating a platform to showcase your live streams and the streams of others isn’t hard if you have the right tools.
To review the steps one more time:
- Find an available domain
- Signup for hosting (Nexcess)
- Create a WordPress site
- Choose a WordPress theme (Vlog)
- Customize your site
If you have any questions about how to build your own live streaming website or any general WordPress questions, post in the comments section below.
