Aimsites.org is a service designed for AIM Missionaries to create and maintain their own website or blog.
Are you an AIM Missionary wanting a blog to share what God is doing in Africa and amongst Africans?
So you’ve signed up for AIMsites and now have a blog, or website, or whatever-you-want-to-call-it. If you don’t have a website, sign up here.
Putting video on your website is a great way to talk to supporters/friends/family and show them what your life and ministry look like, in a way that photos can’t. For some examples of how our family uses video, hop on over here.
Putting your video on your website is easier than you think. A couple of things you’ll need:
The first step is to get your computer and your camera talking together. Power on your camera, put it in playback or VTR mode (the mode where you can watch what you’ve recorded). Power on your computer, and locate the cable that probably came with your camera that is for plugging your camera and computer into each other. It’s probably called a “Firewire” or “1394″ cable. If you are using a USB cable, you will probably need to install some drivers (look for a CD that came with your camera) before using it on your computer. Firewire is better, use that if you have one!
If you’re on a Windows computer, open up “Windows Movie Maker“. This is free software that comes with your computer expressly for the purpose of easily creating video!
If you’re on a Mac, you’re also in luck. Find iMovie in your applications folder and launch it.
How to use these applications is beyond the scope of this quick tutorial. Play around with it, read the help screens in your application (Movie Maker or iMovie) and learn to use it.
The gist of what you need to do is this:
Furthering reading:
for iMovie (http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/#imovie)
for Windows Movie Maker (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/getstarted/default.mspx)
Next thing you need is a place to upload your videos to. Your AIMsites website isn’t a really good place to do this for a couple of reasons: it’s not a video server and you have a limited amount of upload space.
The best thing is to sign up for a free account at one of these places:
I like blip because it gives people the option of subscribing to your videos through a podcast, like iTunes. It also organizes your videos into a “show”, so you can kind of think of each video you upload as another episode in your show. It’s also where AIM hosts its videos, which you can find here and here and here.
Once you’ve signed up for a video hosting account, and probably had to confirm your email address, proceed to the next step.
The best way for you to get your video uploaded would be to find a client application that will do it for you. This is much better than sitting on a web-page for 40 minutes trying to send a file.
If you’re using blip, you can download their tools to upload here. I use Upperblip, but if you are using Windows Movie Maker there’s even a plugin that will let you send your videos to Blip straight from Movie Maker.
If you’re using Google Video, check out the Google Desktop Uploader.
If you’re using Vimeo, try the Desktop Uploader.
Once you’ve uploaded your video to your site, you can proceed with the next step
This is the easiest part. You can embed your own video in your pages and posts as well as video from almost anywhere else on the internet.
Just follow these easy steps:
We’re here to help! AIMsites is a ministry of the On-Field Media team, and we make it our mission to help missionaries with media. We built this site for you, and we are here to support it and train you in using it!
Africa Inland Mission and
On-Field Media and individual missionaries
