A short article on things you should check you haven’t forgotten before launching your PHPmotion website.
#1 Finish your information pages
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve visited people’s websites from the showcase section in the PHPmotion forum to see the default “demo” content still on the About, Contact & Terms pages. If you’ve just finished your website, double check to make sure you haven’t forgotten this!
#2 Check it all works OK
This seems obvious right? Well even though the script should work out of the box I’d recommend checking it out in different browsers just to make sure that everything works as expected. A few times people have contacted me or posted on the forum because of javascript errors or blank pages caused by a missing file. This goes for all websites not just PHPmotion ones 
Do not expect visitors to inform you of any errors on the site! They won’t, if something doesn’t work then they will just go elsewhere. Wouldn’t you do the same? Every now and then check your server error logs to see if any user actions are causing problems on the site.
#3 Customize your website
If your site looks just like someone else’s, visitors may think that you’ve copied the others site (or vice versa) or that you are the same & therefor have the same content. Now the chances that your visitor has been to another PHPmotion website are slim but with an ever growing number of downloads, it’s getting more and more likely every day.
The easiest option is to buy a pre-made theme or hire a professional to do the changes for you. The costs will vary a lot based on the theme or the designer you hire. If you didn’t plan on spending any money or don’t have any to spend before the launch, you can change stuff fairly easily yourself.
Being template based means most logic is kept outside of the templates so you only have to deal with actual code which will effect your layout/design. This makes it easier to edit, just take a look into your themes/default/templates/ folder to see the files that make your website look like it does currently. It only takes a few minutes to change your logo & upload it (provided you have one of course). But spend a little extra time changing the css files and you’ll be able to easily change the main colors & images used in the theme.
#4 Optimize your site for search engines
The latest version of PHPmotion is an improvement compared to v2 but there’s still room for improvement (there always is). In the near future I will try to post some articles on improving the rankings of your PHPmotion based website.
#5 Install extra features/addons
The only free addon I can think of for v3 that should not only be installed but should also become a default part of the script is RSSmotion. This is a must have if you plan on getting your site well known. Created by the forum member LennonNZ this easy to install addon will allow you to add RSS feeds of your videos to various different websites such as Google Video & Truveo.
There are plenty of addons available, most of them come at a cost though. Depending on your budget, you may want to be careful when choosing which commercial addons you buy. I’d recommend the video embedder for a quick way to get videos on the site & the invite my contacts addon to help grow your community faster. It’s also a good idea to remove the branding by purchasing a license.
That’s all for now, hopefully this short post will help any new users out there.
Webmasters with successful websites should also take into account the massive change in the sites seo when upgrading versions of phpmotion.
After an upgrade from v2 to v3 about six days ago, my traffic has dropped from hundreds of unique visitors to tens per day. I am hoping that this will balance out with re-indexing over time, fingers crossed eh!
I blogged about this very problem http://funkycode.net/2009/09/28/dont-upgrade-to-phpmotion-v3-just-yet/ a while back & contacted the PHPmotion devs about the SE loss when upgrading. Obviously wasn’t considered important to them though as nothing was done about it…
Unfortunately I’m not sure how long it will take you to regain your previous ranking/traffic. Basically upgrading kills most old links so all your existing content will be reconsidered as new links when SE’s index your site
PHP Motion, biggest rip off on web… They say it is FREE, not so.. SCript wont work, you can not find answers on their forum. Solution pay them to install for you..
PHP Motion Highway Robbery
It is free to use, there are extras that you can purchase but the main script is free to download & use. Many commercial scripts work like this, it’s not just PHPmotion.
1000’s of people would disagree about it not working, sure there are bugs but it works. And the forum is pretty helpful for most people
I definitely would not consider it highway robbery, I think you just seem to have had bad luck setting it up. Were you on a host that supports PHPmotion?
I have to agree with Ben- I never paid PHPmotion to install anything for me, and the script works beautifully. The only thing I ever bought from them was a license, which wasn’t essential, it was totally my choice.
I did find that your host makes all the difference in the world. Had a rough first month before I moved to a quality host. Things were great after that.
Back on topic- #1 just made me laugh! I find it almost hilarious that people seem to subconsciously think that if the links (terms, privacy, etc.) are in the footer, they’re covered… so often forgetting that the links are supposed to go to legitimate pages.
Great post here!
Hello,
I found this while I was “googling”. It’s is very interesting. all the 5 things are helpful to improve quality of his website.
I have some trouble with my host. The quality of the video is not very good. So there someone who know a good host for phpmotion website?
Thank u for your help.
Sincerely.
Sorry, I don’t really have any hosts to recommend. I know one that shows up a lot on the forums is Cirtex hosting (not all comments about them are good though). Who is you’re current host?