What Can I Do With Miro Community?

Miro Community can embed and display videos already on the internet. It offers an easy way for you to collect and curate videos, and display them elegantly. You can search within Miro Community for videos you have collected, and as an administrator you can search through Miro Community for videos with relevant keywords on popular video host sites.

Can I use my own domain?

This feature is available with a premium account. Apply to get a premium account here.

Is Miro Community a video hosting site?

At this time, Miro Community does not host videos. You cannot upload videos to Miro Community sites (yet). If you need a place to host your videos, try blip.tv, Vimeo.com, VideoPress, or Kaltura.com.

Does Miro Communtiy support Ogg Theora? Does it allow flash?

Miro Community supports any video that can be embedded, including Ogg Theora videos. As co-founders of the Open Video Alliance, the Participatory Culture Foundation is committed to open-source video solutions. We have added some extra support to help make Ogg videos look great and warn those using browsers that do not support Ogg. We also want to make our software easy to use for people who may not have previously encountered open-source software by supporting the most popular video hosting sites, including YouTube, blip.tv, and Vimeo.

Why should my community have a video front page?

Right now, there is a lot of valuable local video out there, but it can be very difficult to find, especially if you're looking to get a general sense of a community on a regular basis. Video and local are both big trends right now, but few efforts are truly combining them - Miro Community allows you to do so by taking advantage of the local video that's already out there.

Why should I use Miro Community to make a community video page?

Miro Community takes much of the work out of making a video page. Simply copy and paste media embedded RSS feeds into the Manage Sources page, and videos will come into your site automatically, and can then be reviewed by your administrators. Miro Community is easy to use, open-source, and highly customizable, both through custom CSS, and, for premium users, access to Django templating. Miro Community is also produced by a small, nonprofit organization, ensuring that you will be supported along the way and know that you’re supporting a good cause!

Is Miro Community free?

The software that runs Miro Community is free and open source and can be downloaded here. We currently host free sites for the general public and small community groups, you can set one up here. You can also apply for a premium account, which will give you a three month free trial of premium features.

How do I make a Miro Community site?

Go to http://mirocommunity.org/signup/. You will be asked to provide a username, password, email, and a URL for your site. Once you click Create my Site, sit back and wait for your new site to come online. You will receive an email at the specified address when your site is up and running. If after 1 hour your site is still not online, please email us at anne [a] pculture.org.

How do I add a YouTube User's Videos to my Miro Community?

You can add Youtube, blip.tv and Vimeo user feeds to Miro Community sites by copying and pasting the URL of the user profile into the Add Source area of your Manage Sources page. For all other kinds of feeds, including YouTube favorites and playlists, you will need to generate a media RSS feed and submit that as a source.

Can Miro Community accept videos from anywhere?

Miro Community accepts any video that can be embedded. It works especially smoothly with videos from YouTube, blip.tv, and Vimeo, but any video that can be embedded can be posted to the site. For feeds, Miro Community can accept media embedded RSS feeds. For more information on feeds, see Make Internet TV.

Do I need permission to post someone else's video to a Miro Community site?

Because Miro Community works by embedding videos hosted at other sites, there is no need to request permission to post other peoples' videos to a Miro Community site. Videos that have embedding turned off cannot be played through Miro Community, and a link to the original video site will be preserved whenever a video is embedded.

Why are there users on my site that were automatically created? What if those people want to be site users?

When you submit a video or a feed to your Miro Community site that comes from a major video hosting site, Miro Community automatically creates a user so that it can attribute the video properly. By default, you will see only Human users or users that were manually created on the site. To see all users, including those that were automatically generated, click the See All Users tab. If you want to make an auto-created user a site user, just add a password and they can start signing in!

I want statistics and metrics!

We recommend using Google analytics code to track your statistics. Go to http://www.google.com/analytics/ to get set up, then copy and paste the code into your footer area.

What do I need to do to get my Miro Community site to show up on Google or other search engines?

Nothing! Miro Community sites quickly rate well in search engines for their topic. However, in order to increase your search ranking, make sure to tag and categorize your materials and include keywords in your page, your sidebar, your title and your tagline.

How do I find more videos to use on the site?

You can search for videos through Miro Community on the Manage Sources page, which is in the administrators area. Type in key words in the Search Video Sites area, choose to have your results listed by relevance or date, and search. Your results will be from YouTube, blip.tv and Vimeo. If you have a search you like and think you'll want any new items from that search to come into your queue, you can choose to save your search as a source. You can also search for items within a video site and then submit those video URLs or feeds to the Miro Community site.

I have an error on my Miro Community site - what should I do?

The site I made is gone!

We deactivate sites that have not been logged in to for 2 months and have less than 5 videos. This allows us to free up resources for active sites. If you would like to re-create your site, feel free to do so at http://mirocommunity.org/signup/.

Why does the site look strange in my browser?

We try to make sure Miro Community will look good in all modern browsers, but there are bound to be some kinks. Try updating to the latest version of your browser, and if the problem still exists, feel free to let us know at anne [at] pculture.org.

How can I protect against spam?

Miro Community includes reCaptcha for comments, which should cut down on most spam. You can also choose to moderate all comments and/or limit commenting to logged in users through the Settings page. You can also limit the ability to submit videos to logged in users, but we have not seen this be much of a problem.

How can I edit information, metadata, or a thumbnail for a video?

When a video is in the review queue, an admin can edit the category, date, title, thumbnail, author, tags and website by clicking the Edit links next to the field when the video is selected. Once the video has been approved, you can edit most fields on the video page with Edit links, and can change the embed code and other fields through the bulk edit page on the administrative side.

How can users sign up on my Miro Community site?

Users can sign up for your site using the Login link in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. You can also create user accounts from the administrative side on the Users page. If you want a user to be able to log in, you will need to be sure to give them a password. Users can also sign in to Miro Community using their OpenID or Google ID.

How can I brand my Miro Community site?

One of the great things about Miro Community is its flexibility. To get started on customizing your website, you can upload a logo and background through the "Settings" administrative page. For more advanced customization, you can add custom CSS on the "Settings" administrative page.

Can I customize it to look like my website or include it within my website?

We have full Django templating so that every portion of the site can be 100% customized from the HTML to the CSS and up. Custom domain names allow you to seamlessly embed Miro Community into any web domain. Full Django templating and domain names are only available on premium accounts. Apply here to obtain a premium account.

How can I change the layout of my site?

Miro Community offers 4 basic themes for your site - Scrolling, List, Category and Blue. These can be found on the Themes page on the admin side of the site, under Settings. To change your theme, simply activate the desired theme. All content of your site will remain the same. Users with premium accounts can also upload their own Django templates (see above), including variations on the basic themes. If you a’re interested in becoming a premium user, apply here.

Can I advertise on my site?

We restrict the ability to run advertisements to premium partners. Apply at http://mirocommunity.org/signup/ to get a premium account.

Can I run Miro Community on my own server?

Yes, Miro Community is Free and Open Source Software, written in Python using the Django framework. The source code can be found here.You can get further documentation on installing Miro Community here. MiroCommunity 1.0 was released on 2010-05-20. The source can be downloaded here.

How is Miro Community funded?

Miro Community is generously funded through a grant from the Knight Foundation and monthly fees for premium accounts.

Where can I send my suggestions?

Send suggestions and bugs to anne [at] pculture.org. We will try to get back to you as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, we cannot offer support for customization and issues specific to your site at this time.

Who is the Participatory Culture Foundation?

PCF is the non-profit organization that develops Miro Community. Find out more at pculture.org.