Adding streaming media to your website can be very useful. Although gratuitous use is not recommended, band websites might wish to feature streaming audio, or you might want to have a video advertisement available to your customers.

There are a few requirements you need to consider when adding streaming media to your website. Firstly, you need to make sure that your hosting server has software installed which can support streaming media. Secondly, you need to ensure that the media you wish to use are of file types which are suitable for streaming.

Whichever media player you choose (the three most popular being QuickTime, Windows Media Player and RealPlayer), you will need to install software on your server which permits the streaming of the appropriate media. This software is available – at a cost – on each company's website.

You then need to use QuickTime Pro, RealProducer, Windows Media Producer, or some other media producer, to create your streaming files.

If the option of a streaming server is not available to you, you could instead use HTTP to stream your media. It is not recommended that you feature a lot of streaming media in this way, as it can put a lot of demand on your server. If you wish to do this, you simply need to put a link to your streaming media in your website. When the user clicks this link, the file will begin to download, and after a suitable amount of the file has been downloaded, it will begin to stream in their media player.

By Iain Ford

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