First off you'll need to bear with me while I back up a bit and talk about something that I've seen a lot of in the almost 6 years that Jamroom has been online - the desire by many users to get the cheapest hosting possible.  This is a completely understandable position to take - you're trying to minimize any recurring costs that might be involved with running your site, and in the beginning (when you may not be making money), you want to have the least amount of money flowing out of your pocket on a monthly basis.  Again, this is understandable - but really only to a point.  An analogy I would use is that you've just plucked down big money for a new 50 inch LCD TV, and now are determined to drive all over town trying to find the cheapest pair of "rabbit ears" you can to put on your new TV.  Is this going to give you a high quality picture?  Of course not - most people who plunk down their hard earned cash for a monster TV end up getting some sort of "bronze" or "platinum" digital TV package through their cable/satellite/fiber provider, because after all - what's the point of having HD support if you can't use it?  The same can be said for hosting providers.  Going for the "all you can eat for $5.00 per month" type of hosting provider is going to get you the same type of "service" you would get with your bunny ears - it might work, but when you want to start doing new things with your Jamroom (like grow), you'll find that having 2,000 (or more) other websites on the same server you are on is going to cause a small problem.

This leads me to my next point - why Jamroom.net has partnered with JBServers.  Many of you that are long time Jamroom users already know about JBServers, and why they are the only hosting provider we recommend.  Recently I received an email from a Jamroom owner, with some questions and concerns about our relationship with JBServers - most importantly, the feeling that Jamroom was being designed to ONLY run on the JBServers.net servers.  While initially I couldn't understand why the user would feel this way, I realized that over the years that we have been working with JBServers, it has become very easy to say "if you were hosting on JBServers you would not have this problem" - without ever really making it clear that there are thousands of Jamroom sites around the world hosting on other hosting providers besides JBServers.  Our goal with Jamroom has never changed - to provide a powerful platform for building your social media community.  Since by far the majority of our customers do not host with JBServers (despite our best efforts!), it only makes sense for us to try and make sure Jamroom runs on as wide of a variety of hosting providers as possible.  This means everything from cheap (even free) hosting plans, all the way up to dedicated servers at Rackspace that run $1K a month and above.  With literally hundreds of different operating systems, versions of PHP, versions of MySQL, versions of Apache, caching accelerators, as well as OS and user space process limitations, it's a constant effort to ensure Jamroom runs on 99% of the systems out there.  With JBServers, we know our customers are going to be in good hands - not only because they run great servers on a top notch network, but because there is no other hosting provider that comes close to the level of Jamroom knowledge and experience that Jonathan at JBServers has - he runs his own Jamroom sites and is involved with the day to day support of the Jamroom community.

With that said, I want to take some time to point out the reasons why quality web hosting is so important to the success of your Jamroom site, as well as to the perception of your site by your veiwers.

• Powerful Servers - Jamroom is not your typical "forum" PHP script, or chat script - it's almost a half million lines of PHP code, Javascript, CSS and templates that all must come together to provide the services it offers.  Jamroom is a bit different then other scripts in that it makes extensive use of the file system (hard drive) on the server.  Most forum and chat scripts (for comparison) simply use a database for storage - this makes it so you don't have to worry about permission issues.  However, Jamroom must use the file system since it is not practical to store hundreds of gigabytes of media files in the database as BLOB objects.  Having a powerful server is important (especially when doing media conversions) - multiple CPU's is better, and lots of RAM will be needed (again, especially if you are doing media conversions).

• Dependable daily backup system - the time will come when you will need to restore a song or video that one of your users accidentally deleted, or a set of files that were accidentally overwritten.  Even though it may seem like it WON'T happen, it WILL.  It may not in the first year, or in the first two years, but if you've been online long enough, you WILL eventually have a problem where you need to reload.  I can't tell you how many times one of our customers has been a bit distraught when they realize their "cheap" hosting provider's last backup of their site was from 60 days earlier, and they now have to explain to all their existing (and new) customers why their media is missing.  More then any other requirement to look for in a hosting provider, I would personally say this is NUMBER ONE.  You have one chance to make a good impression on a user or member, and often one BAD impression is all it takes for them to take their profile elsewhere.

• Knowledge of the system - this variable really comes into play when you're having a problem with your site, and need a quick resolution.  A hosting provider that understands Jamroom will often be able to get your site restored much quicker - many hosting providers that are not familiar with Jamroom will simply tell you that it is a script issue, and to contact Jamroom Support.  While we try our best to make sure we assist quickly, this can often make the issue take considerably longer to resolve, as the hosting provider will insist we "prove" the problem is server related.

• Unrealistic prices for services - (unfortunately) most users make their web hosting decision based on this factor alone - price.  They often see "unlimited everything" for $5.95 per month, and think it is a great deal.  However, the truth behind this price is that the offering isn't even close to being "unlimited" - as soon as your site begins to grow, you'll be asked to "move up" to a dedicated server (in order to handle your usage), or leave their service.  Their ENTIRE business is built around the fact that most people that place a website online will receive NO traffic - this is how they can get away with placing several thousand domains on a single server (I've seen as many as 25,000 domains on a single server).  However, once you open your doors to your users, and you get a couple dozen viewers streaming videos or songs online, you'll  likely get an email from your hosting provider asking you to upgrade or move - we've been involved with dozens upon dozens of moves like this - moving their existing Jamroom site over to new hosting.  Regardless of what they tell you, quality network bandwidth, quality servers, a robust backup system and knowledgeable personnel all cost money.

• Customer Service - while I have saved this for my last point, it is by no means the least important - there is going to come a time when you need assistance from your hosting provider to do something on your server - change a setting, fix a login issue, try to find out why you're having a problem installing a script - whatever it may be, you're going to call on the hosting provider to get their help.  When you go with the cheapest hosting you can find, their motivation is to NOT help you - as soon as they have to get a support person involved with fixing your problem (or even just having them look at it), any "profit" they were going to make from your account is gone.  I can't tell you how many times we have worked with hosting providers to try to get them to make a small change in their server PHP configuration, or get them to move the users site to a new server, and pretty much have run up against a brick wall. Their entire business model is based upon volume of accounts, not quality of accounts, and you see that in their operations.

Thank you for bearing with me through all of this - I know this is a longer-then-normal blog post, but I want to make sure everyone understands why quality hosting is so important to running a successful Jamroom site - your hosting provider should be a partner with you, with the goal of making sure your site is running the best it can - if you're not getting that type of service from your provider, you might consider changing hosting providers.

Over the last 3 years or so, we've seen a real "shift" in the online media space towards video, and video sharing in general.  With the explosion in popularity of sites like YouTube and Google Video, all of a sudden everyone became their own director, and uploading videos to YouTube became something many people quickly wanted to do (which in turn actually spawned a whole sub-industry of cameras that feature "one button" uploading to YouTube and other video sharing sites).

It was on June 25th, 2005 when the first release of the "Jamroom Power Pack" went online, enabling Jamroom to support uploaded videos in the same manner as audio - this allowed artists to begin sharing videos of their shows, or music videos, with their fans.  In the last 3.5 years, the Power Pack has grown to encompass many other "add ons" and features, and is a really "powerful" add on for your Jamroom.  With the release of the Jamroom Conversion Server (part of the Jamroom Cluster Server), Jamroom also added the ability for uploaded videos to be automatically "converted" to FLV videos - this allows the videos to always be streamed directly in the Flash player on the profile page, instead of launching a media player on the visitors computer.

Recently, with the release of the Jamroom 4 Skin Pack, a new Jamroom Skin called "JamTube" was released that does it's best to mimic the look and feel of YouTube.  If you are looking to create a YouTube like video sharing site, then the JamTube skin provides a perfect "launching point" to begin the design of your site.  The JamTube skin offers the basic functionality of a video sharing site, and most likely you will want to add your own unique features and design to the skin.  An entire guide has been developed to help you along:

Creating a YouTube Clone using Jamroom

The guide covers the configuration changes you'll want to make in Jamroom to make your Jamroom "video" centered (instead of audio centered).

I know this new blog entry could have probably been written as a new User Support Forum post, but I wanted to make sure that our visitors that only stop by the front page of Jamroom know how flexible Jamroom can be - if you're looking to create an online video site, Jamroom provides you with a very solid foundation (for audio and and images as well as video) that is a perfect platform to build on.

If you have any questions about Jamroom, or Jamroom functionality, make sure and join us in the Jamroom User Support forum and let us know what you're looking to do - we're always ready to help ;)

The core feature that enables this detection is called "MusicDNS", and it is a service that is provided by a 3rd party (the MusicIP Corporation), and is free to use for non-commercial sites (they do offer commercial contracts for those that need a high volume account).  The description of MusicDNS (in their own words):

MusicDNS provides a simple, easy to use method for acoustically identifying digital music and acquiring the correct metadata. Leveraging patented acoustic recognition technology, MusicDNS consistently identifies the same digital music recording, regardless language or audio file format.

This is a really cool service, since it gives the Jamroom Conversion Server the ability to "identify" a music file by uploading a snippet of it to the MusicDNS database for acoustic fingerprint identification.  In our tests during integration, the MusicDNS service was able to identify copyrighted audio files we uploaded (regardless of file format) 100% of the time.

If you are a licensed Cluster and Conversion Server user, and would like to enable the MusicDNS support in your Jamroom, simply follow these steps:

• Sign up for a MusicDNS account at the following URL:

https://secure.musicip.com/signin.jsp?status=dns&fast&home=https://secure.musicip.com/dns/license.jsp

This will get you a special MusicDNS "API" key that you will need to use to query the service.

• After you have received your API Key, log in to your Jamroom as the Master Admin and go to the "Admin Options" -> "Jamroom Config" -> "Media Settings" section.

• In the "MusicDNS Access Key" setting, enter your MusicDNS API Key, then save the settings.

• Next, go into the Jamroom Config -> Jamroom Quotas section.  Within here you're going to want to "modify" each Jamroom Quota that you want to enable the MusicDNS check for.  This allows you to set the check on a per Quota basis (since for example you may want to offer a Jamroom Quota that allows the users to upload copyrighted music - say a Music Label account, for example).   You'll find the "Enable MusicDNS Check" option is available in the "Media Support" section for your Artist Quotas.  Set the setting to "yes" and save.

• Make sure you have the Media Conversion settings set to active as well - Jamroom must be doing audio conversions on the uploaded files in order for the MusicDNS check to work.

You're all set!  Now, when a user uploads a song file, Jamroom will check the uploaded file against the MusicDNS database.  If it detects that the uploaded file is copyrighted, it will flag the new (or modified) song as requiring admin approval, and send you an email letting you know that a new song is awaiting approval.

It doesn't get an easier then that ;)  If you have any questions about the Jamroom Cluster and Conversion server, and the other features it offers, don't hesitate to join us in the Jamroom User Support forum and let us know what you're looking to do.

Thanks!

- Brian