Video breaks hosting in a way nothing else does. One viewer holds a connection open for twenty minutes, and a handful of them can occupy every worker a normal site has.
Serving video well is about getting it away from the application server entirely.
Video is served from the edge with range requests. A viewer watching for twenty minutes costs bandwidth rather than a PHP worker held open for the duration.
Range support is what lets a player jump to the middle of a file without downloading everything before it. Without it, scrubbing feels broken no matter how fast the connection is.
A multi-gigabyte upload through wp-admin fails on default limits long before it completes. Upload size and execution limits are raised so large files land the first time.
Video archives only grow, and deleting old material to stay within a quota is a hosting problem rather than an editorial decision. Storage is part of the plan and can be topped up.
Members-only or client video is delivered behind access checks rather than relying on an unguessable filename.
Nothing about video is hard once it is off the origin. Everything about it is hard while PHP is still involved in handing the file over.
The failure mode on a normal host is not slowness, it is exhaustion — every worker occupied by somebody watching, and the rest of the site unreachable.
Every row is a way of keeping the application server out of the transfer, because that is the whole problem.
| Setting | What we do | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Media delivery | Edge-served with range support | A file streamed through PHP holds a worker for the length of the video, and a few concurrent viewers can exhaust the pool. |
| Range requests | Enabled on all media | Without them a player must download from the beginning, so seeking appears broken however fast the connection is. |
| Upload limits | Raised for multi-gigabyte source files | Default upload and execution ceilings reject the files a video site is made of, which is where most migrations stall. |
| Storage | Sized for a library that only grows | Archives are never pruned for editorial reasons, so quota pressure forces decisions that have nothing to do with the content. |
| Private media | Served behind access checks | An unguessable filename is not access control, and client or members-only footage needs actual enforcement. |
Every plan includes free migration, daily backups, SSL and 24/7 support.
Move the site across — migration is free, library included.