For one of my websites I wanted to have a page as the homepage for my wordpress install instead of the blog. Hence I did a google search on “wordpress have page as homepage”. I clicked on the 3rd result called WordPress Tutorial – How to Make a Static Page Your Home Page because I thought that would give me what I was looking for. It sure did but I needed to watch a 10 minute video for it 
. I should have picked the subpage of the second result Creating a Static Front Page « WordPress Codex that just had text explaining what I needed to do at it would cost me just 20 seconds. In this case there was still a text tutorial but I’ve googled in the past for other stuff and the only thing that came up were video tutorials.
So why o why do more and more people do video tutorials. Just because it’s hip to put videos on youtube? Some people claim that video tutorials are better for beginners. However if I had to watch for every setting of a program a 10 minute video I would get really frustrated as a beginner.
What’s your take on these video tutorials?
I hate video tutorials. They can’t be parsed by a search engine, they don’t allow copy/paste, they don’t allow that people skip though them to get just the bits they want, etc..
I understand why they can be helpful sometimes, but that’s it.
2nd that, i don’t know why everyone’s gone video tutorial crazy. I used to do muck around with 3D software and nearly all the tutorials (including training disks you can buy) are videos, as if i was expected to watch hours of film on my sofa and then go to my computer and try to find the right button after having seen it for about 1 second somewhere in the middle of the video.
I hate video tutorials too. The last time I found one, was while I was searching for a tutorial about “Drupal CCK Calendar iCal Export”. I would give you a link, but it seems like the page is no more available. But the video was total useless, because it was out of date. That is another problem with videos. How to update the video, if the thing you explain was updated??? I watch this video (about 20min), just to see, that it won’t work anymore. A text with the same content (even outdated) could be read in less than 10min.
I say, if you can skip to the part that matters to you, and there’s enough information on the page with the video to know which part of the video has the information that matters to you, then a video tutorial is fine. That, and if there’s a good text tutorial to accompany it, then all the better.
Might be a personal preference thing. Many people like to be taught with demos, similar to how a face-to-face run though with a teacher and a video is about as close as you’ll be getting to that online. I do not, it’s much easier to browse text with photos or screenshots for the parts that need to be visually shown. There are, of course, some things that do lead themselves to video but it’s being overused by a lot right now. I think some of it is that it’s become possible for an average person, so it’s used even when it’s suboptimal. It’ll probably pass.
I have just recently learned to love them. This weekend I discovered how many ‘soldering tips’ videos there are on Youtube. I think the world would be a better place if I could find a soldering instruction channel on TV, and there weren’t 27 sports channels.
Maybe that’s just me though.
For soldering it makes sense, because it’s very difficult to describe in words how to do it. However for software it is in general pretty easy to describe and if it’s not you should think about the design of your software
I agree that many times written documentation is much faster, and better. There are times when its easier to watch a video. Blender is another example I can think of. The video tutorials for that software are very very good.
I have never tried to learn WordPress though, and I don’t think video tutorials would be the best approach.
If it was as easy to make screenshot-by-screenshot tutorials with instructions as it is to make video tutorials, we wouldn’t have this problem.
People do what’s easy. If you want them to do something your way, make your way easy for them.
Depends on the tutorial and who is doing it. Torley Linden of Second Life fame does some good ones, and someone’s quick to transcribe it to the Knowledge Base there. That’s the other thing, the tutorials don’t take the place of real documentation. And he’s good about subtitling what he’s talking about along the way if you’re just fast forwarding through it.
I’m looking for some help making tutorials for designing Tango styled icons (with the new high-res, single-canvas workflow). Tutorials can be pretty bland and hard to follow though, if the speaker gets side-tracked with “ooh shiney” things, rather than following through with the base point of the tutorial.
[...] Tech BlogUse Unique Article Wizard As A Tool For Affiliate Marketing …Related Blogs on tutorialsThe rise of Video Tutorials | Blog of Jaap A. HaitsmaVideo Tutorials Offer an Alternative to Traditional Learning …Lizard Lounge Dallas Related Blogs [...]
It depends how video is used. Some people write poor documentation, some people create poor videos.
I quite enjoy videos for showing how some fancy new feature works instead of trying to guess what the author is describing in words (words that may not be his/her primary language!)
I also *strongly* prefer *text* tutorials, they are easy to discover with a search engine, can be sorted by relevance, allow you to spend as much time as you want with a certain step, set your own pace… I also wrote a good deal of tutorials (mostly about graphic applications, like Inkscape or GIMP).
With this said, beyond the “cool” factor, which is the main attraction point for an audience with a shot attention span, there are some merits for video tutorials, for example you can show better with video how you *draw* something in Inkscape or how you *paint* with the healing tool in GIMP, those are hard to explain with simple text or static images.
As others have suggested, it depends on what’s being taught. YouTube is a godsend for tips on scaling fish, but I’ve never watched a tutorial video on programming (or indeed on anything directly computer-related except games) which had more value than a text copy.
As to why it’s done? It’s easier and more natural for the person doing the teaching. Written tutorials require more explanation and clear, pre-planned prose.
@Chris Cunningham: a problem is video tutorials are abused in many cases where a text tutorial would be better. Also, doing videos also require pre-planning, is way harder for me, who I am NOT a native English speaker, with better writing than talking.
I really like video tutorials, but I also like gnash, and often they don’t play well together. I wish more people would publish their nice tutorials in an open format.
I appreciate all the discussion on this topic, which I found thanks to the link from Jaap above. I’m totally sympathetic to the idea that people don’t really want to wade through a 10 minute video tutorial when they know exactly what they are looking for when they see it and can grab it and move on.
I started making video tutorials for WordPress two years ago. Initially I made them for my customers, who needed a basic introduction to WordPress fundamentals.
Prior to that, I made text tutorials with screen shots. They took about the same amount of time to make, but I did not get as many views and I got far fewer comments and questions. There is also something to be said for the increased visibility you get posting on YouTube plus embedding in a blog vs. posting text on a blog alone.
It’s safe to say that almost everyone reading this post and the comments – me included – is far more technically skilled than any of my customers. Although now it makes me wonder. I don’t really have conclusive data to suggest that beginners prefer video. But I bet they do.
The take-away for me is that it would be good to have a text version of the tutorial available in addition to the video. Thanks for the feedback.
[...] McLaren on More General Questions About W…candicejs on More General Questions About W…The rise of Video Tu… on WordPress Tutorial – [...]
Personally, I prefer text. As many have said, there is nothing more frustrating then watching a 5-10 minute video and finding out that what you need to know was in the last 40 seconds.
I truly believe to be successful in tutorials you need both. Remember those learning styles people have, auditory, visual and kinesthetic. There are people who learn best by listening, and others by watching, or reading. And in a world where everyone scans, video loses out and text wins.
And as someone also said, it also depends a lot on the subject matter.
So many variables, it’s just best to have both to cover your bases!
I agree that video is huge these days, but nothing beats having the printed text to refer to as well.
I think that video tutorials, if done right, are far superior to text. But the videos must been done in small, modular units that are indexed for easy searching. Lynda.com does video tutorials very well.
Videos tutorials are good because the quality of youtube is in HD or very clear. It was not good in the past with pixelation, bad audio, and cheesy background music. The problem with text tutorial is it is hard to understand people’s writing due to bad grammer, or using huge or out dated or modern words which only a person with an english degree can understand. Plus, a lot of videos are to the point, and the vlogger does not make a lot of sarcastic commentary, or really poor humour like a lot of blogs which made me stop visiting a lot of blogs since I got offended by some of their jokes.
I think following a cursor, and watching a guy type in textboxs is a lot easier then reading a long winded blog artice. With video, I can also use the slider (status bar) thingy to fast foward to the section of the video I need to learn. I also can pause the videos.
I also dislike making text tutorials since I have to make a lot of screen shots, and figure out a way to write them, so they are understandable. Plus, I hate it when people steal my articles and paste it on their website. With a youtube video, I don’t care since I water mark all my videos with my link, so the person embedding my videos to their site is helping me promote my website. Plus, it is more difficult for people to remove a watermark on a video compared to a picture which anyone with MS paint, photoshop can do. But, with video people, need to remove frames with Video editing software.
Johnson makes a good point about using a URL as a watermark on videos. Whenever someone embeds the video, it has my URL prominently displayed.
If I find that someone has bootlegged a video of mine that is on YouTube or one of the other services like VodPod, etc., I can ask YouTube to take it down, and they will do it. Fat chance that someone who steals my text tutorials and screen shots would remove those from their site.
This has happened to me twice. The thief used video editing software to paste their URL over the bottom of my tutorial screen for the entire tutorial, using as an advertisement. When I asked the video site to remove the videos, they did so quickly, and in one case they banned the user.
Hi Mark
Interesting point you make about plagarism. I too have several websites offering free material, both written tutorials and videos and have come across very crafty theives.
On the one hand I guess they are helping distribute the material as long as the links are respected, but on the other I think someone has just hijacked work it took me hours (sometimes days) to make. I always use a closing screen with a URL hotspot embedded in it for my video tutorials, but many of the spam sites don’t seem to care – they pinch it anyway!
David
[...] tutorials? There’s a discussion on the blog of Jaap Haitsma with participants expressing an overwhelming preference for text tutorials. Business Blogging 101 is mostly video tutorials. Although, when I started making tutorials for [...]
[...] I liked the discussion at this blog post: The Rise of Video Tutorials. Posted in Health Issues, Rants, Technology and Software. Tags: access weight loss, internet [...]