How to get HTML5 MP4 or WEBM video to work on a GoDaddy web server (Apache web server)

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: June 6, 2016

I had a problem getting a WEBM video to work with Firefox after I upload it to one of my GoDaddy websites. The video just wouldn't show up in Firefox, while it did work with Chrome and Safari. The solution was to put a .htaccess file in the same directory as my video, with this one line:

AddType video/webm .webm

That line helps the Apache web server (which is used by GoDaddy) know about that MIME type.

FWIW, my HTML file, which serves up the video, looks like this:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang=en>

<head>
<title>People active at night need to be careful</title>
</head>

<body>
<h2>People who are active at night need to be careful</h2>

<video width="640" height="480" controls="controls">
  <source src="MyVideo.webm" type="video/webm" />
  <source src="MyVideo.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
  <source src="MyVideo.theora.ogv" type="video/ogg" />
  Bummer, your  browser does not support the video tag.
</video>

</body>
</html>

As you can see from the video tag, I created three different versions of the video so I could support most browsers.

I think the "video/ogg" is right for the last version of the video, but I could be wrong.

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How to get HTML5 MP4 or WEBM video to work on a GoDaddy web server (Apache web server)

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