How to Build a YouTube Style Website Using an HTML Editor—A Complete Guide

With around 1.7 billion unique monthly visitors, YouTube is the world’s second-most-visited website. It carries the potential to reach 2.56 billion users. Moreover, YouTube ads have created revenue of around US$ 28 billion in 2021 alone.

Astonishing facts, aren’t they?

This is the reason YouTube-style websites are trending. People from around the world are in a hurry to invest time and money in building websites like YouTube.

You might be wondering if it would take a lot of time and effort to design such a website. The fact is that it doesn’t. There are a lot of options available on the market that let you create a YouTube-style website without spending a lot of money or having any technical knowledge.

Want to know the best option?

Froala Design Blocks and Froala WYSIWYG HTML editor are the answer.

So, let’s begin the journey by understanding what these really are and how to use them to build a website like YouTube.

What Are Froala Design Blocks?

Froala Design Blocks are super-advanced design blocks that are used to build a website. They act as a bridge between designers and developers to eliminate the communication gap. Froala offers more than 170 responsive design blocks that are unique and give you the freedom to develop your website and apps the way you want.

All blocks are based on the Bootstrap library. You will be able to see the preview and download the corresponding code as per your need.

The good thing about Froala Design Blocks is that they are free and open-source projects. This project aims to empower everyone to contribute to a better web.

Features:

• Froala Design Blocks uses open-source illustrations that are created by unDraw and have vectorial images that can be easily customized on the fly.
• Support for AngularJS, React JS, and Vue JS is part of Froala Design Blocks.

• Professional photographers from Pexels create the photos used by Froala Design Blocks.
• Font Awesome library is used for inserting social network icons.
• Available code layouts can be used as a starting point.
• By default, the Roboto font is used in the Design Blocks tool kit. You can change them to any other font you like.
• It is easier to use. Once you put the Froala Design Blocks basic HTML structure in place, you can browse the design blocks that you want to add. All you need to do is copy/paste the HTML.

Now that you know about Froala Design Blocks, you must be curious about Froala WYSIWYG HTML Editor.

Aren’t you?

Well, here it is:

What Is Froala WYSIWYG HTML Editor?

Froala WYSIWYG HTML editor is the next-generation JavaScript web editor that delivers high performance intelligently. It is a lightweight editor that enables rich text editing capabilities for your websites and apps. Created by developers and for developers, it doesn’t involve any coding from the user side. This means you can use it to its fullest without putting your coding skills into action.

You might be wondering why the Froala WYSIWYG HTML editor is the one to choose.

Needless to say, Froala offers advanced features in bulk. This is the reason it is rated as the top WYSIWYG HTML editor by G2. Beyond this, Froala is used by several corporate giants, like Samsung, Apple, IBM, Amazon, eBay, Intel, Salesforce, Cisco, Reuters, and more.

Now the question is, can these corporate giants simply go with any other HTML editor that’s available on the market?

Probably not!

Now, you might be looking forward to giving Froala a try. 

Well, who stops you? Let’s begin the journey.

How to Use Froala Design Blocks to Build a YouTube-Style Website

There are many ways to use Froala Design Blocks for building a website. We are going to discuss the two most common methods.

Method 1: Using the Design Block Builder Tool

The quickest and most straightforward way to build a website is to use Design Block Builder. Let’s go through the steps.

Step 1: Go to the Froala website and open the Design Block Builder tool. Once opened, click to add a design block.

Step 2: Select the required design section from the top menu and click on the design block you want to add.

Note: You can also drag and drop the design block you want to add from the given options.

Step 3: Continue adding design blocks until you have added all that is required. You can delete the design block by clicking on the delete icon in the top left corner. You can also load HTML and change the view and layout the way you want from the bottom menu.

Step 4: Once you are done with the design, click the Download button at the bottom.

This will download the entire design that you have created.

Method 2: An Alternative (Skeleton)

Use the HTML layout below as a starting point for the site.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Froala Design Blocks - Skeleton</title>
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, height=device-height, initial-scale=1.0">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.1.3/css/bootstrap.min.css" integrity="sha384-MCw98/SFnGE8fJT3GXwEOngsV7Zt27NXFoaoApmYm81iuXoPkFOJwJ8ERdknLPMO" crossorigin="anonymous">
    <link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Lato" rel="stylesheet">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://use.fontawesome.com/releases/v5.3.1/css/all.css">
    <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/froala-design-blocks/2.0.0/css/froala_blocks.min.css">
  </head>

  <body>

    <!-- Insert HTML for Design Blocks. -->

  </body>
</html>

Once you have the Froala Design Block HTML structure in place, you are all set to start browsing and designing blocks the way you want. You can easily copy/paste the HTML for them.

Browse Blocks

There are various ways to browse the Froala Design Blocks. 

1. For the latest release, download the archive. You can easily browse the code in the archive you have downloaded.
2. Go to the GitHub repo and check the code.
3. Click on the designs present on the homepage to see the HTML code.

Once you’re done with the design section, it’s time to move forward with adding rich content. So, let’s begin there.

How to Use Froala WYSIWYG HTML Editor to Add Rich Content to Your Website

Froala is quick to integrate with websites. You can easily add it to your site by following a few easy steps. Once added successfully, you can use it to effortlessly create the type of website content you want.

Let’s get started.

Step 1: Install

There are many ways to install the Froala WYSIWYG Editor. Here, NPM is used. It is one of the best and easiest options to go with.

For NPM, type in the following command.

npm install froala-editor

Once the installation process is completed successfully, embed this code into your HTML file.

<link href="node_modules/froala-editor/css/froala_editor.pkgd.min.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="node_modules/froala-editor/js/froala_editor.pkgd.min.js"></script>

Note: You can also use CDN as an alternative.

<link href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/froala-editor@latest/css/froala_editor.pkgd.min.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/froala-editor@latest/js/froala_editor.pkgd.min.js"></script>

Step 2: Create

You can initiate the Froala WYSIWYG Editor on any DOM element, but it is recommended to use a DIV element.

Add an empty <div id=”example”></div> element that is going to be turned into a rich-text editor.

Step 3: Initialization

Initialize the Froala WYSIWYG Editor on the previously created empty element.

var editor = new FroalaEditor('#example')

Step 4: Display Content

Include the CSS files given below to preserve the look of the edited HTML outside of the rich-text editor.

<!-- CSS rules for styling the element inside the editor such as p, h1, h2, etc. -->
<link href="../css/froala_style.min.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

Do not forget to put the edited content inside an element with the fr-view.

<div class="fr-view">
  Here comes the HTML edited with the Froala rich text editor.
</div>

Here is a complete example form showing the integration of Froala WYSIWYG HTML Editor with a site.

<html>
<head>
<link href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/froala-editor@latest/css/froala_editor.pkgd.min.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/froala-editor@latest/js/froala_editor.pkgd.min.js"></script>


</head>
<body>
<div id="example"></div>
<div class="fr-view">
  Here comes the HTML edited with the Froala rich text editor.
</div>
</body>
<script>
var editor = new FroalaEditor('#example')
</script>
</html>

Here’s the final look at the form.

Now, you can create or edit the content in the way you want. Whether you want to add rich content to your site that looks exactly like the content on YouTube or have a better idea available, Froala gives you the freedom to create it. Moreover, it doesn’t matter whether you need markdown support. FontAwesome, a host of existing plugins, framework integrations, extensive documentation, and so on, Froala offers all in a single place. 

This means you can build a YouTube-style website without any hassle.

Final Takeaway

Originally designed to be a video dating site, YouTube has emerged as a powerful search engine and an open source of entertainment. It even exceeds Bing and Yahoo in terms of searches and the number of users. This is why the website design of YouTube is trending. Most developers are working on building a site like YouTube.

Even though creating a YouTube-style site may seem like a daunting task, you can easily create one with the help of Froala Design Blocks and Froala WYSIWYG HTML editor by following the above steps.