ReelSEO ► Online Video Industry News ► YouTube Channel Functionality Flips Out Today: Is New Channel Design Coming for Everyone Soon?

YouTube Channel Functionality Flips Out Today: Is New Channel Design Coming for Everyone Soon?

  |  2 months ago   |  
YouTube Channel Functionality Flips Out Today: Is New Channel Design Coming for Everyone Soon?

Today, if you tried to make some edits to your YouTube channel page, you were probably rudely rebuffed.  And when something like that happens, and there has already been an announcement about a new channel design in the works at YouTube, this could be an early sign that we're about to all get a huge overhaul.  Still, we have to wonder what it all means.  With multiple people claiming they can't access channel editing functions and getting a "This functionality isn't available right now, try again later" message, it's probably the new design getting thrown at you very soon.

Why Are Channel Edits Being Messed With?

Probably because they don't want you making changes that are just going to get changed anyway.  But we saw this tweet from TheyCallMeDSP:

And this one from ChimeraGamer:

Of course, YouTube does this stuff without saying one thing.  They either won't admit that there's an error that is causing a bunch of people grief, or they're just going about their usual "change everything" mantra and shrugging and saying, "We told you there'd be days like this."

The new channel design will mean you can only put a banner at the top, while YouTube takes the rest and fills it with their new page design: videos, guides, and so forth.  One nifty feature of the new channel design is that you can put a video there for unsubscribed viewers that tells them about yourself and "sells" your channel.  The early "testers" include iJustine, Epic Meal Time, DeStorm, SORTED, Mystery Guitar Man, Geek & Sundry, and LOUD.

What do you think?  Is YouTube about to unleash the new channel design on everyone by tonight/tomorrow/sometime this week?  Or is this a glitch?  A mistake?  Both?

Posted in Web Video Industry News
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About the Author -
Chris Atkinson joined ReelSEO in 2011. He is a longtime film and television reviewer, and has almost two decades of experience in the theater industry. He also writes on his personal blog - http://nymoviereviews.com. View All Posts By -

What do you think? ▼
  • Jeff

    I just noticed this myself. I was able to edit my channel settings by altering the URL. Instead of youtube.com/user/xxxxx which is the default channel page, I went to youtube.com/xxxxx and edit functionality was restored. This might be a glitch or they might be playing around with the canonical URL. Personally, I think it would be awesome if they dropped the ugly "/user/" from the channel URLs. I already write out my links without it.

    • http://www.reelseo.com/ Mark Robertson

      Very interesting. Thanks for the update on this. I see that you're right as it does come back when I go that route. I dont think they're going that route as the canonical in the head still points to /user/ and though I agree with you in terms of the preference, I actually hope that they don't since I just finished an audit and recommendations document for a client telling them to change all their links to their channel to point to /user/XX ;-)

    • Pat Ferdinandi

      I agree about dropping the "/user/". If you forget to put that in, you get a channel with a similar name that may have more search juice. I just had to deal with this for a charity I was helping. An old employee had a name similar to the charity. because she had been there for a bit longer, she would come up instead of the official charity page if you left the "/user/" off.

  • Youtubio66

    IMO its a side effect of a recent change related to or effected by the recent Youtube Overhaul (YO!) Are YO!s are getting more frequent? I hope not, I like to set something like a channel design and forget it.

  • rcsparks

    Mine seems totally fine :) I can edit everything a-ok. /djmedic2008

  • Syncb0

    How do i add Seasons and episodes like feature to my youtube videos , like in the given image .
    And how do people make the channel background clickable ??

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Ray-Lane/1269020982 Ray Lane

    It may indeed be a glitch, however, one thing I have learned is that YouTube glitches are usually accompanied ny changes :)

  • DylBar

    I think the old design was better. The new design is... kind of ugly.

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