Embedding Videos in WordPress is Easy

Embedding videos in WordPress is so easy, I wonder why bloggers don’t post them more.

Videos are great way to enhance your blog not just because of the enrichment they offer. Embedding videos give your site a stronger connection to the second largest search engine, Youtube, which is owned by the first largest search engine, Google.

And don’t even think about uploading videos in your WordPress Media Library. Videos over 15 seconds are too big to load onto your puny shared server. All we want to do is call the video up to play for us, not put a roof over its head and feed it.

Videos should be housed at YouTube or Vimeo, or one of other repositories that WordPress is friendly with like, Hulu, Flickr, Animoto, DailyMotion, Viddler, Blip.tv, TED Talks, Educreations, Instagram, AolOn, Vine, and Videolog.

You can use a plugin or a premium theme feature and use either the whole link, or the extension alone. Those are super easy to work with.

But even in the most basic free theme, like Twenty-Fourteen, embedding videos on your page is simple.

Here’s how.

At Youtube

On the video’s Youtube page, you don’t have to scroll in order to find the Share tab below the Views count. Share brings up three tabs below it.

Share this video offers 10 popular networks to share to video link on.

Email brings up a form to email the link.

Embed is what you want. That brings up an iframe code, preselected to quick copying.

The Video Size dropdown menu allows you to pick your size, from 420 – 960 px wide, as well as custom sized. For most blogs, 640 is the widest you’ll want, but better yet is 480 px.

Below that, you have the option to Show Suggested Videos, but don’t. You never know what might follow.

Enable Privacy Mode makes it only viewable by you.

Finally, Use Old Embed Code gives you the option to not use iframes, like back in the old days. Keep this in mind in case the iframe doesn’t look so good.

Select the code and copy it.

In WordPress

On the Edit page, set the edit box to Text. Copy the code in Text. Viewing it in Visual will show a plain yellow box. That’s your video.

Save and Preview and enjoy, after perfectly embedding video in the page.

Video in Widget

This same code can be placed in a widget, to play video in the sidebar. It can go into a number of widgets including the humble little Text widget.

The video size must be changed to fit the width of your sidebar, something in the range of 280×160 is the smallest. In the code, just reduce the pixels of width and height in equal increments.

Obviously, it doesn’t fit in my sidebar, but if yours is wide enough it will work for you.

Again, if this code doesn’t work for you, try the Old code.

And, that’s it. That’s all there is to embedding videos in WordPress. There are fancier ways to accomplish the task, but this is the simplist, most basic method.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all the world’s Irish, as well as those who wish they were Irish!

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