Embedding YouTube Clips Into Wordpress Without the Hassle!

Hi Caroline, thanks for these tips.

I’m guessing that the API and YouTube account thing is so you can easily just click ‘blog this’ and have the video added to a new post without any cutting and pasting. Just a guess, but that’s probably what that process does.

Doug

Hi Caroline, thank you so much. In the past I attempted the same thing and then abandoned it because I didn’t find the final solution that you’ve given us here. Thanks for spelling it out so clearly, I’ll install the youtubebrackets plugin now. ;)

Hi Caroline there is a even easier method that I found out by accident
I use a blog editor called ecto it’s a doddle to embed any video clip using that and it’s quite cheap, here is the url http://infinite-sushi.com/software/ecto/ if you or any of your readers are interested, btw which subscribe to my rss feed plugin do you use at the beginning of your posts.

Thanks Mark

I alway had trouble doing this as well…

I never took the time to find a plugin though,
I simply inserted the code into the code area while in the code view, then save it without switching bak to
view mode.

It work and no mess, no plugin…but if you ever want to edit
that post, then its a problem!

Caroline, thanks for the tip! Your timing is perfect…I was just trying to embed a youtube clip in one of my posts but couldn’t get the formatting right. I was going to say “forget it” but now I think I’ll go back and add it. thanks so much!

You cleared up a mystery for me. I always wondered why I had no trouble embedding videos, even though I heard that a plugin was needed, and I never installed a plugin for it.

So it is the WordPress visual editor. Now it makes sense, because I don’t use the visual editor - I dislike it for other reasons. Thanks for clearing up the mystery. :)

Hi,

firstly excuse me for my bad englsih but i’m from belgium and I usually speak only french ;)

For all your video on a wordpress blog, you know this plugin ?
http://www.daburna.de/blog/2006/12/13/wordpress-video-plugin/

It’s the same way with brackets, but it’s more quick because you have just to add the ID of the video not all the URL.
Moreover it is functionnal with more then 30 tools.

Hope I don’t say too much stupid things :)

Great find caroline. The only workaround which I used by now was to reduce the size of the video and it used to work fine. But once I bring it to its normal size it will break the template again.

The small size was acceptable though but the orginal size has no competition. Thank you for the find..

@Mark, okay call me a tight-wad but I’d rather not have to shell out cash just to embed video in a blog post!

@Warrior, yeah I tried that the first time but you should see the amount of typos I put in my post - I have to edit so many times so that’s just not a solution for me!

@Arkan, no I hadn’t seen that one, thanks for the link! And no, your post was not at all stupid - your English is far better than my French! Merci beaucoup!

I just started using Wordpress and was going to do a review on someone’s video tutorial. This will come in handy. Thanks again Caroline

Thanks for the tip, I could have used this 2 weeks ago though :)

I struggled for a few days to figure out that it was the visual editor. I’m glad I turned it off, I find it much easier to just drop in my posts from MS word. It keeps the formatting the way I like it. That was another big problem for me.

I just found your site and I’m liking what I’m seeing so far!

Hello Miss MiddleBrook,

How are you? The best way to get anything done is to do it on your own. And you are sharing this with others to make everyones life easier, its cool! :)

Also You best me on almost every blog I visit for commenting, I mean You are always there before me! :) Is it he time zone difference or you are very vigilant?

Also I have written a resource article on Youtube tools. Its includes about 10 WordPress plugins and Utilities.
Hope you wont mind me posting the link in the comment:

a-collection-of-top-50-youtube-tools-and-resources-on-the-web

Very cool Caroline! Up until now I have always turned the editor off to embed video - I actually don’t use the editor much anyway. This method is a lot easier though!

Hi Caroline!

Thanks for the video, something other than internet marketing is always welcome :-).

Cheers

I’ve been using Viper’s Video Quicktags on my blogs. It works in about the same way.

I do find the WordPress Visual Editor annoying so I don’t use it at all. I prefer to just do the HTML manually since my background is in programming and web design. I use Windows Live Writer sometimes to handle some formatting chores though.

Weird I have NEVER had that problem, I just go click the html button thingy and then paste in the youtube code
no hassles no problems.
Good lord frank, man you’re like a rare person I dont know too many other people that handcode their posts, are you NUTS :-P

Thanks Caroline, I tried to embed a video once and it screwed everything up so much that I just had to link to it. Now I won’t have to do that.

hey, when did you get blog rush on there? nice tips about you tube.

I never had trouble with including youtube videos on my WordPress blog. Maybe that’s because I used the code editor and not the visual editor?

I haven’t tried embedding a video yet on my own blog, but some clients have wanted it. Sometimes the different options can be more confusing than helpful. Thanks for sharing your experience.

I’ve used the CoolPlayer plugin on one of my blogs and it works great. You can use the CoolPlayer Button on the toolbar to insert any multimedia in the Text Editor & Rich Text Editor.
Also, if you use the Semiologic Wysiwyg Editor then you can embed the object into the post and it doesn’t break the template.

Hi Caroline fair comment but ecto does far more than that that is just one feature. You can get plugins that do the job for free as you have explained just trying to give you some pointers to a useful tool that is all.

Nice tips here. Although I don’t use the plugin since I don’t need to have such hassle (I don’t use WYSIWYG), I am sure that video is becoming more and more important for a blog.

With creative contents somehow shrinking, videos might be the new creative way to spark creativity.

@FrankC, doing it all yourself is pretty hardcore :)

@Serge, I’ve had blogrush on here since the day it launched.

@Deborah, that’s right, the problem is only if you use the visual editor.

I could never got Roberts plug-in to work with youtube remote posting and got no support from his blog either. I spent 3 hours on it and had to give up.

But I found a great (free) plug-in which takes 2 seconds to use and all you do is surroud the video (youtube, google, etc.) with some bracket video tags. I’ve had zero issues with it. There are lots of options in the WP CP page to show or not show ratings, comments, etc..

It’s just one file you put in your WP plug-ins folder and the job is done.

I had to mod it to remove the download feature, which I don’t think is cricket. There’s a link on my blog to it. Just SEARCH for “wordpress video”.

It would have been nice to use Robs remote posting feature, but the problem with free stuff is lack of support when it doesn’t go quite according to plan :-(

Caroline!

Fantastic find.. I don’t really like the embed way that youtube tells you to do for normal sites as once you’ve played the video, it goes really small.. You can’t play it again without refreshing the whole page… - try explaining that to a 2 year old when he says “Again mummy…..”

Love the Star wars video - absolutely hilarious… Watching things like that at work gets me strange looks - but thanks!

Emma

I came here because of a post written by Rosalind Gardner. Reading your blog made me feel exhausted - you have so much energy! I think you are a very brave lady to give up your day job and dive in - Good Luck for the future.

@Anji, thanks very much :) I wish I had more energy…

They always end up below my post on my blog. Being as I know nothing about code and the technical side of the house I had no idea why this was happening.

Thanks for the in-depth explanation and solution!

Slideshare.net does the same thing. However, they have a special wordpress code window.

I needed just that for my video on a blog post today, and I used video quicktags plugin for wordpress that just did a fine job and it also supports several video hosting platforms.

[ youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeJKQuvmDro]

That thing actually works on my blog. I used that plugin since start.

@Vladimir, this one?
http://www.viper007bond.com/wordpress-plugins/vipers-video-quicktags/

I wish I had found that before, these people need to publicize their stuff better heh!

Caroline, I know what you mean by the coding YouTube uses. It used to mess up my tables very badly. I guess you also know about the Viper video quicktags because I use that one all the time. It also has some bugs, but it’s easy to use for newbies like me :)

-Mike

Hi Caroline,

I hate the WordPress editor when it doesn’t do what I mean it to do. Usually, I prepare my entire post in Microsoft Word. That way, if the PC crashes, or the internet connection fails, I still have my work.

I used to copy the Word doc and paste it into Notepad and THEN copy from Notepad into the WordPress blog. I did this to strip out formatting characters.

Now, instead of using Notepad, I paste the post into an HTML editor, so that I can more easily test, well, the HTML.
Once I am satisfied with the results, I paste the markup into the Code tab of the WordPress Editor.

I just wish the WordPress editor would let you default to the code tab!

Cheers,

Mitch

Hi Carol,

Thanks for sharing the great tips on how to embed YouTube video into Wordpress Blog. It certainly take away all my nightmares.

Cheers!

@Mitchell, ooh sounds like a lot of work! If you don’t like the Wordpress editor there are a load of alternatives. Off the top of my head try googling for ScribeFire or Windows Live Writer.

Hurray, thank you so much Caroline! I’m not currently using videos on my blog but this could very much come in handy as I probably will someday.

I have used SKaRCHa’s WP Vidoe plugin that I got from his site at
http://www.skarcha.com/wp-plugins/wpvideo/#english and it works fine for me except I don’t like the ‘Download’ button that comes with it.

Hello.

Thank’s for this post :) ! It’s excelent help for problems with YouTube tags in WordPress. I’ve found Your blog, used Your info about plugin and … it works! :)

Unfortunately it looks like that plugin is no longer available. Do we have a mirror for it or can someone get it to me somehow?

here is the link provided in the post…
http://www.robertbuzink.nl/journal/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/youtubebrackets_3.0.zip

it is now just a advertising page. :(

Looks like this plugin fulfills my needs, thank goodness…

http://www.skarcha.com/wp-plugins/wpvideo/#english

Hey Caroline,
How’s it going. I just tried clicking though to that link it appears to be broken or the dude has closed his site down or hasn’t payed his osting fee or what ever… Might wanna update that link.
My problem still is posting camtasia and flash video on my blog. I have uploaded a few plug-ins that allow you to do this but to this date I haven’t figured that one out.
Strange that this problem of uploading a youtube video is such a problem, I personally havent encountered it. You site was one of the first that appears when I did a search for this. A frined of mine was having this problem while he was at my place with his lap top and couldnt for life of him figure it out, or how I could do it so easily so like you I posted a blog entry about embedding youtube videos. I have 2 other blogs that I run that I upload videos to and I havent ever had this problem, I wonder if it has anything to do with the version of wordpress that people are using? Haven’t seen any posts in the blog-o-sphere regarding this so maybe I’m out left field on that one, who knows.
If you dont mind Im going to drop my post link here, hoping someone can help me out with my problem of posting flash and camtasia videos on my blog, the reason being is that we have family all over the world and would like to show them videos of our little monster being the monster that he is.
how to embedd youtube video clips in wordpress

@Stephen, thanks, I’ve fixed the link now.

Can I offer solution that works, is small and easy to use and adds the video preview even in the rss feed ;) Smart YouTube Plugin

Hey Vlad,
Thanks for the plug-in. I’ll give it a whirl.
I have my feelers out there looking for other ways to get this done. Turns out it really isnt all that easy to embedd flash videos into wordpress posts. I read a post by Chris Pirillo, yesterday, should have saved the link but I didnt. He had a great solution for putting youtube vids into wordpress posts. It has something to do with changing your account status setting on your youtube account, so that the videos get posted directly to your blog. Heck I’ll update my post at some point today to show this or just include a link.
Cheers and Beers
Shane

Sounds like a GREAT solution Caroline :)

I spent a LOT of time getting one YouTube video up by temporarily disabling the WP editor (like shane mentions). This sounds way better.

Thanks!

Hi Carolyn!

I came upon this post when I was actually looking for a list of your favorite plug-ins. The title of this post drew me in because like every WP blogger out there, embedding a YouTube video is a constant headache. You have to switch the view mode off and on to get a video embedded. And then when you go back to edit the post, you lose the video and have to start all over.

It was with a great degree of interest when I saw this plugin you recommended but I’m still a little confused. I hope you can assist.

Once I install and download this plug-in, do I have to remember to insert a space between the bracket and the start of the embed code every time I put in a YouTube video or does the plug-in automatically do that for me?

And where is the plug-in supposed to be downloaded into? Which file goes where? For instance, if the plug-in includes a folder with a handful of files like a .php file, do you upload the whole file or just one (like .php)?

Hope this request isn’t too confusing. Thanks!

@Stephen, No you DON’T insert the space - I had to put one in there to PREVENT the actual video from being embedded to show the actual text within the blog post.

For this plugin, and in fact ALL plugins, you upload the entire folder containing the php files into the wp-content/plugins directory. I recommend you download my ebook actually because chapter 5 is all about plugins and I demonstrate the install procedure with graphics.

Hi Carolyn:

Thanks for the instructions!

I was under the impression that some of the plugins out there only required you to upload the .php file to the plugins folder on the server? That’s why I was asking above if this particular plugin required the entire folder to be uploaded or only portions of it like the .php (or whatever is in it).

The other question I wanted to ask was does the plug-in automatically insert the brackets plus the words “youtube” (at the beginning) for you? Or do you have to remember to insert those in there?

Thanks again for your e-book. It’s wonderful!

@Stephen, basically the php file has to be somewhere underneath the plugins folder. Some plugins are just the php file itself and others come with other files too so they are packaged up into their own folder but it really doesn’t matter.

And no to use the plugin you have to type the notation into your editor.

THANK YOU! Seems so basic but it was so broken. Not anymore. Thanks.

Jef’s last blog post..Lone ranger, no longer ‘lone.

Although my blog is subtitled “The curious study of broken things” I was getting a bit fed up with this YouTube problem, so thank you. Came to you via Utterz, btw. The brackets issue looks familiar, so I must have been down that path in vain a few months ago.

Tim

knackeredhack’s last blog post..the two tails of fame

Thanks Caroline. I just installed it and it works like a charm. When I do my “WordPress must have’s post” I will be sure to give you credit.

Anthony a.k.a. OldSchoolSEO’s last blog post..The Stumble Upon Commandments

Thanks for this information and all the other comments and links that have been focussed here. I usually can DIY the code in, but this one escaped me. BTW Great blog!

Great tip, i’ve been strugling with those clips, it’s so much easier with the plugin enabled. I just have to be careful not to overdo the posting of Youtube vids …

Anders’s last blog post..Politican