May | 17 | 2007

Embedding Youtube The Easy Way

Posted by Benj as Blog Reviews, Plugins, Software Features, Software and Widgets, Videos

Given the technology that bloggers have at their disposal nowadays, it is now easier to publish material on less-than-conventional media. Videos blogs and podcasts are no longer a rarity but they’re not exactly that mainstream as far as your everyday bloggers go. Fortunately for Wordpress users, a lot of plugin developers have since chipped in making multimedia embedding easier.

Among all the content providers available in the internet, Youtube is clearly tops. Aside from being the repository of third-party videos, the site can also serve as a host for a user’s personal videos. These could in turn be used for a user’s personal blog or website. Though Youtube already gives out a pre-fabricated code for embedding the file, you may only use the code while on the “code editor” and once you revert to the “visual editor” the code will be distorted and unreadable. Not only will the code change, it will also cause the video to not appear.

Try it for yourselves. It’s a fair assumption that most Wordpress bloggers use the visual editor and since it is the “first” view that appears when trying to edit and entry, the code would’ve been altered by the mere act of clicking the edit button. One way to keep this from happening is disabling the visual editor under “Profile”.

If you’re unwilling to sacrifice the visual editor for the well-being of your Youtube codes, you may download Youtube Brackets. This plugin makes embedding Youtube videos easier by limiting the necessary coding to:

[youtube=videourl]

Just like that, your video will be embedded without the hassles of Wordpress altering the code the next time you edit it. If you’re fine with hard coding Youtube videos into your blogs the hard[er] way, be my guest. But if you’re one of those who would rather take the easy route in things like embedding videos, this plugin is exactly the one you need.

10 Responses

magneticBLUE
17|May|2007

Thank you for sharing this information.

I’d like to suggest for another video embed solution. Actually not only videos… Images and quotes from any web page, directly to any WordPress blog. Best of all, it’s not a plugin, it’s a bookmarklet. You drag & drop it to your bookmark bar and then, when you see a video or image, or some text worth to quote, click the bookmarklet and that’s all. For more information, please visit:

http://postsome.com/
benj
17|May|2007

Thanks for sharing magneticblue! I’m checking it out right now. It looks very promising. Please do come back for more updates here at Blog Tutorials. Who knows, we might even feature this in the near future.

Cheers!
Rory
18|May|2007

Does your suggestion here work for Google Video, or any other? And does it mean the HTML validation issue is overcome?

Having just watched the postsome video, I was a bit concerned about the blatant hot-linking concerns, particularly with regard to the pictures. I’m not sure Copyblogger (for example) would appreciate bloggers linking directly to pictures stored on his server. Same applies to Flickr.

Otherwise, it looks interesting - especially if it had the facility to save as “draft”.
magneticBLUE
18|May|2007

Hello Rory,

There’s no hotlinking. When you blog an image, PostSome server creates a copy of the image on the fly, and sends PostSome URL to your blog.

For example…
If I blog an image from this page, say, (http://www.blog-tutorials.com/wp-content/themes/wp_BT/images/feature4.jpg) it will become like this: (http://PostSome.com/images/12123123.jpg) Test it. You’ll see. There’re no worries for anyone.

“Otherwise, it looks interesting - especially if it had the facility to save as “draft”.”

Hmm, interesting… I like this idea very much. Looks like It can be done.

“Does your suggestion here work for Google Video”

Yes., works with Google and all other 28 known video sharing websites.

“And does it mean the HTML validation issue is overcome?”

Yes and no.

Yes… Every post you have with PostSome button, transfers directly to your blog, without validation of “Rich Text Editor”. Of course WordPress validates the code, and it has to be, but as long as you host your own blog you can embed videos directly in your posts.

No… If you have to use Rich Text Editor, when you need to edit your posts, let’s say a draft post, it will be validated by RTE.

No… If you have a WordPress.com or Wordpress.org blog, you cannot post video embedded blog entries with help of PostSome.com. Other features like posting image or quoting works well.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Rory
18|May|2007

Thank you for clearing up some of those points, mBLUE, I really appreciate it.

I should have made it a bit clearer: The first part of my question - Does your suggestion here work for Google Video, or any other? And does it mean the HTML validation issue is overcome? - was aimed at benj’s original post.
magneticBLUE
18|May|2007

Oops, ok
benj
18|May|2007

Hi Rory! Thanks for clearing that up. Unfortunately, no it doesn’t. You may use this instead.
Easytube

This would enable you to embed both youtube and google videos.

Thank you to the both of you! As you could see, we’re just starting anew with a spanking new lineup of writers. It’s great to have some comments here! Yay!
Alex
18|May|2007

I suggest just copying and pasting the embed code. If it so happens that you need to upgrade your engine (say, WordPress), at least you don’t have to worry if the plug-in’s compatible or not. Besides, you’ll just be copying and pasting anyway.
benj
18|May|2007

Alex, the embed code usually gets altered once you switch views to the visual editor. If you’re not using the visual editor then good. But if you’re one of us unfortunate sods who don’t hard code our posts, the plugins could definitely prove to be of great assistance.

Thank you for dropping by Alex.
ia
18|May|2007

Here’s a clue as to why the <embed> tag gets altered. It seems to be a bug in the TinyMCE editor that’s *supposed* to be fixed already.

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