Embedding Youtube The Easy Way

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.

Originally posted on May 17, 2007 @ 8:34 am