In this tutorial, we will discuss the easiest procedure to add or embed videos in WordPress Posts or Pages. Here, you will learn the way to embed video from other sites (like youtube, Vimeo, Dailymotion etc) into your WordPress Posts.
I know that many beginner users either think it to be hard or use some external plugin to add videos to their website. But this is not at all required if you are using WordPress. WordPress already has a built-in feature to embed videos directly from many of the popular websites like Youtube, Dailymotion, Vimeo etc. This auto-embed feature is also widely known as “oEmbed”.
How to Add or Embed Videos in WordPress Blog Posts?
WordPress features a great solution for embedding videos, called auto-embeds (or oEmbed). This WordPress feature automatically fetches the embed code for the online video from a majority of the popular video hosting sites like YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, etc.
If you are using the visual editor, just copy and paste the video URL into the editor. Make sure that you paste the URL is in a new line and it is not clickable (hyperlinked). WordPress will immediately get the embed code from the hosting site and display the video inside your post editor. Same as how it displays images within the visual editor.
[See Also: How to Create a WordPress Post and Use all the features?]
You can then save your post and click on the preview button to see how the video is embedded in your blog post.
Now let’s see the trick for embedding videos using the text editor mode. If you are using WordPress text editor, you can use the below code to use the auto-embed feature of WordPress.
[ embed width="480" height="640"]http://video-url[/embed]
* Remove the space between "[" & "embed" while using.
Which Video Hosting Sites Are Allowed for Auto-Embed (oEmbed)?
As of Jun'18, WordPress can do auto-embeds for 34 white-listed video hosting service providers. For other websites, you will still have to manually obtain the embed code and then paste it into your blog post's text editor.
Here is a list of white-listed service providers for auto embeds in WordPress.
- Animoto
- Blip
- Cloudup
- CollegeHumor
- DailyMotion
- Flickr
- FunnyOrDie.com
- Hulu
- Imgur
- Issuu
- Kickstarter
- Meetup.com
- Mixcloud
- Photobucket
- PollDaddy
- ReverbNation
- Scribd
- SlideShare
- SmugMug
- SoundCloud
- Speaker Deck
- Spotify
- TED
- Tumblr
- VideoPress
- Vimeo
- Vine
- WordPress plugin directory
- WordPress.tv
- YouTube
Why You Should Not upload videos to Your WordPress Site
Though you can upload the Video directly to your website, we do not recommend you to do so. There are quite a few reasons to choose for embed instead of uploading to your own website.
Images, audio, and video make your website much more attractive. It also adds value to your content and increases the audience engagement. So, it is better if you display images or videos within your blog posts. The reason why we recommend you to embed images or videos are:
Resource Utilization:
If you are a beginner user, you most probably started with a shared-hosting account or low-cost VPS with limited resources. In that case, uploading videos to your hosting account may consume a lot of server resources which can slow down your website dramatically or even your account can be suspended by your hosting provider. Whereas embedding videos to your website would not impose that much of load on your hosting server.
Bandwidth Usage:
Uploading videos to your website will cost you huge bandwidth. Videos are usually of heavy sizes. The Higher the quality of videos will cost you more bandwidth. Moreover, if you further allow users to embed it on their own websites, then the bandwidth usage will get multiplied each time the video is embedded by others. Huge traffic will flow to your site, which may cause your site to crash down.
Effect on Revenue:
If you have tons of viewers, it is better to embed videos from sites like YouTube, Dailymotion etc as they offer significant revenue sharing for your videos. Which may increase your monthly revenue. If you upload videos directly to your website, you will miss that revenue offer.
Enhanced User Experience:
When you upload a video on video hosting sites like YouTube or Dailymotion, they process each video for a better user experience. The best facility is that viewers can choose the video playback quality according to their requirement. They may choose to view in HD or in Low resolution. Moreover, these websites try to automatically detect a user’s internet connection speed and device type to play the video in an optimal quality. Thus, provides the best user experience. But, if you choose to upload your video on WordPress, then you are going to miss all these optimization features and eventually may end up with low user engagement.
We hope that you have enjoyed the above article describing the steps to embed video to your WordPress posts. Be with us to explore free training on Leading Technologies and Certifications.
Leave us some comments if you have any questions or need further help on add or embedding videos in WordPress, we will be happy to help you.
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