Prior to WordPress 2.9 if you wanted to embed a video you needed to either copy the embed code (seen below), or you needed to use a plugin to be able to embed the video.
Now with WordPress 2.9 or above you can easily embed a video with a simple copy and paste. WordPress 2.9+ now has the oEmbed feature, which for most of us it’s not important to know what it is, just what it does. Now instead of copying the above code and inserting it into your “HTML” tab in WordPress you can simply copy the web address from the web address bar.
The only extra step you need to remember to complete is to ensure that the address is NOT clickable (see the embedded video at the end of this post)
http://youtu.be/iANRO3I30nM
As long as the web address and code comes from a whitelist service provider, I’ve provided a list of the providers below.
White List Providers
- YouTube
- Vimeo
- DailyMotion
- blip.tv
- Flickr (both videos and images)
- Viddler
- Hulu
- Qik
- Revision3
- Scribd
- Photobucket
- PollDaddy
- Google Video
- WordPress.tv (only VideoPress-type videos for the time being)
- SmugMug (WordPress 3.0+)
- FunnyOrDie.com (WordPress 3.0+)
Why do you want to host your videos with a service provider rather than your own hosting service? Well you can, but it’s not something I recommend. Videos take a lot of server resources (where your site is hosted) and for most people you are on a shared hosting account. If your videos gets lots of traffic your site is more likely to crash. In addition to this you are missing out on additional traffic from having your video hosted with a service provider. Using a third part site such as Youtube or Blip.tv can save your server resources and also help to drive additional traffic to your site.
Update: December 8, 2010 – Rebekah of My FabulousVA had a great reminder about knowing that hosting all of your business related videos on a service like Youtube or Vimeo may be a violation of their terms of service, so be sure to read the terms of service before choosing to host all of your videos with one service. Using an additional service like Amazon S3 (cost is minimal) is a great way to protect your content.
Now enjoy this video that has had more than 4 million users.
