Challenges with embedding YouTube video into WordPress Blog

Sunday, August 6th, 2006 | Technology, WordPress

Today I tried to integrate a YouTube video into my WordPress. It did not work out of the box. Initially the video would break the layout in Firefox and not show up in Internet Explorer. It turned out that the problem is the Rich Text Editor in WordPress. Even if you select the HTML editing mode and copy over the HTML provided by YouTube it fails.

To make it work I changed back to the older WordPress Editor…

1. Login to WordPress admin
2. Go to Options >> Writing
3. Uncheck both Users should use the visual rich editor by default &
WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically
4. Go to Users
5. Uncheck Use the visual rich editor when writing
6. Go to Write >> Write Post
7. Paste the ’embeddable player’ code for your YouTube video in the write box
8. In the code change the width of the player to “500” (depends on your template, but in my template the standard “600”setting ruined the layout in IE.
8. Publish blog

Now it works (see my previous blog entry).


39 Comments to Challenges with embedding YouTube video into WordPress Blog

Paris Hilton
August 11, 2006

Whole of my blog’s template broke when i tried to insert a you tube video.
Do we need any additional plugin?

Matthias Zeller
August 11, 2006

Well my template broke as well with the new editor, but after I switched to the old WordPress editor as described above it worked OK, no specific plug-ins required. It also won’t work with other editors like Flog.

[…] Thanks to Matthias for his post helping me get the video to embed Tags:No Tags   « IBM Open Source Strategy is “Beyond Linux” |   […]

maggie
August 28, 2006

find good vieo tools is very improtant!

good site!

[…] As of late I’ve been somewhat frustrated with the lack of Youtube support with WordPress. There didnt seem to be an easy way to do it. People were creating complicated plugins and other work arounds. However I found this simple solution which I recommend. […]

HART (1-800-HART)
September 11, 2006

I’ve been using YouTube on all my WP versions .. with the 2+ versions, the first thing I always do is go to the Users/Your Profile and turn off that visual Rich editor option. Maybe that’s why it’s been worry free for me. As long as my template is 450px wide that is .. otherwise the template pushes the entry below the sidebar

I have been having problems trying to get a Youtube video to be blogged by email. The codex claims that blogging by email will strip the HTML code, but if you email H2, H3, FONT etc type of html codes – they show up in the blog. The OBJECT and PARAM of the YouTube code just shows up as empty space. If you tumble on a solution .. please pass it on!

Lance
October 19, 2006

It worked perfect. Thanks fo rthe help. I even kept my template formatting.

lao-ocean-girl
October 25, 2006

Thanks for posting this! I’ve been searching for the answer for over an hour, and installing a plugin seemed a little daunting since I’m very new to WordPress.

[…] I was searching online for an answer of how to embed a YouTube video in WordPress, because my previous post would just show up with a red X where the video would have been. Plugins are still over my head and I had better things to do than figure it out today. Upon browing, I came upon the answer, and found myself staring at Steve Wozniak’s (co-founder of Apple) business card. […]

Aliarse
December 17, 2006

Thanks for that, helped a lot. :)

crose
January 6, 2007

thanks….hours of frustration solved.

Lori
February 6, 2007

Can’t thank you enough! Your suggestion worked. Wasted more than an hour or so trying to figure out what to do. So thanks again!

sharon
February 16, 2007

I have been having problems with Youtube , but thanks to this post all is fixed

[…] Klein probleempje met mijn vorig post om de Youtube video ook zichtbaar te krijgen in Internet Explorer. Alle andere browsers (Opera, Firefox, Konqueror…) werkten prima maar IE niet. Oplossing was een wijziging in de instellingen van WordPress die blijkbaar de code net voldoende om zeep hielp om IE te foppen. Met dank aan voor de oplossing. AL heb ik nu mopeite om mijn post op te maken want de editor is niet meer wysiwyg…. Argh… Trackback · […]

[…] Coming to Number 1… Recently Shel Israel gave a number of tips on how to improve Blogs to make them more interesting. He states “It is better to be useful then boring”. While it seems obvious, it is easier said then done. My post on “How to embed YouTube videos into a WordPress blog” clearly hit a nerve with many people out there and based on the comments proved to be very useful. So maybe it is not a surprise after all that it received the most visits in 2006. […]

Bollywood Movies
March 13, 2007

Well its been quite easy for me coz there have always been the plugins and rich editors.

[…] Today Charlie Beckett was asking how to do this for his POLIS blog so I’ve been looking into it. If you look at my earlier post you’ll see that it is now working but it’s a bit fiddly. I followed instructions posted by Matthias Zeller Memento which involves turning off the visual rich editor while you make the post that includes an embedded YouTube video. I’ve found you only need to worry about your personal settings so a revision of the instructions would be: […]

[…] (Sorry for the 8 million edits to this page. Took a while to figure out how to get WordPress to play nicely with YouTube. Finally found the steps here: Challenges with Embedding YouTube video into WordPress blog.) […]

Mysorean
April 18, 2007

Thanks a lot for those tips! Really helped me out a lot! Was getting frustrated seeing others being able to do it and me not even getting the hang of it! Thanks again!

[…] UPDATE: Found useful tips here and hence the video is up! […]

peachy
April 23, 2007

this really helped a lot – simple and easy to follow. :) thanks!

Christine
May 2, 2007

THANK YOU, thank you for posting this, and thank you for having it come up in a google search… it was driving me crazy that it wasn’t working, but with your instructions, my youtube video was up and running in no time.

Jerome Blanc
June 30, 2007

if you put a tag before the video and at the end it may help. This is what worked for me.

Sara
August 29, 2007

THANKYOU. I totally owe you a beer

[…] that it is not entirely trivial embedding a video in a wordpress blog. I followed the advice from this chap and it worked. […]

graveca’s view
September 1, 2007

[…] that it is not entirely trivial embedding a video in a wordpress blog. I followed the advice from this chap and it worked. […]

Rebekka
September 4, 2007

Thank you, thank you, thank you – I was tearing my hair out, and this worked perfectly.

Digitowl
September 13, 2007

Thanks! Problem solved for me to!

matilda2007
October 30, 2007

How to watch youtube video on MP4 Player

Why you should download/save videos from youtube :
You found an interesting video from youtube and you want to save/download it to your computer and later share it with your friend or keep it as a collection. However, by default Youtube doesn’t allow users to save/download the videos. It only allow user to send a hyperlink to the friends and invite them to go to youtube website to view the videos.

why not save/download the video before it’s too late ?

Steps to save/download the video from youtube

For Internet Explorer (PC) users

1) Click your favourite video clip, you can see the URL in your browser becomes something like this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCcCEqD117U

2) highlight the URL, “copy” & “paste” to Youtube Robot url and click “+” button
or move mouse to the download link, right click the mouse use “menu”->”download by youtube robot”
or drag the url to youtuberobot’s floating window

4) When the download link shows, the flv video file will auto download to your local computer

5) You can double click to view the downloaded video file

6) Youtube Robot intergrate with FLV Converter,you can select output format first then click convert button to convet the downloaded video file to your format.

7) You can plup-in IPod, PSP to usb port,after convert finished Youtuberobot will Auto transfer video to iPod, PSP,iPhone, Pocket PC, or Zune

Product page: youtuberobot.com
Direct download link: youtuberobot.com/download/utuberobot.exe
Company web-site: youtuberobot.com
E-mail: support@youtuberobot.com

Junior
December 8, 2007

I am also having problem of embeeding videos on my blog…hope this post will help…thanks!

Junior
http://www.goodtolove.com

Coryan
December 29, 2007

WOW, worked perfectly! Thanks for the excellent advice. I’ve been frustrated with this problem for the last hour. Glad I found your blog.

Pablo
September 27, 2008

Hey thanks for the tut!
It worked great.

Arthur
November 5, 2008

Thanks for the post. Poznovatelno.

author
March 9, 2009

Hi, I can?t understand how to add your site in my rss reader. Can you Help me, please :)

[…] Challenges with embedding YouTube video into WordPress Blog Posted by root 10 minutes ago (http://matthiaszeller.com) I was searching online for an answer of how to embed a youtube video in wordpress because my previous post would just show up with a red x where the video Discuss  |  Bury |  News | Challenges with embedding YouTube video into WordPress Blog […]

mini storage hk
July 12, 2009

thanks for sharing~`

PSP Custom Firmware
September 6, 2009

I never had any issue with youtube and wordpress . been working extremely well for me on my blog .

thanks
Mike
pspcustomfirmware.com

Amy
April 1, 2010

I have also added a youtube video to my wordpress blog & it works fine, thanks for sharing

Festool Sanders
August 19, 2010

This has helped me enhance the appeal of my text blogs with these videos.

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