Simple YouTube Embed is a WordPress plugin that allows you to embed YouTube videos and make it responsive and prettier. You can embed a YouTube video with the highest resolution version of its thumbnail image and present it much more professionally to your visitors.
With Simple YouTube Embed, you can prevent YouTube from showing related videos when a video finishes playing. You can also apply advanced customizations such as automatically play a video, hiding player controls, fullscreen option etc.
Simple YouTube Embed Info
Requirements
- A self-hosted WordPress site running on a WordPress Optimized Environment.
- Support for the oEmbed API.
YouTube Embed Plugin Demo
YouTube Embed Plugin Installation
- Login to your WordPress admin dashboard
- Go to Plugins->Add New
- Enter Simple YouTube Embed in the search box
- Once you find the plugin hit the install button
Option 2
- Download the zip version of the YouTube plugin
- Go to Plugins->Add New and click on the Upload tab
- Select the zip file on your computer
- Upload and install it
Option 3
- Download the zip file and extract it
- Connect to your site via FTP (you can use a tool like Filezilla to transfer files to your server)
- Browse to the “/wp-content/plugins” folder
- Select the folder containing the plugin files on your computer and upload it
- Once all the files have been uploaded to your web server, you can activate the plugin from the Plugins menu (WordPress admin dashboard)
YouTube Embed Plugin Usage
You can easily embed a YouTube video by inserting the URL into a YouTube block in your post/page editor. For example:
Once you publish the post/page, your YouTube video should like the following,
If you already have some YouTube videos embedded, the plugin will automatically make them pretty like the one above.
Automatically Play a Video
Add “autoplay=1” to the URL if you wish to automatically play the video after the page loads.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpg9yizPP_g&autoplay=1
Disable Related Videos
Add “rel=0” to the URL if you wish to disable related videos from displaying when the YouTube video finishes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpg9yizPP_g&rel=0
Disable Player Controls
Add “controls=0” to the URL if you wish to disable YouTube player controls.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpg9yizPP_g&controls=0
Disable Fullscreen
Add “fs=0” to the URL to disable the fullscreen option in the YouTube player.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpg9yizPP_g&fs=0
If you wish to display a YouTube video in lightbox, please check this tutorial on how to embed a YouTube video in lightbox.
how do I set the videos to not automatically start playing? Don’t need 5 videos playing at the same time, half of them twice.
Thanks!
Is there a way to set the default video thumbnail image?
Thanks!
@Mark, you should be able to do it from your YouTube account.
Not having it work at all for me. Just shows the standard embed window that comes with WordPress.
Having trouble getting it to work. Just shows the standard Youtube embed built in with WordPress. Any ideas?
@talorb, please provide a link to the page in question so I can take a look.
Here’s a sample post:
http://www.thewesker.com/cedar-point-trip-report-iron-dragon/@talorb, are you using a caching plugin? All the JavaScript files are getting included in the wrong way. It’s also causing some errors on that page.
@wpguide Thanks. I went through and disabled any plugins I thought would be causing issue and it still didn’t work. I guess I’ll just go without.
@talorb, have you disabled “quick cache” or any minify options that you are using? Once the scripts are loaded correctly I might be able to track the issue.
Yes, both plugins are currently disabled and it still does not work. I’ll leave them disabled if you’d like to troubleshoot. Thanks again.
@talorb, some of the errors are gone now. I believe it’s the wp minify plugin that you needed to disable.
@talorb, actually I just noticed something. How did you insert the video URL? You need to embed it like the following for the plugin to work:
It is embedded just like that. I don’t know what could be causing the issue. I even tried creating a simple post with just the video URL and it produces the same result.
Thanks for your help anyhow.
@talorb, that’s a little strange. The final embed code is not even coming from the plugin. Do you have any plugin that filters YouTube code or does something with it (It could even be the theme)?
I got it working. Just so you know for future reference or documentation, it was a setting in the popular Jetpack plugin. I had to disable the “Shortcode Embeds” option within it to get the plugin to work.
Funny though, that disabling the Jetpack plugin itself didn’t allow it to work.
@talorb, I’m glad to hear that it’s working now.
how can i resize the video size?
Curious like Don is on how to resize the embedded video, as well.
Great plugin! Worked the first time with my current configuration.
Hi!
Nice plugin!
On my site it works on some posts and some not.
Here it works nicely:
http://www.updateordie.com/2014/08/31/mulher-como-mero-objeto-video-disseca-o-sexismo-dos-videogames/But not here:
http://www.updateordie.com/2014/08/28/dj-cria-faixa-partir-de-1-000-sons-produzidos-por-maquinas-da-ge/Any clues?
Thanks a lot!
@Wagner, the plugin is getting a 404 error for the YouTube thumbnail (maxresdefault.jpg). Does your video have a high definition version?
Hi!
A HD version? I don’t know, they are all embeds from yt, our authors usually just drop the url w/o any further settings…
The theme is new and I’m still regenerating thumbnails… Could it be related?
Tks!
Oh, I got it.
The poster frame only shows if the video has an HD version, is that right?
If that’s the case, that’s something really bad for editors and authors because there’s a lot of videos w/o HD. Is there any way to avoid the ugly blank grey screen?
I hope so because the plugin is great and works really well with the HD videos.
Tks a lot!
@Wagner, you are right. I will take a look at the code and see if I can come up with a workaround.
Besides blank screen on video (no poster frame), I’m getting a random video after my video plays.
@Paul, Please provide a link to the page in question so I can take a look.
Is it possible to resize the embedded video? Works nicely otherwise…
This plugin works in Chrome, Andoid browser, IPAD browsers, and Internet Explorer 9.
However, the video does not show in Internet Explorer 10 and Internet Explorer 11.
The div tag is in the page code, however, it does not show in the browser.
Any ideas on how to get this work in IE 10 or 11?
I’m also getting a blank grey screen (no thumbnail) with low res video. Additionally, at the end of the video, it loads a random video in.
I love the appearance of this player on my new website. Thank you for creating it! My question is about Vimeo videos. Is there a way to replay(loop) the video instead of going to the default Vimeo end-of-video screen where multiple other videos are displayed? Same question about YouTube. Thanks! Dia
Hi, thanks for the plugin.
Could you update to the most recent version of PrettyEmbed.js in the next release of your plugin since it provides way more options.
Cheers
@Miron, Thanks. I will take a look and update it as soon as possible.
Love the player, thank you! Is there a way to make it autoplay when the page is loaded?
@Jody, Unfortunately no because the embed code comes from WordPress.
Thank you for a very helpful plugin.
Quick question – the YouTube video is responsive in the admin panel for the page it’s on, but not on the actual site.
Did I miss something?
Thanks for your time.
@windeef, It should be responsive. Do you have any other plugin installed which might be conflicting with it? Please provide a link to the page in question so I can take a look.
Ah-HA! JetPack does not play nice with it.
Thank you!
When I post a vertical video, it shows up HUGE on the live site. Any way to keep this from happening?
Question…when I add the “rel=0” to the end of the code to disable the related videos from displaying at the end, all I see is a black screen with the YouTube play arrow. Without the addition of the “rel=0” at the end, the first image from my video appears. Is there someway to disable the related videos and yet still show the first image from my video?
Thank you!
Never mind…I just realized that I left out the “&” sign before the “rel=0”. Works perfect!
Thank you!
Hi,
I’m trying to get it working but so far no success. The page is here:
http://memoryisourhome.byethost31.com/authors-note/and the URL at the bottom of the page is:
[code autolinks=”false” gutter=”false”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3EnbQvpgZM&rel=0[/code]
Maybe I’m doing something wrong… I’m very new in this.
Any ideas why it does not work?
Thanks.
Oooops, magic 🙂 it does work here on your page (see below), but why it does not work on mine??
I tried with disabling all the plugins but it still does not work.
Any ideas how to fix it?
Thanks!
@Marek, Does the video render if you deactivate the simple youtube embed plugin?
@wpguide. No the video doesn’t render even when I deactivate your plugin.
Strange isn’t it?
What to do?
@Marek, The embed feature comes from WordPress. So it should at least work with the plugin deactivated.
Please switch to the text editor to make sure that there is no hidden character or HTML tag in it.
@wpguide. I checked in Text mode and there are no hidden characters or HTML tags there, still does not work at all even with the other types of URLs like below.
Any other ideas?
Thanks!
@Marek, You can give it a try with the embed shortcode.
https://codex.wordpress.org/Embeds@wpguide. Thanks again. I tried with the embed code but it fails to load 🙁
@Marek, I believe the oEmbed option is not working on your server. Have you contacted your hosting provider yet? They should be able to look into this issue.
@wpguide. Yes, I contacted the hosting admin and the ‘mystery’ is solved. They said:
“Due to the high amount of abuse and increased security needs we have disabled by default all outgoing connections for free user accounts.
Allowed outgoing connections are only available for paid accounts, you need to upgrade to a paid account in order to use it.”
Well, at least I know now…
Thanks again for all your help!
good plugin, but not SEO friendly
plugin loading java scripts on all wordpress pages
make please check for pages with youtube links and add scripts only on those pages,
thank you
Is there a way to adjust the width of the preview image? I uploaded the preview at 1170px but the preview displays at 865px. The video plays fine at 1170.
I’d like to set the quality automatically om the maximum HD1080p.
How can I do that using this plugin?
@Cecile, That’s something YouTube does automatically based on the connection speed.
Hi there i need some help, is there a way i can add a comment box below every video,i have embedded many videos in one page and may be some like buttons…here is my link…
http://www.jacksonkanyoro.co.ke/videos/?preview=true. Thanks@Jackson, You mean a comment box like the one that appears on the YouTube video page?
Hello,
It doesn’t appear to be working for me. When I view page source, all it renders is:
and nothing is visible on the page. It’s pulling the id, but it’s just an empty div. Any idea why this is happening?
@Jesse, Did you try it in text mode? Did you actually publish the page to see if it renders the YouTube video?
Dear Author this plugin is working fine in case of desktop. but for mobile devices the videos are not playing
Please Help.
Hello,
I add a Youtube video to my YouTube Embed the Simple WordPress plugin. Youtube page of Adsense Ads appears in the video, but can not be opened in their Adsense ads on the videos above reproach. Please help.
Hey,
Great plugin 🙂
It would be great if you could get this to work with ACF’s (Advanced Custom Fields) oEmbed field.
Hello there ..I installed this plugin but it didnot work for me .Video cannot be displayed .
Would please look at
http://glamorousnepalese.com/priyanka-and-ayushmans-new-cover-song-out-on-youtube.htmland tell me why it isnot working ?Thank you
@Shraddha, Are you using the embed shortcode? or did you directly copy and paste the URL into the page?
There is a JavaScript error on that page. Please fix it first so we can get into the plugin issue. This tutorial will help you debug JavaScript errors:
https://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Your_Browser_to_Diagnose_JavaScript_ErrorsI activated plug in and none of my embedded you tube videos allow full screen still. When i click full screen it says option unavailable. How do I make my videos go fullscreen? Here is my embed URL:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jzeKNVSUQ0]When I use the “&rel=0” at end of my embed URL it turns my video black and says playback not allowed. here is my URL:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jzeKNVSUQ0&rel=0]@IGOW, Are you embedding this video at wordpress.com? That’s clearly not the shortcode for embeddng it on a self-hosted WordPress site. The documentation actually explains how you can embed a video as well as turn on various options for it.
Im confused then I guess I need more guidance. The link is directly from you tube embed option. It renders and plays just fine on my site, with the exception of 2 issues. It will not allow full screen even when we click the icon in bottom right corner of screen. AND it off and on shows related videos and replaces my embedded video unless you refresh the page.
If you can guide me to use this better that would be great. thanks again
also when I try to use just the youtube URL and add media it does nothing and displays nothing including the code isn’t displayed or any image when using just the watch URL not the embed link
I have seen a couple questions about resizing, but no response. Does that mean we are unable to resize the video on our webpage? Thanks!
@John, The size is automatically determined by WordPress based on the content area. It has nothing to do with the plugin.
Hi admin,
I just installed this plugin and works fine on desktop, but not on mobile phones and tablets. Is there any fix to this? Highly appreciate it
@Shumet, It just uses plain YouTube embed code. But I’m not sure why it wouldn’t run on mobile devices. Please provide a link to the page in question so I can take a look.
Unfortunately it’s just not behaving as hoped. I can see the video in the page preview but not on the home page where the page is allocated. What is your advice please?
The page it’s not working on:
http://118.127.46.83/~horshamcoc/@Phunkemedia, What happens if you deactivate the plugin?
Ha @admin, nothing happens
@Phunkemedia, oEmbed is a WordPress feature. Your video should work even if the plugin is deactivated.
https://codex.wordpress.org/EmbedsThe plugin simply lets you customize the thumbnail and some YouTube parameters. So if it doesn’t work WordPress is not being able to embed the video with oEmbed.
…oh… well that sucks… thanks for shedding some light… do you know how I find out how to fix it?
I am having same issue with IE 11. Works fine on Chrome! Shows PLAY button and YouTube Video Preview with a circle and line logo.
Nice on Chrome though! Good job!
Thanks!
Cool plugin thanks. Could be great if we could select our own thumbnail. To avoid this kind of remarks:
https://img.youtube.com/vi/gydzuiagdza/maxresdefault.jpgis resized in HTML or CSS from 1280×720 to 440×248. Serving a scaled image could save 28.1KiB (88% reduction).Hi there! I’ve been using your plugin for a couple of months now, and have been one happy panda because it does exactly what I want and I didn’t notice anything going wrong.
Until I (by accident) checked my pages on Edge (latest installment, 42.17134.1.0), and realized none of the videos show…
An example of working code:
On Edge the whole part isn’t visible in the code, it’s just the empty div.
Is this a know issue, and would you have an idea in what direction I should start troubleshooting? I am of course using a bunch of other plugins across the website, and switching them off on a live environment will be kinda unpleasant. If the issue is completely unknown I’ll create a mirror to test without plugins, let me know 🙂
@Yoran, Please provide a link to the page in question so I can take a look.
Here is an example, scroll down until you hit the part “Video (youtube)”
https://www.artistenfuerdich.de/kuenstler/saenger-mit-gitarre-berlin/@Yoran, Thanks. I saw some JavaScript errors when I loaded for the first time. The errors were gone and the video appeared when I hit refresh. Either there is something wrong with the edge browser or your site has some caching issue.
Alright, I’ll load a mirror on the weekend and see if I can figure out which plugins are conflicting. In any case the issue is then probably related to my installment, and not a global one with your plugin. I’ll give an update if I figure something out, and thanks for you help! 😀
Always the risk with WordPress huh, running 30+ plugins 😉
@Yoran, True. If this doesn’t get fixed you can choose to deactivate the plugin and WordPress will still be able to render the YouTube video.
Change all http:// to https:// or // to make it SSL correct and avoid Unsafe scripts warnings in modern browsers.
Kind regards/Stefan
@Stefan, Please provide a link to the page in question so I can take a look.
Hi.
I love this plugin and works fine on desktops but not on mobile phones and tablets. I saw someone else had the same issue. Is there any fix for this? I have no errors in the console and I really need this.
Can you check this page please?
https://brentwallace.com/juice-plus-nutrition/Thank you,
Brent
I should add that I’m using the Divi theme and this videos are in a slider in each tab. The first video loads on tab 1 but not on the others.
@Brent, The video doesn’t appear on desktop either. However, I see some JavaScript errors on that page. Please insert a YouTube block and paste the video URL to see how it goes.
Hi, thanks for the reply. I have fought this all day. Honestly I have too much stuff going on between this damn Divi theme, a video link that pops up and a slider. I’m working on another approach with just using CSS. I’ll get back to you. Okay?
Hi again.
If you wouldn’t mind taking a look at this I would really appreciate it! I’m back to the same issue of the YouTube videos working fine on the desktop but not in mobile. Very frustrated!! I can give you access if needed but I’m going to bed.
Here’s the link to the page with the problem:
https://brentwallace.com/juice-plus-nutrition/Thanks again best regards,
Brent
@Brent, Try this:
1) Inset a YouTube block into the WordPress page editor
2) Copy and paste the video URL in it
What do you mean by a block? Sorry I don’t follow.
Thanks.
@Brent, Are you using the new WordPress block based post editor?
No
@Brent, You can try these steps to see if it fixes the issue:
1) Deactivate the plugin
2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1AtLjXHDYc
Can you help me to review some problems happen that the videos on the youtube did not auto-resize to fix with my website although I have used your application already. Check on the attached link.
I have been battling non-stop to try and get your plugin to work but for the likes of me I cannot figure out why the video is not loading even after installing and activating your plugin. Was trying to post the video on a blog page but it refuses to even show and there is just a white space under the written article. i can’t figure what I am doing wrong, even after publishing. Nothing shows up at all. When I am in edit mode the video will show up but when I preview the video and/or click publish, nothing shows. This is weird.
@Wayne, What happens if you deactivate the plugin?
I will do it and see what happens. Am sure nothing will happen as this is a new website and blog and the normal youtube block does not work which is why I discovered yours in desperation in the hope that it will work.
Am wondering if I should make either an animated screen shot in gif format or a video so you can see what is going on as am so frustrated, then you can see exactly what is going on.
Am pretty sure that the fault lies on my end and not on yours if it works for everyone else. I deactivated it but the video still shows, but in the edit mode the video that I inserted is still visible but the moment I click on update or preview, no video shows up on the published page.
@Wayne, Can you please provide a link to the page in question so I can take a look?
The plugin doesn’t change how WordPress embeds a video (this is to make sure that all of your videos continue to work even after you deactivate the plugin). It lets you customize some parameters that are not available in the core oembed. So if you are just looking to embed a plain YouTube video you don’t actually need the plugin.
How can I contact you privately? This is my private blog and would have to close my entire website off (if the link here is open for the whole world to see) except the page that is giving me problems.
@Wayne, You can use the contact form on the site
Will do. Thank you.
I wonder if you can help? On 15th November Youtube deprecated listtype=search. I was using a shortcode in my hobbyist site to show a video based on a search of a particular artist’s name, eg,
[bobyoutube listtype="search" list="The Sonics"]which called a function and worked really well, showing most of the videos with that particular artist. After the deprecation it no longer works.Is there any way of using the new search.list property with your control?
Thanks Bob
@Bob, Unfortunately this plugin doesn’t really have the listtype functionality.
good