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.
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.