How To Embed Videos In WordPress Blog Posts
Videos bring life to your website, and they are a great way to increase user engagement.
WordPress makes it super easy to embed videos from video hosting sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Twitter, and many others.
How to Embed Videos in WordPress Blog Posts and Pages
WordPress comes with a great feature called auto-embeds which allows your website to automatically get the embed code from popular video hosting services like YouTube, Vimeo, etc.
All you need to do is paste the video URL into the WordPress editor.
For example, you can copy the YouTube URL for a video that you want to embed.
Next, edit the WordPress post or page where you want to add the video, and simply paste the URL in the content area.
As soon as you paste the video URL, WordPress will fetch the embed code and display the YouTube video inside the content editor.
You can now save your post and click on the preview button to see the embedded video in your blog post.
After you have added the video, you can change its settings from the block toolbar and settings column on the right.
You can adjust the video width, make it full-width, change alignment, and more. You can also add a caption and preserve the video’s aspect ratio on mobile devices.
WordPress can only do auto-embeds for white-listed video services. For other websites, you will still have to obtain the embed code and then paste it in your blog posts.
Here is a list of white-listed video services for auto embeds in WordPress:
- Amazon
- Animoto
- Cloudup
- CollegeHumor
- Crowdsignal
- Dailymotion
- Flickr
- Hulu
- Imgur
- Issuu
- Kickstarter
- Meetup.com
- Mixcloud
- ReverbNation
- Screencast
- Scribd
- Slideshare
- SmugMug
- Someecards
- SoundCloud
- Speaker Deck
- Spotify
- TED
- Tumblr
- VideoPress
- Vimeo
- WordPress.tv
- YouTube
If you want to add a video from a website outside this list, then you will need the full HTML embed code for the video.
Simply copy the HTML code provided by the video website and paste it inside a ‘Custom HTML’ block in the editor.
Embed Videos in WordPress Using Old Classic Editor
If you are still using the old WordPress classic editor, then you can embed the videos the same way.
Simply copy the URL from a video hosting service like YouTube, and paste it in the editor. If you are using the visual editor, then you will see a preview of the video.
However, you will not be able to use the width adjustment and other options that you can use in the new WordPress block editor.
How to Embed Videos in WordPress Sidebar Widgets
Just like a WordPress page or post, you can also embed videos in WordPress sidebar widgets.
Simply go to Appearance » Widgets page and add the ‘Text’ widget to a sidebar. See our article on how to add and use widgets in WordPress.
Inside the widget settings, you need to paste the video URL in the content area. WordPress will automatically fetch the embed code and display the video preview.
Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save’ button to store your widget settings.
You can now visit your website to see the video embed in the WordPress sidebar widget.
WordPress Video Embed Plugins
By default, you don’t need to use a plugin to embed videos in WordPress. However, you may want to use plugins to improve video viewing experience on your website.
Following are a few plugins that you may want to try.
1. YouTube Subscribe Bar
YouTube Subscribe Bar shows a YouTube subscribe button below your YouTube video embeds in WordPress. It also fetches your YouTube subscriber count to add social proof and encourage more users to subscribe.
We first created it to promote WPBeginner’s YouTube channel on this website. Many of our users asked us to share how we did this, so we decided to release it as a free plugin.
2. Envira Gallery
By default, WordPress does not come with an embedded video gallery feature. If you wanted to show a video gallery on a page, then you’ll need a plugin to do that.
Envira Gallery is one of the best photo gallery plugins for WordPress. It also comes with a videos addon which allows you to create beautiful video galleries with lightbox popup support.
3. Lazy Load for Videos
Video embeds load scripts from external websites, which has a small impact on page load speed and performance.
Lazy Load for Videos solves this problem by only loading the video image on page load. It loads embed code only when the user clicks on the play button.