How to Embed Video in Your Word Press Magazine Basic Blog

At the beginning of 2011 I started a new blog – Tidbits from Templeton--my first to be self-hosted. I had heard hosting one’s own blog was the best solution if one wanted the blog to earn any money. I’d been perfectly happy with my blogs on Blogger and Wordpress.com when communicating was my only objective, but when I started promoting affiliate products, on Wordpress.com, I discovered it was against their terms of service and removed the few affiliate links I had put up. I knew my next blog would have to be self-hosted.

Self hosting is a new adventure in blogging if you haven’t done it.  I have several web sites and domain names at GoDaddy, so I decided to host my new Wordpress Blog on one of those sites. I was really confused as to how to do it, but found their tech support really helpful not only in helping me install Wordpress on my site, but also in suggesting ways to move several domains into a single web site to save money. If you are thinking of self-hosting a Wordpress blog, I highly recommend GoDaddy. I am a very satisfied customer because they answered all my questions, and led me step by step as I got started. I was used to the Wordpress format and editor, but had never had to worry about plug-ins layout, templates, and widgets on Wordpress.com.

I got off to a rousing start once I decided to use Magazine Basic as my template. It was easy to install within my dashboard at my GoDaddy web site. There were a couple of things I had questions about, so I spoke to a Squidoo friend across the world on Skype who walked me through that. One of the things she walked me through was how to embed a video into my blog.The picture will show you how my Front Page looks.

I had tried to use the video icon in the top “upload, inset” row to insert video, but it didn’t work. It did insert a nice link to the video, though. When I talked to my friend, she kept telling me to click on the long green icon that looked a bit like a cell phone. It just didn’t seem to be there. Then she pointed out a symbol in the editor I hadn’t noticed. Take a look at this picture, "Strange Icon I Hadn't Noticed." The icon is called “kitchen sink.” And its on the end of the first row of icons in the visual editor under the upload icon row on top. (Click  picture to see it full size) When I clicked it, a new third row appeared. And there was the green icon. I was able to use it to insert my You Tube link, and all was well. If you have the right version of Magazine Basic, this might work for you.

About a month later, when I had everything working well, the inevitable happened. First there was an upgrade to Wordpress itself. My support person at GoDaddy suggested I wait to upgrade the magazine basic theme, since it’s not always a good idea to upgrade the themes right away. So I waited. Everything went well until it came time to use another video. All of a sudden, there was no more third row in the editor and no green icon to embed the video.

I started to search the help files and finally discovered that if I went to my dashboard and clicked on Media under settings, there were some helpful changes I could make. I’m not much for changing defaults, but I did need to check the box next to When possible, embed the media content from a URL directly onto the page. For example: links to Flickr and YouTube. This is found next to Auto-embeds under Embeds. (See picture and click to make it bigger so you can read it. )

What that meant was that when I wanted to embed a You Tube video, all I had to do was insert the link right in my visual editor where I wanted it and save. It did not show in the preview, but when I actually published the blog, it magically appeared when it went live. I had a solution to the missing green icon and I was happy. Until today.

Today this trick didn’t work. Evidently this was a day when it wasn’t possible, for whatever reason, to embed the video, so when I published, all I had was the link text. This was not acceptable, since the title of the blog was taken from the the video content. I decided to look through the plug-ins available from my dashboard. I clicked the arrow next to Plugins to expand it. Then I clicked Add New. That led to this screen where I could search for plugins. I typed video embedders in the search box. (See Install Plug-ins photo at right and be sure to click to make it bigger. )

That led me to an page that described all the available plugins from Wordpress.org from which I could choose. The Wordpress for Dummmies Book I was using suggested Video Embedder by Kristoffer Forsgren, so I checked that out first. However , I was using the latest version of Wordpress, and when I clicked for the details on the program, I discovered it hadn’t been tested for my version of Wordpress, and hadn’t been updated in almost three years. So I tried to find another.

I finally decided to try Simple Video Embedder by Janes Lao. I got the same warning message, but it had been updated within the year and I decided to risk trying it with my Wordpress version 3.1. It was easy to install on my GoDaddy site. All I had to do was press “install” and it did. But I still didn’t know how to get the video into my post, which had already been published. When I went back into my edit screen, I noticed this new addition at the bottom. It will be easier if you can actually see the screen,so I've put the image of the Post Video Options screen, just above, on the right. Be sure to click to make it readable.

At first the directions confused me. Here’s what they told me to do.

1. Within the WordPress Administration Control Panel, expand the Posts tab and then select Add New.

2. Create a title for your post and add a description within the post field.

3. Paste the URL to the video you wish to embed within the Video URL field.

4. Enter the Width and Height parameters for your video within the fields provided (optional).

5. Click Update Post to save your options.

6. Once the page reloads, a full preview of your embedded video should be displayed.

(From Plug-in Help Files)

I thought they were telling me to make a new post that was all video, and that didn’t make sense. So I decided to follow the directions whether they made sense or not. I typed the regular You Tube share link (not embedded link) into the top field in this form Video URL. I ignored the other fields. Then I clicked update post at the bottom.

The video then appeared under the form. I right-clicked on the video and copied the URL. Copying the embed URL also works. Paste the URL where uou want the video to appear in the post. Save the draft. Click to preview the post. The video should now be in your post preview.

Want to add another video? Type the new URL into the plugin form at the bottom. Click update . The new update will replace the old first video with the second video at the bottom. Right click to get the URL. Paste it where you want it in your post. Save the draft. Preview the post. You should now see both videos embedded where you wanted them. Now you can finish your post and publish it. You can see below how mine looked.