How to Embed Videos in a WordPress Post
The choice to embed videos in a WordPress post is a great one. This is because videos bring life to a website and offer a great way to increase user engagement. The good news is that embedding a video in WordPress is pretty easy more so when you are embedding a video from Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo and Twitter. But how exactly do you go about it?
How to embed a video
WordPress comes with the auto-embeds feature. This feature will allow you to automatically embed a code from a popular video hosting service like Vimeo and YouTube. To embed videos in WordPress, you simply paste the URL of the video into the WordPress editor. After pasting the URL, WordPress will automatically fetch the embed code and display your YouTube video within your content editor. It is as simple as that.
To change the way the video looks, simply go to settings from the block toolbar. You will be able to adjust the width of the video, make it a full-width, change alignment and do so much more. It is also easy to add a caption as well as preserve the aspect ratio of the video on mobile devices.
All in all, it is good to note that you will only be able to use auto-embeds with the white-listed video services. If the video is on other website, you have to get the embed code yourself and paste it into your WordPress post.
Here are the white-listed video services:
- FacebookÂ
- YouTube
- Vimeo
- Imgur
- Issuu
- Crowdsignal
- Cloudup
- Animoto
- CollegeHumor
- Flickr
- Hulu
- Dailymotion
- Amazon
- Kickstarter
- Meetup.com
- Scribd
- Screencast
- TED
- Tumblr
- VideoPress
- WordPress.tv
- Spotify
- Slideshare
- SmugMug
- Speaker Deck
- ReverbNation
- MixCloud
- SoundCloud
- Someecards
Embedding using the old classic editor
If you still use the WordPress classic editor, you can embed the video in the same way. You just copy the URL from the video hosting service and paste into the editor. The problem with the classic editor is that you will not be able to use the width adjustments and other options that are available on the new block editor.
Embed videos in the WordPress sidebar widgets
You will be able to embed a video into the sidebar widgets too. You just go to Appearance>>Widgets page and then add the ‘Text’ widget to the sidebar. In the widget settings, paste the video URL inside the content area. WordPress will fetch the embed code for you and display the video.
Embedding videos in WordPress is better than uploading the videos to WordPress. Uploading the video will cause your website to be sluggish. If you have a video, you can upload it to a video service then embed it. There are also WordPress embed plugins you can use.