How to Easily Embed Videos in WordPress Blog Posts

Last updated on April 14th, 2014 by Editorial Staff

How to Easily Embed Videos in WordPress Blog Posts

Videos add a new life to your blog posts. There are tons of things that can easily be explained a 2 minute video versus a 1500 words post. In older versions of WordPress (Prior to 2.9), you were required to use the embed code from the video site, or use a plugin to embed the videos properly. Introducing in WordPress 2.9, the oEmbed feature has made it extremely easy to embed videos in your WordPress Blog posts. In this article, we will share how to easily embed third-party videos in WordPress blog posts.

How to Embed Videos in WordPress Blog Posts

All you need to do is paste the video URL into the content area. All you need to make sure is that the URL is in it’s own line and not clickable (hyperlinked). For example:

Here is how you can add Post Thumbnails in WordPress:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID

Wasn’t that super easy.

What are the White-Listed Providers?

YouTube
Vimeo
DailyMotion
blip.tv
Flickr (both videos and images)
Viddler
Hulu
Qik
Revision3
Scribd
Photobucket
PollDaddy
Google Video
WordPress.tv (only VideoPress-type videos for the time being)
SmugMug (WordPress 3.0+)
FunnyOrDie.com (WordPress 3.0+)

If you upload your videos or other media on one of these sites, then WordPress will automatically embed. Otherwise, you would have to post the embed code manually.

Why can’t I upload the videos to my WordPress?

Well you can, but we do not recommend you to do so. Most smaller blogs are on shared-hosting accounts and videos take a lot of server resource. If your video got tons of traffic, your site is more likely to crash. Second, you are missing out the traffic from YouTube users. We recommend that you pick a third party site such as Youtube, Vimeo etc to upload your videos. Read our full article on why you should never upload videos to WordPress.

Don’t forget to follow our YouTube channel.

About the Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress lovers led by Syed Balkhi. Page maintained by Syed Balkhi.

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Bruce Fulford

I have successfully embedded two videos from YouTube but views on WP are not reported in my YouTube stats. Do you know why?
dave

Whoa. I thought there would be more to it!

It works! Just like that.

Thanks a lot.
Cathal

the link for the youtube video does not work!
Anyway, its ironic that you are showing how to embed a video, and the video you show is only a link, not an embedded video???
- http://www.wpbeginner.com/ WPBeginner Support
  
  The link does not work, because it is not a valid link. It is an example of how to paste a link in a post to embed a youtube video. If you are interested in our YouTube videos please check out our YouTube Channel.
Sutherland Boswell

Simple is better and this is as simple as it gets. I love oEmbed!
James

If you could instruct me in English perhaps I may understand. How do I know whether it is hyperlinked or not?
- http://www.wpbeginner.com/ WPBeginner Support
  
  The videos you embed on your site are not exactly hyperlinked. Instead, they are opened from youtube with in an iframe on your site.
POed

Not worth a damn. How about people that don’t want to be a youtube whore?
- http://www.wpbeginner.com Editorial Staff
  
  You can use Vimeo, or one of the many other platforms that WordPress has built-in oEmbed support.
  
  http://codex.wordpress.org/Embeds#Okay.2C_So_What_Sites_Can_I_Embed_From.3F
Kristy

Thank you. Worked like a charm
Kristina Goodrich

Okay, I did as you said and, even though I couldn’t see anything more than a yellow box, it was there. How about that.

Thank you!
Victoria

Thank you very much for this post. I have tried embedding them I don’t know how many ways, then find this. Oh Duh! lol
Jimmy

“Well you can, but we do not recommend you to do so.”

So, how do you do it then? I’ll decide if I want to host it from my own site or not. I have a password protected site with only a few users. I do not want to make my video public. Hosting a 30 second clip is not going to crash the server.
- http://www.wpbeginner.com Editorial Staff
  
  If you have a handful of users and a short clip, sure go ahead and host it on your server. We would recommend going with Vimeo. Their plus feature which costs like $60 per year allows you to limit video embeds to a certain domain name. You can make it yoursite.com, and then have your site members only.
Karen Berry

I consistently can’t embed videos on our blogs unless they are posted on YouTube. I am trying to embed a video from a public television station that provides embed code. Pasting the url does not work, using the embed code does not work. I tried pasting both into Notepad before pasting as a commeter above sugggested and that is not working. I have checked my settings to make sure auto-embed is enabled. Any other ideas?
- http://www.wpbeginner.com Editorial Staff
  
  If these public televisions are not using a popular service like Youtube, Vimeo, etc, then just pasting their URLs wouldn’t work. You would have to use their embed code. If it is iFrame embed code, then you should probably download one of the iframe plugins. If it is a Flash Player code, then you should be able to paste the code in your HTML tab of post editor. It should work just fine.
gyllencrazy

I’m trying to embed videos manually (unfortunately all the videos I want to post in my blog are not among the easy-to-embed ones that you’ve listed) but it doesn’t work.

If I copy and paste the link in the HTML page, it doesn’t do anything in the VISUAL page. What am I doing wrong? I’m downloading these videos and uploading them on my dailymotion page to avoid this problem but it’s time consuming and I really would like to just embed.

Any ideas?
- http://www.wpbeginner.com Editorial Staff
  
  If your embed is iFrame based, then use one of the iFrame plugins.
  - GYLLENCRAZY
    
    Iframe based videos don’t work either, not even with the iFrame plugin. Flashplayer code videos don’t work.
    
    I’m considering migrating somewhere else, it takes less time than trying to figure how to do something that’s supposed to be easy, according to what WP support keeps telling us.
Marie

We’re using WordPress on our own server. Seems like it doesn’t do anything right. When I paste the url into the body, I leave a space above and a space below it. Nothing happens. My url is from a YouTube video that is public! I think it may have something to do with my lines disappearing between paragraphs. They are there when I’m editing but in the preview they are gone. Any know of a fix for that? Keep in mind I don’t really know code, so hopefully a fix that doesn’t involve messing with it.
- http://www.wpbeginner.com Editorial Staff
  
  First go to Settings > Media and make sure that auto-embeds are checked. If it is and it is still not working, then it could be a formatting error.
  - Kristina Goodrich
    
    i have a similar problem. I go to Settings > Media, and the only thing it asks is the size limits for small, medium and large images. There is no mention of auto-embedding, there or elsewhere.
    
    Is the problem that I’m trying to embed .mov files? It doesn’t seem to make a difference if I select Flash (which I used in the past) or QuickTime as a choice under the “embed media” shortcuts.
    
    Help!
    - Niña Angeli
      
      Hi Kristina!
      
      I know I’m writing this a year and a half after you posted the above, but I’m having exactly the same youtube embed problems (no auto embedding option, etc)
      
      Did you ever figure out the problem? If so, please let me know…I’m starting to get frustrated!
      
      Thanks!
      
      Niña
http://kicauku.com/ Hobi Burung Kicau

I Think this simple way for embed video, thanks for sharing
nilam.r.patel

That’s really easy and nice….Thanks
http://www.dwestdavies.com/wordpress D. West Davies

My embedded videos disappear when I go back to a post to edit. Is there a plug-in that prevent this?
Matt F

Doesn’t work for my when I do a straight cut and paste. I have to paste into Notepad, then recopy/pasted into WordPress. Why? Who knows. One of the myriad of foibles of WordPress that should be easy but are ball-tearingly frustrating.
Raven

Incredible! This really works. I spent hours trying to find a simple way to do this. Thanks a bunch.
http://izoel.net izoel

but why there’s no sample how to embeded youtube or etc in here? is it me, or there is no video that shows up in here ?
- http://www.wpbeginner.com Editorial Staff
  
  No sample, because what is the point of showing the video showing up? All you have to do is paste the video URL.
http://courtneyengle.com Courtney Engle

Will embedding the video this way display properly in Google Reader?

And if the RSS is importing to Facebook notes, would additionally hyperlinking the code used to put the video in then break the embed that WP can do?
- http://www.wpbeginner.com Editorial Staff
  
  We always embed our videos this way, and haven’t had any issues from users complaining about misalignment or broken posts in google reader. If RSS is being served to Facebook, it would work perfectly fine, because WordPress is generating your RSS and it knows what to do with an embed code.
http://juniorbiz.com Nick Tart

Wow, I had no idea! I’ll have to try this out. Thanks, WPB.