Videos are an amazing addition to any WordPress blog. Utilizing them can dramatically enhance your visitors’ experiences when they are browsing your site.
Videos allow you to diversify your content and present information that is more suitable to videos than traditional text.
As you probably know, one of the most popular video platforms is YouTube. In this tutorial I will show you how to easily embed a YouTube video onto your website.
How To Add YouTube Videos Step-by-Step
Step 1: Choose your video by browsing YouTube. For this tutorial I am going to be using this video of a talking dog!
Step 2: Once you have chosen your video you will need to click on the (A) “Share” tab below the video
Step 3: Click on (B) “Embed” to open up the embed options panel.
Step 4: Now you will need to choose all of the options you want for the video on your website. You will first choose the size you want your (C ) video to be in pixels. You can use the default setting, choose from some of the pre-set options, or choose a custom size.
You can also choose to allow YouTube to (D) “show suggested videos when the video finishes”, (E) “enable privacy-enhanced mode”, or (F) “use old embed code”. Selecting these features is completely up to you based on your specific situation. However, in most cases I would suggest NOT using the old embed code
Step 5: Once you are happy with your settings, it is now time to copy the code given. First you must (G) click in the box and highlight all of the code. Than you can either right click on the text and select (H) “Copy” or simply push “Ctrl + C” on your keyboard.
Step 6: Now we must go to the post in which you are embedding the video within your WordPress dashboard. Once you are there you must click on (J) “Text” tab. This is SUPER IMPORTANT to do otherwise your video will not show up and your visitors will just see the code.
Step 7: Once you are in the text tab all you need to do is (K) right click in the editor and select paste or press “Ctrl + V” on your keyboard.
Step 8: Now that you’ve entered the code you can check to see if it works correctly by clicking (L) “Preview” on the right side of your screen.
This is what your video will look like if you left all of the default embed settings from YouTube:
For me, I probably would want to choose a bigger video size so it fits in my website more nicely. Remember this is done under the embed settings back on YouTube (Step 4).
I would also like to center my video on the screen so that it isn’t pushed up against the left side of my screen.
Bonus Step: You can center a YouTube video by simply entering the following code around your original code.
<center>embed-code</center>
So, for example: <center> goes immediately before your original code
and: </center> goes immediately after.
It should look like this:
<center><iframe width="640" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/nGeKSiCQkPw?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></center>
Again, you can click on “preview” and you should see that your embedded YouTube video is now centered!
Here's what it looks like after I changed the size back at YouTube and entered the code above to center the image.
There you have it! Embedding a YouTube video into your blog post is not too difficult at all! Please be sure to check out these other posts and tutorials you may be interested in:
- How To Install WordPress Plugins…The Easy Way
- What Are WordPress Categories? – How You Can Use Them To Group And Organize Your Posts
- How To Create A Free WordPress Website In 30 Seconds
- Two Easy Methods To Install A New WordPress Theme
- How To Make A Blog Post In 11 Simple Steps
If you are confused or have any questions regarding anything in the tutorial, please drop me a comment below and I will get back to you as soon as possible!
