You’re at YouTube looking at videos. You come across one that you want to include in your WordPress blog.
1. Here’s the YouTube video that I want to include:
Ladies Golf Tips: Golf Swing Exercise with the Bosu and OrangeWhip
As the video plays, a panel displays below with “actions” that you can take. Actions include voting to Like (or Not Like) the video, saving the video, sharing the video, or EMBEDding the video.
2. To include a YouTube video in your blog, click on EMBED. The embed screen displays.
3. When the embed screen displays, the first section shows the “code” that you need (in order to play the video on your website) in a box with a scroll on the right. When the screen first displays, the code is already selected (see the box with text and the blue “selected” highlight above).
3a. If you do not want to customize the appearance of the video for your website, copy the code. I recommend that you customize the appearance of the YouTube video for your website instead of choosing the default.
3b. To customize the appearance of the YouTube video,
In the second section…
UNcheck this—> Include related videos
If this option is checked, random videos from random YouTubers will display at the end of the video on your website. I choose specific videos for a specific reason, so, I always UNcheck this because I do not know who’s video will be included nor the quality of the videos that might be included.
CHECK this —> Show border
Checking this option enables you to choose one of the color schemes (from grey/white to maroon/red displaying in the third section of the screen) that best matches the color scheme of your website so that the video might look like a more “natural” fit.
UNcheck this—> Enable privacy-enhanced mode [?]
This option controls YouTube’s use of “cookies” upon displaying the video on your website, clicks on the video, and playing the video. I consider this an advanced option and for most purposes, you can leave it unchecked.
UNcheck this—> Use iframe embed code (beta) [?]
Since not all browsers and search engines like iframe code, I recommend ALWAYS making sure that this is UNchecked. Frankly, I am stumped as to why YouTube is offering it as an option since YouTube is owned by Google and Google doesn’t like iframe code. (Boggles the mind!)
In the third section…
Choose the color scheme of the border you would like
For my WordPress blog, I would choose one of the blue/blue color combinations. I would start with the combination on the left, following these instructions until I could see how the border colors look on my blog. If I thought that the border colors did not meld as much as I wanted, I would follow these instructions for adding a YouTube video to a WordPress blog again, selecting the second blue/blue color combination.
In the fourth section…
Choose the size of the video. The smallest default for this video is “445 × 364”. That is too wide for my liking. So, I type “400” in the Custom box (on the right), and the height is automatically calculated and displayed. The height is calculated in order to keep the video width-to-height ratio in perspective. So, unless you are a graphics expert, accept the number the screen displays for height once you decide on the width you want.
4. As you chose your preferences for the options above, the code in the box with the scroll changed. Now, back up to the box and select (highlight) the code and copy it.
5. Open another browser window.
6. Log in to your website administration area (dashboard).
7. Open the Post or Page in which you want to include the video.
8. Click on HTML tab on the top right of the icon bars. You are now looking at some of the behind-the-scenes code that WordPress uses to display the post or page.
9. Place the curor in the section of the post or page where you want the video to display.
10. Paste the code into the post or page.
11. Save the post or page.
12. Check the post or page to see that the video is displaying where you want it. If not, open the post or page again. Click the HTML tab and go to the section where the code is for the video. Select the code, copy it, and paste it into another section of the post or page. Save the post or page.
13. Rinse and repeat…This is one of those tasks that takes a little bit of practice. Go through the instructions for adding a YouTube video to your WordPress blog until you get the results you want.
I want the video to display under this statement, so, I typed this statement,
then clicked on the HTML tab on the top right of the toolbar, scrolled down to this statement and pasted the code in. The video naturally displays to the left. To get it to display in the center, I edited the video code like this:
I added paragraph starting and ending tags (shown above in red). In the starting tag, I told the browser to align the paragraph to the center. I would change “center” to “right” if I wanted the video to display on the right, and to “left” if I wanted the video to display on the left. The closing tag looks like all the other closing tags with a slash before the letter “p”.
Tips: Use all small letters when adding the paragraph tags. Use starting and ending diamond braces <>.