How to Easily Embed Videos in WordPress
WordPress is one of the most popular free CMS in the world. Many companies and individuals use it to manage their personal and corporate websites and blogs.
You can customize your WordPress website very quickly and easily and use both free and paid templates to create an absolutely unique site for you or your company. That’s why many bloggers prefer WordPress over any other CMS, and its possibilities are truly endless.
In today’s piece, we will answer a very hot question many users have after installing WordPress: how can I embed a video on your pages? You will learn different methods of adding videos to your blog and definitely find the one that fits you perfectly. Let’s do it!
Why is visual content so important for your WordPress website?
But first, let’s talk about the importance of visual content and video marketing. Why do you need to use videos in your blog posts or on the website’s pages when WordPress already gives you tons of other options to customize a website of yours?
Well, the importance of video marketing and visual content overall lies in its accessibility to people. Not everyone can understand what you mean in your words, but if you create a nice slideshow, everyone can get your message in these photos.
The next important thing about visual content is it helps people to “rest” during reading. Illustrations, infographics, and pictures separate chunks of text and give people time to prepare for the next reading session.
It may seem silly, but we nowadays are forced to read much more than our ancestors because words follow us everywhere: in texts, social media, and at work.
Adding visual content gives people an opportunity to watch something instead of reading, to consume information in a more digestible form, and spend a lot more time on your website. And this is perfect for us!
Top 5 methods on how you can embed videos in WordPress
Now, after we have explored why videos are so important for your WordPress blog and website, let’s get to the methods of actually adding them to it.
1. How to make it through a page editor
So, the first method is the easiest, and it shows how comfortable WordPress is for users and how much its creators cared about your convenience.
You just need to copy an URL from Vimeo, YouTube, Flickr, Reddit, Instagram, Hulu, DailyMotion, or from one of the dozens of other websites and copy it into the body of your post or page.
That’s it! The website will auto-embed the video, and you can update the page and see it there. Yes, it’s that simple!
2. How to make it with the YouTube plugin
YouTube WordPress Plugin is an extra tool you need if you regularly embed videos from YouTube in your posts and wish to make this process even simpler.
The plugin also offers a couple of extra features like creating dynamic sizing and playlists for people to watch.
3. How to make it with the ARVE plugin
Another excellent plugin for embedding videos on your WordPress site is ARVE or Advanced Responsive Video Embedder. This plugin has a plethora of features, including the option of adding specific SEO titles, descriptions, etc., to your embed video to help Google index it.
This plugin also needs only copying and pasting the URL from you, just like with an auto-embedding. But you get a lot of more cool and advanced features if you use ARVE.
4. How to make it with WP Video Lightbox
This is another plugin you can add to your WordPress website to embed videos, but it has a couple more features traditional auto-embedding doesn’t have.
For example, when you use WP Video Lightbox for embedding, when a user clicks on a video, it automatically pops out on the screen, and everything behind the video becomes dark.
It gives a visitor a chance to watch a video thoroughly and does not have ads or any distractions during the view.
With WP Video Lightbox, you can only add videos from Vimeo or YouTube for now, but we are sure that soon enough, you will be able to add videos from other video host platforms since the plugin gets updated pretty regularly.
5. How to embed self-hosted videos
The previous four methods were used for embedding videos hosted on other platforms, but if you need to upload your own personal video, you can do it too!
To do that, go to click on the “Media” menu and drop the video file here. Next, you can add the video from a media library whenever you need it!
However, we need to warn you that in our personal opinion, if you can choose to add an URL and not upload your self-hosted video on your website, then don’t do it.
You see, when you upload a video on YouTube, the whole weight of this clip stays on YouTube servers, and when you add a link to this video onto your website, it does not become heavier.
However, when you add a video onto your own server, it takes space on your server, and presumably that you don’t have Youtube’s budget, this space can cost you a lot.
You can use these megabytes for something different for sure. If you really don’t have another choice, the best thing you can do is compress your videos before uploading to save at least some space.
Summary
Now you know every easy way to embed a video on your WordPress website. We hope that at least one of them will be the one that fits your needs the best.
We love WordPress for its convenience and customizability, and we are sure that adding videos to your personal website will now be so much easier, thanks to our advice!
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