How To Embed YouTube Videos & Playlists Into Website Pages

Below is an exclusive guide on How to Embed YouTube Videos on Your Website Page or Blog in Simple Steps. Whether a single video or even a playlist, using an HTML Code or even a YouTube Free Plugin, the process is very easy.

It’s fairly simple because of oEmbed support added in version 2.9 and the Embed Plus for YouTube plugin. YouTube is an incredibly powerful tool that handles storing, encoding, compressing, and playing videos. So you don’t have to worry about compatibility across an ever-increasing number of browsers and devices.

There are various plugins out there that can help you customize the look of your YouTube videos. While at the same time, allowing you to organize them into galleries, and get the most out of media streaming on your site.

For instance, Embed Plus for YouTube allows you to; embed – Gallery, Channel, Playlist, or even Live Stream on your webpage. So, without going deeper into details, if you embed any YouTube videos on your website you should use this plugin. Thank you so much to the developers for creating this amazing plugin. In fact, it was made to be free to use and does everything you needed it to do.

What Is Embed YouTube Video?

Basically, to Embed YouTube Video means to put a video player on your web page. And the easiest way is to copy video embed code from YouTube or another video hosting provider and paste the code in your web page source code. This way the video player appears on your site embedded in the page and is surrounded by other elements on the page such as text and images.

In that case, you don’t have to hide your excitement anymore. Of course, you have your WordPress site up and running and it is awesome! Great work! Also, it’s important to realize, if your website or app is child-directed and you embed YouTube videos, you must self-designate your site and app using these tools.

Apart from the Embed YouTube Video plugin, this self-designation will ensure Google does not serve personalized ads on these sites or apps. And that some features will be enabled or disabled in the embed player. Make sure that you meet all the required user–based standards.

Learn More In Detail: How to Add or Embed YouTube Videos to Your Website?

Apart from the plugin method, you can also use the oEmbed method which I will discuss later on. But, here’s the thing with websites… Just when you’re about to raise a glass of bubbly and celebrate that everything is finally up and running smoothly, the next tech challenge crops up out of nowhere.

But, no need to worry, though! See a step-by-step guide that will show you exactly how to embed a live stream on WordPress. Plus the most important DOs, DONTs, and TRICKS!

Is Embed YouTube Video Useful?

Of course, Yes — Anyone with a blog will tell you: the best thing about the social media sharing revolution is the “sharing” part. Popular sharing sites like YouTube, Photobucket, and Last.fm offer embed codes.

These are strings of code that make it easy for you to plug a video or a song (inside a small player or display wrapper) into your page. Not to mention, these codes work great for sites that offer them, but embed codes and options for embedding media differ greatly from site to site.

And some sites don’t offer any easy sharing codes. It’s easy enough to post an image or MP3 if you know some HTML. But by now we’re deep into the age of the big “share” button — blog tools and widgets that offer no-brainer, one-click posting.

So, if you’re building a social app that allows users to share images, videos, or songs, your visitors will expect something that’s as dead as easy as it gets. To that end, what if there was a standard for grabbing a full multimedia embed code from a URL?

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could turn a simple URL link into an embedded Flickr image or YouTube video?

Why is Embed YouTube Video important?

Sure, you can reverse engineer any of the various embed structures offered by sharing sites. But, what happens when the host of your embedded media changes its format or relocates the actual asset? Thousands of broken links suddenly litter your site.

These are the wishes (and problems) that led to plugins and platforms such as YouTube Embed Plus and oEmbed belong. oEmbed is a new proposed standard for taking a URL and generating an embed link. The proposal is the brainchild of Pownce developers Leah Culver and Mike Malone.

As well as Cal Henderson of Flickr and Richard Crowley of OpenDNS. Not every site supports it, so OEmbed isn’t going to solve all your embedding needs overnight. But given that YouTube Embed Plus is around, there is no need to worry.

At a Glance;

get direct access to your YouTube posts/pages
Shortcode support for embedding multiple videos on one line
General playlist embedding support
YouTube plugin migration support

Click the Download Button to start exploring now, or take a look at some more introductory details below.

What does Embed Plus for YouTube provide?

Embed Plus for YouTube allows you to embed (insert) Gallery, Channel, Playlist, or even a Live Stream on your website or even blog pages. And definitely, it’s worth the money and time-saving. Making embedding at YouTube easy and professional looking.

But, why use the WordPress Plugin to Embed YouTube Videos? As an example, I wanted to make a page of YouTube Videos from Playlists and Channels I approved for my readers. However, the problem was when you paused the video or the video came to an end it would show related videos that I didn’t approve of.

Whereby, Rel=0 doesn’t work anymore. And that’s when I discovered the Embed Plus WordPress Plugin. WOW! It works so well and it’s incredibly easy to use. Not to mention, the results are exactly what I was looking for and so much more. Bravo! The best plugin I’ve ever used.

Through Embed Plus for YouTube, get a WordPress YouTube embed, YouTube gallery (channel or playlist), and even YouTube Livestream or premiere. It can be customized in a wide variety of ways with this plugin. Below are a few recently added features:

1. Compatibility

It’s compatible with the WordPress Gutenberg block editor (it also stays backward-compatible with the classic editor). Both the Gutenberg block selector and the Gutenberg classic block will show the YouTube wizard button. For the Gutenberg block selector, click on the (+) sign for the block editor list.

YouTube gallery capability (channel and playlist) – The ability to make playlists and channel embeds have a gallery layout. By default, the plugin can generate a grid-based responsive playlist or channel gallery >>. Your visitors can browse through pages of video thumbnails and choose from videos that are pulled from an entire YouTube channel or playlist.

For these and pretty much any other page builder with a shortcode widget, you can also embed your video, gallery, live stream, or premiere. By creating the shortcode in the plugin’s wizard and then embedding the code in the page builder’s shortcode widget or text widget.

2. Privacy and Consent

The new plugin has improved privacy and GDPR Cookies Policy compliance options. Like YouTube no cookie, YouTube API restrictions, and a customizable GDPR consent message.

The YouTube Wizard block is located under the “Embeds” category (make sure you choose “YouTube Wizard“). See more on how to embed a YouTube video, gallery, or Livestream with the WordPress Gutenberg block editor here >>.

The plugin is also compatible with several popular page builders like Elementor, Beaver Builder, SiteOrigin, and Visual Composer.

3. Continuity and Accessibility

With YouTube gallery auto continuous play – embed a playlist or channel gallery easily. Allowing it to play one video after the next without requiring viewers to click a thumbnail.

Through YouTube Live Stream – Given a link to a YouTube channel, the plugin wizard automatically finds a Livestream if one is active in that channel and displays the Livestream for you. You can embed a direct link to a Livestream too.

As for YouTube Premieres – You can also embed premiere videos using the same method we created for live streams.

With a simultaneous playback control – you can enable/disable the ability for visitors to have separate videos running at the same time on the same page. This also works with YouTube Livestream and gallery embeds.

4. Accessibility

There is improved accessibility while using title attributes for screen reader support. It should help your site pass functional accessibility evaluations (FAE).

Using JavaScript deferral – improve the initial load time of your pages by allowing this plugin’s scripts to begin execution only after a page is loaded. With improved ajax theme support tested using GTmetrix >>.

There is an Easy “Insert” button for both the Visual and Text mode of the editor (for YouTube gallery and live stream embedding as well). And you can Embed an entire YouTube channel as a (non-gallery, single embedded player) playlist.

5. User Implementation Friendly

Start video settings for playlist embeds. You can now choose to start a playlist with a specific video or have the plugin automatically start with the most recently added video.

Note: If you’re embedding a YouTube gallery, the order will be defined by the order of the channel or playlist on YouTube.com. Also, the volume level initialization – helpful when autoplay is checked. In addition to iOS playback preferences.

There is also Automatic localization/internationalization so you can set the player’s interface language from English to another. With Instant HTTPS support that can even convert past non-HTTPS videos to HTTPS.

Did you know that Google uses HTTPS/SSL support as a ranking signal for SERP? This YouTube-Plugin can include premium features like;

lazyload (with animation),
alternate playlist and channel gallery styles,
automatic video thumbnail support,
automatic schema tagging for video SEO,
mobile compatibility checking, and
deleted video alerts when you upgrade to PRO.

How does oEmbed work?

oEmbed is the best alternative to Embed Plus and is a format for allowing an embedded representation of a URL on third-party sites. And the simple API allows a website to display embedded content. Such as photos or videos whenever a user posts a link to that resource. Without having to parse the resource directly.

To simply put, OEmbed dictates a standard format where you send a URL and the host site provides the embed code. In the simplest case, you would capture the URL your user has entered and then query the originating service’s API to get back any additional info you need.

The user enters a URL, the service (say Pownce) then queries the source of the URL (say, Flickr). The source site then sends back all the necessary information for Pownce to embed the image automatically.

The full OEmbed spec says that all requests sent to the API endpoint (Flickr in our example) must be HTTP GET requests, with any arguments sent as query parameters. Obviously, any arguments you send through HTTP should be URL-encoded (as per RFC 1738 in this case). You can read and learn more about How oEmbed Works in detail.

Example of a provider and consumer

As an example, a consumer (e.g. WordPress) makes the following HTTP request:

http://www.flickr.com/services/oembed/?format=json&url=http%3A//www.flickr.com/photos/bees/2341623661/

In the end, the provider (e.g. Flickr) then responds with an oEmbed response:

This allows the consumer to turn a URL to a Flickr photo page into structured data. While allowing embedding of that photo in the consumer’s website.

The one caveat to the oEmbed method is that the URL must be included on its own line. If there is other content on the same line, this will be read as part of the embedded URL. And you will encounter an error. However, you can get around this by wrapping your link in the embed shortcode.

Other Alternative Sources;

Takeaway,

As you very well know, YouTube is a ubiquitous platform used by millions of people. It’s also a great way for you to organize, distribute and share your content anywhere you wish. Out of the box, WordPress already has great support for embedded videos.

Especially YouTube Embed Plus WordPress Plugin helps you easily manage the growing complexity of YouTube embedding. It provides a spectrum of basic and advanced features of the YouTube embedded player. And will have you posting videos in seconds after installing it.

Learn Also: How to Easily Add Lazy Loading for Videos in WordPress

The settings page has plenty of default options that you can automatically apply to your embedded YouTube video, gallery, and/or live stream. You can also start and end each individual video at particular times. Finally, with the tips in this article, my hope is that you have plenty of ways to get started customizing and making the most out of YouTube.

But, if you’ll need more support or help while embedding videos on your website or blog, please Contact Us. You can also share your additional thoughts in the comments section.