John Young contacted us via our shiny new Plugin Review form and asked for our thoughts on the best YouTube embedding plugin for WordPress out of Youtuber, Youtube Embedder, and WP YouTube Player. As this is a comparison request, I’m going to approach from less of a review angle, and more of a well . . . a comparison.
Fortunately, the subject of which YouTube plugin to use is relatively easy. YouTube embeds have been built-into WordPress for quite some time. All you need to do is paste the YouTube URL into your post and WordPress takes care of the rest. So the question is, “Which plugin gives you more than a standard embed?”
Right off the bat, I’m going to take Youtube Embedder out of the running. It hasn’t been updated in over a year, lists its compatibility as up to WordPress 2.9.2 only, and doesn’t do much more than allow you to control the height and width of your embed.
Youtuber offers the ability to embed the video using valid XHTML code rather than YouTube’s own invalid code, but it only allows you to customize the height and width of your videos and force the HD version of the video to display. WP YouTube Player offers a variety of customization controls, including the choice over type of embed, width and height, autoplay, and the display of related videos.
Both plugins work well and offer embedding via a shortcode, but I’m going to have to give my vote in this case to WP YouTube Player based solely on the amount of available options.
Now that we’re talking about YouTube embeds and options, I have to mention my favorite embed plugin, Viper’s Video Quicktags. VVQ does almost everything that WP YouTube Player does, but it also does it for Vimeo, Viddler, DailyMotion, and seven other video providers. The only thing that VVQ currently lacks is support for YouTube’s new Flashless iFrame embed, which WP YouTube Player supports.
If you’re after just YouTube videos, you should definitely use WP YouTube Player, but if you plan to embed more than just YouTube videos, give Viper’s Video Quicktags a try.
Another good one is the Video Embedder plugin. Works fine with WP 3.1.1, although it says it’s only compatible up to 2.7 and handles nearly two dozen video services.
http://wordpress.org/extend/pl.....-embedder/
Home Page:
http://www.gate303.net/2007/12/17/video-embedder/
The best YouTube plugin for WordPress has got to be “WP YouTube Lyte” (Visitors see YouTube video thumbnail image which looks like a regular YouTube player. When you click on the thumbnail image, the Flash video will appear. Also supports HTML5 video.) Results in faster page load (and apparently, faster pages = better Google PageRank). Recently, author has added feature where you only show the YouTube controls (minus the video) so it looks like just an AUDIO PLAYER (cool).
http://wordpress.org/extend/pl.....tube-lyte/
Developed by Frank Goossens a.k.a “futta”. In my past experience with reporting issues & requesting features, he has been friendly and usually accomodating.
Yeah. 🙁
I’ve had version 7.0 in development for over a year now but just no time to finish it. It’s a complete rewrite to make use of newer APIs (for example being able to paste the URL on it’s own line with no shortcodes) and uses the iframe method.
Alpha here: http://plugins.trac.wordpress......evelopment
After spending all week working with WordPress, it’s hard to motivate myself to spend my weekends working on WordPress code too. 🙁
Anybody know the shortcode for WP Youtube Lyte? How may I find various shortcodes in the future without having to bother other people?