Embedding Videos In your WordPress Blog – for noobs.

I remembered when I first started blogging in WordPress after spending a year with Blogger, the task of embedding a Video in my post was so daunting. It was still WordPress 1.5 back then and trying to embed a video or a sound file was a terrifying experience for me. I downloaded various plugins that claim to make embedding videos a breeze, but somehow, none of them works. The tutorials I read were all written for those who are already tech savvy and noobs like me found it totally useless.

Finally a blogger friend told me that to embed a video, I simply have to disable the “use visual editor” option and paste the codes in and finally I was able to embed the videos that I wanted to show.

Then WordPress 2 came along and this was made easier still. I just have to click on “codes” in the Editor and I could easily paste in the embedding codes. However, later I found out something.

You have to publish your post with the codes in it’s raw form. This means if you switch back to “Visual” view after embedding the codes, the video won’t show and/or your whole page will get screwed up after you hit the “Publish” button. This goes for editing your post as well. If a post that have a video embedded needs to be edited, you must have the codes from the source handy. That means if you have a Youtube Video in your post, you better head back to Youtube to get that code once again. If it is from other sources, you have to go back to the same source to get the codes from there. After editing your post, you have to paste in the codes again. Else you page will screw up again.

I don’t understand why, but that’s the way it works for me. I can copy the codes from  my original post into Notepad and re-paste it back after editing that post, but still it won’t work. It has to come from the original source. Did I do something wrong? I mean, it’s the same code. I did not touch anything while editing that post. I just corrected a spelling mistake that’s all.