The easiest way to add video to a WordPress post or page is to do it via YouTube.    

YouTube takes care of hosting the video files and managing file formats – whatever format your video is in, YouTube will convert it so that it can be viewed over the internet without concern about different video players. Also, if your video becomes a big hit and everyone wants to see it,YouTube will manage all of the bandwidth requirements for large numbers of hits on your video.    

So, let’s assume that you have a YouTube account, you’ve made your video and you’ve uploaded it to YouTube. (Here’s some YouTube video help if you need it to get started).    

These instructions apply to WordPress 3.1 or later.  If you have WordPress 3.0 or an earlier version, see the previous version of How to Easily Add Video to a WordPress Post or Page.    

Here’s all you need to do to add that video to your page or post:-    

1. Copy your YouTube video URL

Go to YouTube and get the URL of your video (not the embed code). You can just grab the URL from the top of the browser when you view the video (it will look something like this – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECnAT_NV3GY).    

2. Paste the YouTube URL into the Post Editing Box

When you are editing the page or post where you want to place the video, position your cursor where you want the video to appear.  For the video to be added automatically, it must be on its own separate line, with nothing before or after it.  Press “Enter” to start a new line.    

Using the Paste icon , paste the YouTube URL straight into the post edit box.   

You’ll need to make sure that the URL is not hyperlinked (clickable when viewing the post).  If it is, click on the “break link” icon to remove the hyperlink.    

3. Troubleshooting or Placing the Video Inline

If the video does not appear when you view the page, or if you want to place your video “inline” (ie not on its own line), centre it or use some other formatting, you can use the [embed] shortcode around your YouTube URL, like this:- 

[embed]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECnAT_NV3GY[/embed] 

This will force the video to be embedded, rather than depending on it to happen automatically (which can be hampered if there are formatting tags in the background which prevent your video URL from being recognised properly). 

4. Changing the Size of the Video

If you find the video appears too large for your website, you can control the size of the video by using the shortcode with dimensions, like this:-  

[embed width="480" height="320"]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECnAT_NV3GY[/embed]

You can specify both width and height or just one (the other will be proportional). 

Note that this constrains the maximum size of the video; it will not increase a smaller sized video. 

And that’s it 

Here’s my sample video.    

Hosting your own Video

If you want to show video without the YouTube logo and host it yourself, it’s not quite such a simple process, but it is still quite easy, with the right additions to WordPress. Watch out for more about that.

How do I control which is the front page of my website?

WordPress basically has two options for that front (or home) page:-

• it can be a specific page that you select
• it can be the front page of your blog, containing the most recent posts (you can choose how many)

Some WordPress Terminology

To completely “get” this, you need to understand the following about WordPress terminology:-

A ”post” is your typical blog entry – it is like a diary entry or news item, it has a date associated with it, it can be in one (or several) categories.  For bloggers, it is the “meat” of your blog, the major content; for other sites, with more static content, it may be just ”news” section.

A ”page” is a static entry, which is not date-related, and which WordPress essentially perceives as “back-up” material to your blog.  Content such as ”what is this website about”, “about me”, “why I’m doing this”, (perhaps, “services I offer” could be a “page” but if you update your services regularly and run courses (ie date-related things) for example, then a “services” category, with a post for each course, would also make sense).

So, your website front page can either be a set of recent posts or an individual (static) page.  And you can change from one to another at any time.  You could have a standard front page but change to a different page for a while to draw attention to a new offer.  Or you could generally show your News or Blog as the front page but occasionally change to a static page with some specific information.

How to Control the Front Page

Changing the WordPress front page is easy.

• Log into WordPress as an admin user.
• Go to Settings… Reading…
• At Front page displays you have a choice of whether to make the front page show your latest blog posts (all the date-related, newscontent) or a static page. Click the one you want.
• If you have chosen a static page, in the Front page drop-down, select the page you want as the front page. 
• Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page.

What about the Blog Page?

If you have visited the Settings… Reading… page, you may now be wondering what is the purpose of the Posts page drop-down under A static page…. Here is a quick explanation.

If you choose to have a static page as your website/blog front page, where does the “blog front page” go?  The answer is “nowhere”.  But if you want to have a “News” or “Blog” page which contains your recent posts (but not as the home page), here’s how to do it:-

• Create a new page and give it the title, Blog, for example.  Don’t bother to add any content, just publish it.
• Return to Settings… Reading… and look again at Front page displays, where you presumably have a static page as the front page.
• In the Posts page drop-down, choose your new Blog page.  And click on Save Changes.

When you view your website and navigate to the Blog page, you’ll see your set of recent items – you have your blog front page back!

YouTube takes care of hosting the video files and managing file formats – whatever format your video is in, YouTube will convert it so that it can be viewed over the internet without concern about different video players.  Also, if your video becomes a big hit and everyone wants to see it,YouTube will manage all of the bandwidth requirements for large numbers of hits on your video.

So, let’s assume that you have a YouTube account, you’ve made your video and you’ve uploaded it to YouTube.   (Here’s some YouTube video help if you need it to get started). 

WordPress 3.1 changes this slightly.  If you have WordPress 3.1 or later, see Easily Add Video to WordPress 3.1 for updated instructions. 

Here’s all you need to do to add that video to your page or post:-

1. Position your cursor in the WordPress Editor

When you are editing the page or post where you want to place the video, position your cursor where you want the video to appear. 

Decide now whether you want the video to be centred on the page or not and, if so, click the ”center alignment” button  before you add the video.  It’s best to get the position right before you start because you can’t edit or move a video around the page the way you can with an image.  

2. Click on the add video button in the WordPress Editor

Click on the “Add Video” button in the edit box.  It looks like this  and it’s on the second row of editing buttons.  (If you don’t have a second row of buttons, click on  to display them.)

You’ll see a box that looks like this (the “Insert embedded media” box):-

3. Copy your YouTube video URL

Go to YouTube and get the URL of your video (not the embed code).  You can just grab the URL from the top of the browser when you view the video (it will look something like this – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECnAT_NV3GY).

4. Paste the YouTube URL into the File/URL field

Paste that YouTube URL into the File/URL field in the “Insert embedded media” box.

You can leave the file Type as Flash.  The dimensions will be set automatically from the video URL that you paste in.  You can edit them if you like, to fit your page better - make sure you tick Constrain proportions to ensure the width and height stay in proportion. 

That’s really all you have to do.  Click Insert to place the video in your page/post.

You’ll see a placeholder like this in your edit window. 

And that’s it

Here’s my sample video.

Hosting your own Video

If you want to show video without the YouTube logo and host it yourself, it’s not quite such a simple process, but it is still quite easy, with the right additions to WordPress.  Watch out for more about that.

Then browse to the location of the file(s) on your computer and upload. 

In the Add an Image box:

• Give your image a meaningful title.
• Remove the Link URL (by clicking on None) unless you want to be able to click through to an enlargement of the photo.
• Choose the image alignment and size
• To include the image in the post, just click on the Insert into Post button.  (If it appears in the wrong place, use Ctrl-X to cut and Ctrl-V to paste where you want it).
• After the image has been inserted into the post, you can edit these settings by hovering the mouse over the image – then click on the little Edit Image icon (picture)

Using a Previously Uploaded Image

To include an image which you have previously uploaded, click on the Upload/Insert icons, then choose the Gallery or Media Library tabs to see all the available uploaded images.

Troubleshooting

Unwanted coloured border around your image – If you decide to make the image link to something (either an enlargement or another web page), you may see a coloured border around it – to remove this border, click on the Edit Image icon, as described above, then choose Advanced Settings and set the Border value to 0.

Error messages when uploading – If your image file is large (digital cameras these days can create huge files for each photo), there may be uploading problems.  You may need to use your camera’s software to save a lower quality version, which will have a smaller file size (as if you were going to email it to someone) before you try to upload.

Using the WordPress editor is quite similar to writing an email and most of the buttons will seem quite familiar.  If you need a little extra help, hovering the cursor over the little editor buttons will show some help text.  Here are some extra tips for a few of the less obvious editor features which I find useful:-

Extra Editor Tips

• Click on  to see a second row of formatting tools
• Be careful if you Paste from Word – If you have already written the content in Word, copying and pasting is fine…. but make sure you use   to paste, so that the formatting is stripped out…. Word adds a lot of extra stuff in the background, which can mess up a web page layout (or even just make it unnecessarily large in size, which is not good from a Search Engine point of view).
• Bold, italic and sub-headers – Use the  dropdown  as well as B, I etc, to add sub-headers or other formatting. To see how they are going to turn out, use Preview…. because the WordPress editor does not render these using the styles as defined for your website.
• Links – To create a link to another page or website, select the text which you want to be “clickable”, then click on  and type or paste the destination URL. 

Three Things to Remember When Adding a Post

• Post title – make sure you give your post a good, key-word rich title. After you have saved the post (even as a draft), you can change its URL (the “link” to the page) – this can sometimes be useful if your title is long.
• Categories – remember to choose a category for your post – the Category selection box is in the right-hand column.
• The More tag – you can use this icon  to create an excerpt of your content which will appear on “summary” type pages, such as the Blog front page, rather than the full content. Position the cursor in the edit window where you want the content to be cut off and click on the icon.

Additional Reading

http://codex.wordpress.org/Writing_Posts

http://codex.wordpress.org/Introduction_to_Blogging