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).  

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

This is really a series of Help pages for my own clients, people for whom I have set up a Blog or used WordPress as the content management system for their site.

People who have installed WordPress for themselves can probably manage by searching the internet or scouring through the WordPress documentation at http://codex.wordpress.org.

But I want to provide nice, clear help pages for people who will be using WordPress to add and edit blog posts or website content.

There are really just 3 things which you need for a website:-

1. Domain name
2. Hosting space
3. Web pages

1. Domain Name

That’s the www.mysite.com or www.mysite.com.au which is used to identify your website.  You need to register your domain name with a domain name registrar.  There are many of these - a good low-cost registrar for .com, .net, .biz, .org type domain names is NameCheap.com. 

To register a .com.au domain name, you must be able to demonstrate that you are legitimately entitled to that domain name, such as showing that it is your registered business name, with an ABN, or that is is your own name or similar.  NetRegistry.com.au provides Australian domain names at competitive rates.

These days, it’s probably worth registering your domain name as soon as you find one which you like and which suits your purpose.  If this is the first thing you do, you, or your web developer, will need to revisit the registration site later, to make the domain name point to the actual web pages, once they exist.  So if you do this for yourself, keep (save or print or both!) all emails which your domain name registrar sends you.

2. Hosting Space

This is the computer space where the web pages actually reside and are served up to the internet.  Unless you are a very large organisation (or enjoy a technical challenge) it is usual to rent hosting space from a web hosting company.  Web Hosting by ICDSoft is an excellent choice – they provide reliable, low-cost web hosting with room to grow.  

3.  Web Pages

The actual coded pages which people see when they visit your web site.

You will need to give a fair amount of thought to the content of your pages.  Of course, unlike a book or brochure, a website can be changed, so don’t feel that you must have the content entirely fixed when you start on your website.  A website can grow and change and adding to your website over time can be very beneficial.

Another critical question is the look – what image do you want to convey and how do you want visitors to feel when viewing your site?  You may have a good idea about this; you may already have a logo or printed material, company colours, favourite sites on the internet, or you may wish to engage the services of a graphic designer to help bring together your website look. 

With some content and look in mind, the next question is:-

How or Who to Build Your Web Pages

This is very much dependant on your enthusiasm and time for dabbling in “computer things” and also on your budget.

You can set up a Blog for free at Blogger.com and quickly have an “online diary” which you can update regularly without much technical expertise.  (You won’t need your own domain name or even hosting service for a Blog like this and it may be all that you need initially).

Another option, if you are happy to do the work yourself, is to consider the site building facility offered by some web hosts, such as Netregistry or GoDaddy.  These allow you to choose from a set of existing templates (some quite pretty) and add your own text and pictures to create and then maintain your own site. 

If you want full control over the look or the behaviour of the site, gather up all the ideas you have and talk to a website developer such as weblines.  

Weblines also offers no-fuss, reliable, low-cost web site hosting, via our partnership with ICDSoft.

Once your site has been built, you can continue to update it, via the content management system (CMS).  We are happy to provide training and tips to help you pick things up.  If you don’t have the time or the interest, weblines can continue to manage any updates – all it takes is a quick email from you when changes are required. 

If, by this time, you have become thoroughly enthusiastic about developing the site yourself, you could consider starting with some website development courses!