What Are The Top WordPress Plugins For Video?

Displaying videos on WordPress can be unnecessarily complicated. Embedding looks simple enough but sometimes the formatting is strange or breaks the layout of your page or blog post. That’s if it loads at all.

It can be frustrating when you painstakingly tweak every aspect of your design and videos appear to just do their own thing. Lots of people turn to plugins to help them wrangle videos on their site.

 

Video is huge and only getting more popular. So whether you just want to add the odd one into your blog posts, get visitors to your YouTube channel or use social shares to go viral, you need to be getting on the video bandwagon.

It can be intimidating to get started with video. Which is why we’ve put together some of top WordPress plugins for video to get you on your way.

But first off…

Why bother with video?

It might seem a bit too much fuss but video is increasingly important on the web nowadays. Video sites keep people engaged for hours, YouTubers are becoming mainstream stars, and sites with video get more eyeballs for longer. You can’t ignore the video trend.

Here are some impressive video marketing statistics that you will want to check out. Including such essential tidbits as:

• Blog posts with video get three times the links of those without.
• Visitors spend 88% more time on websites with videos.
• Video improves your SERPs and your search traffic.

Convinced? Let’s check out some of the best WordPress plugins for video to make using video easy and simple.

Best WordPress plugin for video from YouTube

YouTube by Embed Plus is our top pick for straightforward videos from YouTube. YouTube isn’t the only place to get your video, but it is the biggest. This plugin helps you format your videos or will automatically do it for you. Using shortcodes it gives you complete control and complete ease of use.

If you need video from multiple sources there’s a suggestion for you below.

Best WordPress plugin for video and YouTube channels

Although the YouTube plugin above does allow you to create a channel view in a grid layout if you want greater flexibility for your channel on WordPress you should look at YourChannel. Your playlists and channel settings are preserved, even your channel branding is brought into WordPress.

Best WordPress plugin for video sharing and social

Social Gallery is a powerful gallery plugin for WordPress and features a video extension, Social Gallery Video Viewer. Massively boost your video engagement and shares with the integrated social sharing as well as smooth lightbox viewing and Facebook or Disqus comments right on the video itself.

Visitors can talk about the video using their Facebook ID without leaving your site and can even tag other users. The plugin looks and feels like Facebook – the platform people are most familiar with and has a high level of easy integration.

There’s sharing with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr and StumbleUpon. Videos can be from YouTube or Vimeo. Social Gallery Video Viewer is the best way to get your video shared and take advantage of videos popularity and viral nature.

Best video plugin demo

TubePress gives you nicely responsive video galleries with plenty of options. The demo and tour gives an excellent look at how the plugin works and the different customisations you can make. It’s a great “try before you buy” feature of this premium plugin.

Best WordPress plugin for video from multiple sources

Envira Gallery is best known for images but has an addon that can handle video from different sources and in different formats. Use video from YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia or self hosted. There are plenty of options to choose from when it comes to displaying your videos and creating a good looking video gallery.

The challenges of video on WordPress

One of the biggest challenges for developers making video plugins on WordPress is juggling all the different video sources and APIs. Changes can happen quickly and cause big issues for plugins. A lot of very popular YouTube plugins were broken when YouTube upgraded its API a few years ago and the plugins weren’t updated.

So make sure your chosen plugin is compatible with the current WordPress version and ideally that it is regularly updated and maintained. Make regular backups of your site – always a good idea – and be ready to switch things up if a problem occurs.

Whatever plugin you choose, you need to get comfortable with video on your WordPress site because it is big and only getting bigger. There’s only one thing worse than a site that is ignoring video – and that is a site with broken, buggy videos. These plugins will give you the support you need.

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