How to Embed a YouTube Video in Your self-hosted WordPress 2.2 Blog

I have had trouble adding the embed code for a YouTube video to my self-hosted WordPress blog from wordpress.org.

Normaly, you would copy the embed code from the page of the YouTube video you want to copy, into your post where you want to add it, using the ‘code’ tab for your post.

But that doesn’t usually work and you end up with nothing showing up, even though you can see the code when you switch from the Visual tab to the Code tab of your post.

So what you need to do is go to your wp-admin and then to Users and then edit the user you are currently using to post under (logged in as). You’ll see a checkbox at the top that says “Use the visual editor when writing”. Uncheck that box and save.

Then go back and edit your post and copy the embed code from the video into your post. Your post will appear as it would if you were looking at it on the Code tab, but there is no Visual tab.

You have to do this after you have set the user to not use the visual editor. If you copied the code before you changed it, delete it and re-add it. It is usually easiest to do your whole post using the regular visual editor and then switch to not using it just to add the YouTube code. Also, be careful that you don’t edit the post using visual editor after you have embedded the video.

It doesn’t make sense, since there is a code tab that should allow you to add it, but this is how you can do it so it works.

Here is a video I took of my cat 🙂 that I embedded in this post.

~Susan Mellott