Video Shortcodes

Yesterday, Elizabeth talked about adding videos to your blog. Here let’s dive a bit deeper and look at how to use shortcodes to embed videos. On WordPress.com, you can use these handy bits of code to do cool things on your site with little effort, like embed files and create objects.

WordPress.com has a number of video shortcodes you can use to embed videos from a variety of sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Hulu, and Flickr. As Elizabeth mentioned, you can embed a video by placing its URL in your visual editor. But using the shortcode method lets you customize the video in various ways, from controlling its width and height to specifying a start and end time for a clip — it depends on the shortcode and the video service.

Quick Tip: Add Video

Have you ever had this experience? You’re a big fan of someone’s blog. You read all her posts, you know her pet peeves, her sense of humor, her favorite books and movies. You know her dating travails, and that her best friend tends to drop by unannounced. You know her job sucks (or rocks). You know what she looks like, too – you’ve seen photos of her, her apartment, her car, her dog (forgive me if this is sounding stalkerish). You think you couldn’t possibly know her better.

Then, one day she posts a video of herself talking. And you’re blown away! “So, that’s who she is!” you think.