Visit Page
Skip to content

WordPress 3.1 Loses Video Embed Button

WordPress’ 3.1 update seems to have killed the video embed button. I couldn’t find it after upgrading and quick googling shows that it’s not a bug, it’s a feature (as they say.) Very annoying in that it makes it difficult to easily embed self-hosted videos and it makes it just as hard to go back and edit older video posts should they need a tweak.

There seems to be no work around short of using a plug-in. Some of those do allow for self-hosted video but having just switched to Vimeo – it’s far easier to sign up with them or use a similar service. **I’m using the Vimeo Quicktags plug-in and it’s a piece of cake. No more having to factor in the height of the Quicktime control bar or finding that FireFox and Safari are showing different video aspect ratios.

Vimeo seems to have many advantages – it’s one of those, I should have done this sooner moments.

-using Vimeo puts the server strain on them instead of my web host.

-viewers can now watch all videos in full HD. All they need is a free Vimeo account.

-if you sign up for Vimeo Plus the uploading is almost instantaneous and you get stats on what is viewed, where it was viewed, and if other sites embed the video.

-I have not used it yet but Vimeo has its own social side (communities, channels, likes, etc.)

**Update 01-02-12: Something just killed the Vimeo Quicktag Plug-in. Most likely culprit was updating WordPress site stats to WP’s Jetpack(?) Work-around seems to be ditch the plug-in and use Vimeo’s iframe embed code directly into the html of a blog post or WP has new directions here.

**Update 02-13-12: WP’s directions linked directly above do work but not consistently. They do not work when the code specifies a video size and the blog post is accessed via an iPhone. I have found the best way to embed the video is to use the iframe embed code that Vimeo (or Youtube) provides and to enter that with the blog post’s “HTML” tab selected. Works perfectly.

2 Comments

  1. I need to self-host some of my videos. They are .mov’s

    Which plugins would you choose to work in 3.1?

    Thanks.

    Steve

Comments are closed.