Adding video to your WordPress blog post or page is a pretty simple affair. All you have to do is copy the embed code of the video and drop it into WordPress’s HTML editor. Pretty simple.
What if you want to add it to your sidebar though? You could probably use the text widget but then you would have to change the code yourself to change it’s size. This is fairly straight forward, but it might be something that people are not interested in doing. This is especially true if they have no coding knowledge.
Like usual though, WordPress has a plugin to help you out. Doesn’t it always? There are a couple plugins that can address this issue, but my favourite is simply called the Video Widget. All you have to do is download this plugin and activate it. Once that is done you will be able to add videos to your sidebar.
When the plugin is activated, you will notice you have a new Video Widget in the widget section of your WordPress back office. A little reminder; the widget menu can be found under the appearance heading. You simply grab the widget and drag it where you want it to appear in your sidebar.
This video widget will give you a few options. It will allow you to title the Widget so you can call it something like “Check This Out” or “latest video”.
It will also allow you to specify the width and height of the videos. This is extremely important because the average video won’t naturally fit in the sidebar.
Another cool feature is right underneath the width and height values. There is a box that will let you put in multiple video IDs. You don’t need the embed code for this plugin, just the video ID. The plugin works with 25 of the most popular video sharing sites so no matter where your video is you should be able to use this plugin. If you have multiple videos, your videos will be chosen randomly for your web visitor.
Underneath that you will see an area to use if you just want a single video. You will also be able to add some text either before the video or after it.
This plugin is no longer updated, but it still works as of WordPress 3.0. If you want to put a video in your sidebar the Video Widget is one of the easiest and most flexible choices you can make.
