Wednesday, November 2, 2011

How to Embed a YouTube Video in Blogger Post, In About That Many Steps

In Photos.

So I see one of my Friends needs help embedding a video onto her blog. Thusly, while I was working on my Halloween post the other night I took [too many] screenshots of the embedding process. Now I can write up this [hopefully] handy tutorial. For the record, I use Internet Explorer 8 when embedding videos. I don't know why it would matter if you use FireFox, but I use IE. All the pictures you see in this tutorial -yeah, that IE. (Sad, isn't it?)

First you have to find the video.You all don't get any pictures for this. Go YouTube and find a video. I'll wait here.

All done? Alright, good. Now, you should have picked the video and have it open so you can watch it on your screen. Now refer to the following (click to enlarge):


Now, you see down there I have circled in red a little button reading 'share.' Once you have selected your video, click this button.


Once you have clicked this button, you should have this little window pop open beneath it. I have circled the embed button. This is what you want to click next.

This expands another little window. The text highlighted in blue is the embed code that you will copy and paste into Blogger. But before you do that, check and make sure that the video is the size you want (I use 420x315 because that fits well into the post section of my blog). Also, you may want to prevent YouTube from offering related videos. This box is usually selected when you open the embed window, just click on it to uncheck it. If 420x315 is too large for your blog - or blog sidebar, as I had three video embedded in the sidebar of this very blog at one point, but that's a story for another time - then you can use the custom boxes to find a size that fits your blog. If you type a number into one of the boxes, YouTube automatically matches it to make sure the video still looks alright.

But anyway, you have your code. Right click, and hit copy. Then get back over to your blog.


You are going to need to have your new post/ edit post window set to 'Edit HTML.' As you can see, it is one of the tabs at the top of the page. I usually try and have it set like that before I'm ready to embed teh video.



Make sure you have all of the spacing sorted out, then right click and paste the embed code.


You should be able to see the newly embedded paste code.

If this is the only vidoe you want to post, then hit enter once or twice to move the typing bar away from the code, and then you can either keep typing in the Edit HTML page or you can set the thing back to 'Compose.' If you have more videos to post, than keep the page in 'Edit HTML and repeat the previous steps as needed.

Use the preview button before you publish the post (or close the YouTube videopage) to make sure that the size you choose for the video fits the blog. This isn't always possible with some videos, but it's always good to check.

And this is where I should post a video to prove that my steps work, but these are the same steps I used for my Halloween video post-a-palooza, so if the Halloween Post doesn't convince you that I know how to embed a YouTube video into my blog, I don't know what posting one here is gonna do.

Anyway, I help this was helpful. Good luck embedding!