How To Add A Video To A WordPress Website Using JW Player

Do you want to add video to your WordPress blog or website?
Do you want to host videos on your own server not YouTube?
Do you want to create a play list of videos on your own site?

Recently a client asked me if I could build a WordPress site to host his own videos. He didn’t want to upload them to YouTube because it would send visitors to other sites after watching his own video. He wanted to keep visitors on his own site. Also Google rewards websites where visitors stay for longer periods than just a few seconds.

Why I chose the JW Player for WordPress

1. Easy installation
2. Easy integration with WordPress
3. Full integration with the WordPress media library
4. Easily embed video into posts and pages
5. Add external video to your media library ie YouTube
6. A full featured playlist manager
7. Supports Flash and HTML5
8. Easy customization interface
9. A powerful shortcode system to easily embed videos

How to install JW Player in WordPress

• Download the video plugin
• Extract the jw-player-plugin-for-wordpress.zip
• FTP the folder to the plugins directory (/wp-content/plugins) on your server.
• Login to your admin panel
• Go to Site Admin-Plugins on your WordPress Dashboard
• Activate your plugin

To complete installation after activation

• Click the link that says “install the latest JW Player”
• This will result in downloading and saving the latest player to wp-content/uploads/jw-player-plugin-for-wordpress/player automatically.

Configuration of the JW Player

I used the default configuration because you can immediately begin embedding videos into your posts/pages after installing the plugin. To do this select the “Out of the Box JW Player” configuration.

If you wish to customize the JW player click the button that says “Create Custom Player.”

How To Add A Video To A WordPress Website Using JW Player

1. Increase the upload capacity of your server

When I initially tried to upload a large video to my server using the WordPress uploader I was unable to do it because it said my upload limit was 8MB. To increase the limit to 200MB I added this code to my .htaccess file.

php_value post_max_size 200M
php_value upload_max_filesize 200M

2. Upload video to your server within WordPress

• Login to your admin panel
• Dashboard – Media – Upload New Media
• Select files ( to upload the video file from your computer)
• Add titles and descriptions
• Add a thumbnail image (so a visitor can click on the image to play the video)
• Click save all changes

3. Add video to your post or page

• Open a post or page
• Click the “add video” icon (next to upload/insert at the top of the page)
• Media library – Video
• Select your video and click “Show”
• Check you have titles, descriptions and thumbnail filled in
• Click “Insert JW Player”
• This will insert short code into your page (make sure you’re using HTML view)
• The short code will look something like this:
  [jwplayer mediaid="361"]
• Save or update your page

To add multiple videos to the same page simply repeat steps 2 and 3. In HTML view you’ll see a list of short codes on the page. After saving the page you’ll be able to view all your videos.

Resources

Free Flash Image Rotator Spices Up Your Web Site
How To Create Multiple Slide Shows For WordPress Web Pages

*********************
Download my free report…
7 habits of Highly Effective Traffic Generation