Anyone who has a blog on WordPress knows that embedding content normally goes pretty much smoothly there – unless you have to deal with different types of content and codes.
WordPress Editor is awful when it comes to embedding an iFrame – besides, in some cases, it chooses to strip the embed code once you click from “HTML” tab to “Visual” editor.
Embedly is a new promising start-up that is said to help you “embed anything” to your blog post. It works via the Embedly oEmbed API that currently supports about 100 huge content sources that can be embedded to your blog with one click.
The problems that the plugin is aiming to solve:
- Different content providers have different embed codes – with the plugin you no more need to worry about that. Just use one unified way to embed anything.
- Some huge content sources do not provide for a clear way to share their content without hosting it – the plugin expands your possibilities by letting you embed what you have never tried to.
Installing Embedly
The Embedly WordPress plugin is installed just like any regular plugin: choose your preferred way (either manually or with the help of the WordPress admin area plugin installer) and activate the plugin.
Immediately after that you should see a new menu section called “Embedly”. That new section lists all your services that you can from now on “effortlessly” embed to your blog.
There’s an option to disable any of the services (I couldn’t find a reason to disable any of them – even if I am not going to use it in the near future, who knows, maybe I’ll need it at some point).
Besides obvious sources like YouTube, SlideShare and Scribd, you’ll be surprised to see a few popular sites you’d never think to embed content from, such as:
- Twitter;
- Craiglist;
- CNN;
- Amazon;
- Digg, etc
Give It A Try
So how exactly does Embedly make it easier to embed content? You are going to love it!
From now on you don’t need an embed code to embed anything. All you need is your content source URL – just paste it in your editor and it will be converted into a rich embed!
Now let’s give it a try. Create a new post, add some short introduction and try embedding, say, your Tweet.
Embedding A Tweet
All you need is to grab your Tweet direct URL and copy-paste it into your WordPress Editor. When you are saving the draft or publishing the draft, this URL will be turned into the embedded Tweet:
(Much easier than even BlackBird, isn’t it?).
Now let’s try to embed other types of content:
Embedding YouTube Video
Just grab the video URL and copy-paste it into the editor. I was curious to see which dimensions the embed video was going to be. The choice turned out to be a bit unexpected: looks like the plugin used the small size (see the actual output on my test post):
So we tested it with a Tweet and with a video. Now let’s try something different for a change: Compete.com. How has the start-up been doing in terms of traffic? All we need is to copy-paste this URL – http://siteanalytics.compete.com/embed.ly – right into the editor:
Looks like a great tool! What are your thoughts about it? Let us know in the comments.
