I whipped this up for a project and thought I’d share it with everyone. Even though there are already plenty of WordPress plugins that will show a YouTube video in the sidebar, I couldn’t find one that met a few key requirements.
What I Was Looking For
- Lightweight. I didn’t want this one little feature to be the plugin that broke the camel’s back, as it were.
- Easy to use. It needed to be simple to install and even easier to use.
- Flexible. It needed to be able to fit into a variety of widget sizes, both sidebars and (potentially) widgetized footers.
The Solution
I came across this very excellent idea (by Go41 Webdesign) of using SimplePie, since it is already included with WordPress. There was no need to add a bunch of useless code to get information from an existing feed.
The problem was simply that of end-user experience. So I reworked the code a bit, wrapped it into a widget, and added the ability for the site owner to make changes right in the Widgets section of WordPress.
I may expand the capability of this plugin in the future, but for now I’m happy with it and I like the simplicity.
What It Does
This plugin is super simple. It creates a widget that you can drag into your sidebar or widgetized footer. Then, simply specify what YouTube channel to look at, and it will pull the most recent video from that feed and display it on your blog. I even added the ability for you to easily adjust the height and width of the video to fit into a variety of theme designs.
Get the Plugin
I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. Give it a try and let me know what you think.
I downloaded this plugin, and dragged it into my sidebar and it's not showing up. what should I do?
You added your YouTube ID to the settings and the latest video doesn't show up? What version of WP are you using?
Is there a possibility to add the option of how many videos from yuor channel to show (i.e. 0-10). This would allow your sidebar to have a column of 3 videos and be more interesting. There's a plug-in that does this ("Latest Youtuve videos"), for code refernce, but I'd prefer yours b/c it's coded to match the theme better. Actually, lots of plug-ins have the option to select multiple videos. Would you be able to use their code and add that feature?
It's easy to make more videos optional, but my goal was to keep the plugin simple, lightweight, and easy to configure for the end users.
And secondly, is it possible to pull in a channels' uploads AND favorites, so it would show the latest upload or favorite? Combining this feature with multiple vids option would make this the best youtube plug-in!
Again, I'd like to keep the plugin simple. I will consider both of your suggestions for the next version, and if it appears to me that the plugin will still be easy to use for WordPress novices, I'll go ahead and add in the features.
Thanks for the feedback!
That is rather cool. I gave it a tweet for you.
Thank you, Rose! I'm not sure how long it will be before there's an update, but I'm glad you like it in its basic state.
tried downloading plug-in but saw now exe file or set up file in download. TSo, went to URL specified in readme doc and got directed back to your blog with error msg – help!
Jonathan, it's a WordPress plugin, so it's meant to live on your web server and doesn't work without WordPress installed. There's no executable file or setup file.
If you already have a WordPress blog, you can install it directly from your administration area by going into the plugins folder and clicking the "Add New" button. Then perform a search for "last-youtube" and you can install it from there.