youtube videos messing up formatting

hmmm….I wonder, I just posted about my website being hacked, but maybe it’s because i’ve adding youtube videos. I’m curious as well.

Does anyone have a clue?

YouTube and other sites have a nasty habit of publishing invalid code for cut/paste purposes. WordPress tries, and fails, to correct that broken code. This causes the weirdness.

Short answer: Never cut and paste code from other sites into your blog and expect it to work properly. Use a plugin instead. I recommend this one for YouTube:
https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/youtube-brackets/

It lets you put in code like this:
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whatever]

And have that automatically converted to the correct code for the video. Also, if you use YouTube’s own “send to your blog” functionality, then this plugin allows what they send to your blog to actually work correctly.

awesome. I am going to install that plug in now. thanks for the info.

actually THIS plug in worked much better and was easier to get to work. check out https://www.ejump.co.uk/wordpress/easytube-plugin-for-wordpress/

worked great!

where do I install it at? My page code for plug-ins is 6-feet long!

That plugin won’t work with YouTube’s own send to blog functionality, which is why I don’t recommend it.

I don’t know how it could be any easier to get to work though. You activate the plugin and it works. Nothing more to it.

Otto – i tried to install the youtube brackets one you mentioned and it wont work (or maybe i am doing something wrong). i have it in my plug ins – then i hit activate – then what?

the other one seems to be working on my site right now, but i would like to make the one you suggested work also

ok i got it to work. the difference between the 2 is this.

the youtube brackets one Otto suggested is [youtube=TheYouTubeURL] and the other one I posted is [youtube:TheYouTubeURL]

Both work! thanks!

Youtube-bracket is great when the visual editor is on.

I had a peek inside, though, before I activated it, and saw these problems:

1. It has a function called “quicktime_post” which will conflict with another plugin with that name, if it was also active.

2. It works only on the FIRST youtube bracket pair on the post. The next ones are unconverted.

3. It relies on the correct sequence of parameters on the YouTube URL: v, width, height, and poster. I saw some youtube URLs that had other parameters, like title, related and search, and had them in another sequence. This breaks the plugin.

Added:
If the colon ([youtube:URL]) is the only thing in EasyTube that conflicts with youtube’s send to blog functionality, then this is easily patched in EasyTube, which has more flexibility and functionality. For instance, EasyTube converts the tags into image previews on the WordPress feed.

EasyTube’s major problem is indeed the use of the colon. That simply will not work with YouTube’s own posting methods. If the author would correct that problem, then I would recommend it instead. But since he has not, I cannot recommend it at this time.

If you want to patch it yourself, go right ahead.