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The Best WordPress Video Plugin and How To Install It

Video player plugins aren’t the easiest to configure if you’re a newbie or technically challenged.

I’ve recently started a free membership site for beginners needing to learn how to setup WordPress using videos tutorials.

I wanted to install a video player and plugin rather than play around with code.

Update: I’ve now changed and suggest using the ProPlayer plugin which is a customized version of the JW Player software. Far easier & better solution.

Step 1

To use Flowplayer you need to install the software as well as install the Fv WordPress Flowplayer plugin which is made by Foliovision not Flowplayer.

Click Plugins > Add New > and type fv wordpress flowplayer into the Search Plugins box.

Once you locate the plugin in the plugin directory, install and activate it.

Install Video Plugin

Step 2

Flowplayer works very well and looks great so all i did was download the free version from the flow player website, unzip the folder and drag the folder across to  a new folder in a sub directory on my server which is wpsites.net/flowplayer

You could upload the contents of the folder into a new directory on your server but this does exactly the same thing and its faster.

Then i installed Flowplayer which adds a small f above your editor and looks like this.

WordPress Video Plugin

After you upload the video file (MP4) to your Media Library, you simply click the small f and come to a screen like this one where you can add the URL of the video.

Upload Video

Once you have upload the video, MP4 format (Will take other formats) to your server, simply copy and paste the URL of the location into the Video field above.

You can also change the size of the video player. Here i have set mine to 520 wide by 420 height as you can see in the screen shot above.

WP Media Library URL

This is the URL you need to add to the Video Field when you insert the Flowplayer tag (click the small f) into a post/page.

WP Media LibraryA splash page can be a image of your logo or something else to promote whats in the video and or yourself/business.

You could  take a screen shot of your website and upload it as an image then insert the URL where it says splash image. You can also add a splash image at the end of the video also.

[flowplayer src=’ http://wpsites.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/WordPressVideo2installation.mp4′ width=520 height=420 splashend=show splash=’http://wpsites.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Splash2.png’ redirect=’http://wpsites.net/products-page/’ popup=’24 Premium WordPress Video Tutorials’]

If your wanting to create your own website and like using qaulity video tutorials, this set of 24 WordPress videos is perfect for you.

Consider this: You are far better off to embed your own videos into your own WordPress posts and pages and host them on your own server so you can play them with your own video player than host them on Youtube or somewhere else.Why? Read my related post on video sitemap plugin for WordPress and you’ll easily understand why.

You can still upload it to Youtube and other places you’ll get hits but you want your URL indexed on Google NOT Youtube’s.

Conclusion: The best WordPress Video Plugin,  FV WordPress Flowplayer, works flawlessly with the best free video player for WordPress and its simple to install, setup and configure on your own server which you control.

Editor Problems

If you have a problem with your editor caused by the theme you are using, i suggest you try installing Folio visions editor and see if this fixes the problem.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  3. Hi Brad,

    Yes, of course: making sure everyone using WordPress has access to a great video player is very important to us (why we created the free FV Flowplayer originally). There is a free version with all the core HTML 5 features. The Vimeo Pro features and lightbox are pro only features.

    Let us know what you think. I’ll set up a pro license for you now to try both version.

    Best wishes, Alec

    • Would you like to write a guest post Alec?

      The people who read WP Sites may want to know why using a plugin is better than using the native WordPress video player?

  4. Hi Brad!

    Please come by and check out the new HTML 5 FV Flowplayer Pro. In addition to full HTML 5 and mobile video support, we can secure play Amazon S3 and Amazon Cloudfront, as well as Vimeo Pro videos with no chrome. We automatically check your videos for correct encoding.

    We’ve also added post and pre-roll, text ads, video lightbox and playlists.

    http://foliovision.com

    We’d love to have your input on the new version.

  5. Brad,

    Thanks for the info on installing the player. I would like the player to show up in the “slider” image window of a wordpress theme.
    Question:
    Can the “slider” window be coded to show a video player instead? It may be a simple question, but if you can help me I would appreciate it.

    Thanks
    Brian

    • Hi Brian

      You can put the code generated from the flowplayer plugin into the embed box of the slider and it should show up.

      Once you have installed the player, uploaded your video to your media library and installed the plugin, simply click the icon in your editor to generate the code.

      May depend on which theme you are using

  6. Brad, I think you just saved my life…

    Great write-up and we’ll definitely be using these video plugins & your tips moving forward.

    Thanks for a thorough write-up & all the resources to get it implemented.

    Regards,
    Cory

  7. Hi Brad great article you’ve written here!,
    I got hold of some affiliate video reviews which I want to host on my personal blog, but being new to video I hadn’t a clue how to go about it, so I did a google search and came up with your article… now I have a clear idea of what I need to do.

    Thanks for that…

    Kindest regards

    Pete Chapman

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