WordPress makes it so so easy to embed media into your blog; in many cases it can do this by simply pasting in the URL for the web page where the media came came from using the automatic WordPress embed options.

This means (a) you do not have to upload the media to your site and (b) you do not even have to mess around with gnarly HTML embed code. All you need to do is find the URL that displays the content you want to use from sites such as Youtube, Vimeo, flicks, SoundCloud, and more listed in the WordPress Codex.

Embedding Images

For photos stored in flickr, just put the URL (plain text, no link) for the web page that contains a flickr image in a blank line, e.g.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7202153@N03/493046463/

will embed the image like

Grand Canyon - Lower Tapeats Campground at the Colorado River

Be sure to remove any extraneous “in/photostream/” part of the URL.

You can also embed Instagram photos (sometimes the URL for a single image is hard to find). Here is the way to embed one

http://instagram.com/p/yBaG8jBQiB/

And to see that cute dog?

http://instagram.com/p/yBaG8jBQiB/

Embedding Videos

The same goes for video hosted sites like YouTube and vimeo, just the plain URL (Youtube videos can use the short form as well)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYqvGWBkiBc

or

http://youtu.be/UYqvGWBkiBc

which can embed a video like this

And you can also embed TED Talk videos, again… put the URL on a blank line

https://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_stanton_the_clues_to_a_great_story

And you get Andrew Stanton talking about storytelling!

Embedding Tweets

Everything sent out on twitter has its own unique URL usually linked from the timestamp when it was published. Just like images and video, you can have the full functionality (including links and avatar icons) of a tweet embedded into a WordPress post by simply pasting the URL for it into a blank line.

For example, Sheila’s excitement over finding how to embed media can be put into any WordPress post or page

https://twitter.com/smstagner/status/557036706914779136

and will appear in a your blog rendered as

https://twitter.com/smstagner/status/557036706914779136

How cool is that?

Embedding Audio

You can upload audio to SoundCloud.com, or record directly into the web site. You can use the same method outlined above to embed an audio from this site, just use the URL for the SoundCloud page that displays it, e.g.

http://soundcloud.com/miss-mc-3/7-word-story
which will produce this when your blog is published

See also