WordPress Tutorial: Easy Steps to Add Video to Your Website

You can add videos to your WordPress pages or posts in several ways. It's possible to embed a video from a video hosting service, such as AliCloud or YouTube, or upload a video directly from your server. Each method has its own benefits, which we'll explain in detail in this guide.

In this post, we'll show you how to upload a video to your WordPress media library and then how to add it to your post or page.

Adding Video to WordPress: The Basics

Before we dive into how to add videos to WordPress, it's important to understand the basic concepts. First of all, you need to know the difference between "uploading" a video directly to WordPress and "embedding" a video into a website.

When you add a video directly into WordPress, this video file is saved on your web server. This is called a video upload.

When you add a video to a WordPress post or page from a third-party site like YouTube or a video hosting platform like Aliyun OSS, the process is called video embedding.

As you can see, when you embed a video, you may get some advanced player features that vary by platform. Sometimes, these features include built-in social sharing options, which can help increase viewer engagement.

Also, when you use a third party to host a video, this video is not actually stored directly on your web server. This means that it won't significantly affect the loading speed of your web pages.

Why add videos to WordPress?

Before we go any further, let's take a look at why it's so important to learn how to upload videos in WordPress. First of all, video content is very popular right now, in almost every online sphere from e-commerce to social media. As a result, users online are starting to expect to see more video content.

No matter what your website does, video can help you engage your audience and get them to spend more time on your site. Videos are especially good for explaining complex ideas or making your company or topic more relatable. Using video can also cater to different audience preferences and learning styles.

Many creative websites include high quality video content in their posts and pages. Whether it's a product video, a commercial, an indie film or a lifestyle clip, all types of websites can utilize video.

Will uploading videos slow down your WordPress site?

When you upload a video directly to your site's media library, it is stored on your site's server, which takes up space. Video files are usually large, and even if you only upload them occasionally, it can slow down your website and affect its performance.

This can lead to slower loading websites and lower Core Web Vitals (website health metrics) scores. Not only could this affect your rankings on search engines, but it could also leave new and existing visitors dissatisfied. In short, if your website slows down because you add too many videos, the benefits of video may be outweighed by these negative effects.

Fortunately, you can avoid these problems by uploading videos using a third-party video hosting service. This way, the videos are the ones that are loaded on an external server and your website will still function properly.

In this guide, we'll show you a few different methods of video uploading so you can choose the one that best suits your needs.

Method 1: Video Upload to WordPress Media Library (not recommended)

Uploading videos directly using your web server in WordPress is another option, but this is usually not recommended as it can use up a lot of server resources and cause your website to slow down. Also, depending on your web hosting service, there may be file size upload limits as well.

Often, this method is not the best option either, as the video playback speed may not be ideal and the player's capabilities are limited. However, it can still be helpful to know how to use this method in certain situations.

1. Log in to your WordPress dashboard.
2. Click Media > Add New.
3. Click Select File, find the video file you want to upload, and click Open. You can also drag the file directly from your computer's file manager to the upload area of your WordPress dashboard.
4. After the upload is complete, you will see the status bar showing 100%.

Add videos to posts or pages

After uploading a video to the media library, you can add it to a post, page or sidebar (just like adding an image). Please follow the steps below:

1. Log in to your WordPress dashboard.
2. Go to "Pages" or "Articles".
3. Edit an existing page or post, or create a new one.
4. Click on the plus sign (+) in the editor and select the "Video" block.
5. In the video block, click on "Media Library", select the video you just uploaded and click "Select".
6. When you're done, remember to click "Publish" or "Update" to save your changes.

Method 2: Youtube Video Embedded in WordPress Page (Recommended)

The recommended way to add videos to a WordPress site is through embedding. First, upload the video to a platform like YouTube or Vimeo, and then use their URL or embed code to add the video to your site so that you can utilize their server resources without slowing down your own site.

This method not only maintains the speed and performance of your website, but also ensures that visitors have a good browsing experience. Moreover, YouTube and Vimeo are servers that are specialized in delivering high quality videos.

Embedding a video is easy, here are some steps on how to embed a video into your WordPress site through a third-party platform.

First upload the video to the Youtube platform

After uploading your video to YouTube, go to the video details page and click the share button in the bottom right corner. Then select the "Embed" option and copy the embed code that appears. You can also adjust the width and height of the video to fit your page.

Log in to your WordPress site and embed youtube videos on pages and posts!

Open the article editor, find the widget and select the "HTML" block, paste the YouTube video embed code you copied into this block and click "Publish" to publish your article or page.

Method 3: Upload the video to an externally hosted server

The last way to add video to WordPress is to use an external hosting service, like AliCloud, Amazon Cloud or Google Cloud. These services provide the functionality and security needed for large websites, but they are more complex and expensive.

What is the best option for uploading videos to WordPress? 

If your website is geared towards an international market, it's best to upload the video to YouTube. this not only speeds up the loading of your website, but also helps promote the video on YouTube.

If your website is in Chinese, it's best to upload the video to Aliyun OSS. this will improve the opening speed of the website and also enhance the security of the video.