Looking for a YouTube Wordpress Plugin
Posted on September 29th, 2008by Michael Gray in Programming
As both Youtube and Wordpress are mature products I would have imagined this plugin existed hower after several days looking it doesn’t look like it’s available.
I’m looking for a wordpress plugin that use the youtube API and automatically pulls in new videos as they are posted and automatically creates a single post for them. I’m just interested in working with a username, not keywords or tags. The reason is if you use keywords or tags other people can cause use them and make the plugin to pull in unapproved videos.
Ideally you would be able to configure how often it checks for new videos and tell it which category to put the videos in.
The Youtube API currently only spits out a pic with a link to the video not a true embedable video. Wordpress also munges the code if you write it directly. If you were looking to be quick and easy I’d suggest working with the smartyoutube plugin and spitting out the output in this format and popping that into the post.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00000000
if you wanted to be extra cool you could add a function to put the latest video in the sidebar so you wouldn’t need to update the template when a new video comes out.
It’s a friends personal project so there’s no budget, but they will give you a link, and I’ll help pimp you out here as well. I know I’m not the only one looking for this plugin, so I have to imagine you’ll get some link love elsewhere as well. If you’re interested drop a note in the comments or contact me … thanks.
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September 29th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Let me get this straight, you are looking for a plugin that will automatically make a new post with every new youtube vid from a specific user?
September 29th, 2008 at 9:04 am
yes but the playable vid has to be in the post not just a picture/still from the video.
September 29th, 2008 at 9:08 am
I can do this….I think….might take a while though…
September 29th, 2008 at 11:23 am
I started coding this but then got bored, the code I came up with so far can be found at http://pastebin.com/f797e81e9 in case anyone finds it of any use.
September 29th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
I am the author of Smart Youtube plugin and I suggest you and your friends take a look at another plugin of mine called Insights http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/wordpress-plugins/insights
While not completely automating it, I think you will be pleasantly surprised what it can do.
If you still need more, contact me.
September 29th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
@Vladimir: Your plugin is interesting but the automated cross posting is a mission critical component.
September 29th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
@Michael - Thinking more about this…you will never get a fully automated process here. Heres why: RSS doesn’t push, post, ect. Therefore, here’s what I think needs to happen. An XML parser needs to be used to format the original youtube RSS into something that PHP can play with. Then we can take the RSS item links (permalinks) and use them to create the embed code. At this point we could either spit this out into a new XML template to create a whole new feed, or we could just inject it directly into the WP database. But heres the catch: All of this isn’t going to happen on its own. Therefore I think the best method would be to create some type of cron job that is set to run every hour or what ever you want, so that It can check things on a regular basis.
In the end, I think this would be a fun plugin to create. However, when I think about the complexities involved, my gut tells me that we might be able to do everything above using 2 or 3 plugins in conjunction with each other.
September 30th, 2008 at 12:37 am
@Joe Hall: lots of plugins run on a schedule. I can already grab it in XML/rss format using a feed scraper plugin but without hacking in some exceptions there’s no way to convert it into a playable video.
I may end up doing that but not my first choice, mucking w/other ppls plugins is a recipe for disaster
September 30th, 2008 at 10:29 am
@Michael you can create custom feed output from another feed using rss2html pro. I have used it, and its great. With it you can completely change the way that a feed is output, then create a new feed. Then you could use a scrapper plugin to scrap your new feed. This way you wouldn’t have to hack anyone’s plugin.
October 2nd, 2008 at 2:27 am
I’ve worked with it before for some video insurance news we had on YouTube and it works great.