Joomla is one of the world’s most popular and widely deployed content management systems. Continuing our series on Joomla plugins, we next tackle the surprisingly complicated task of embedding video into Joomla articles. What makes embedding videos in Joomla so troublesome (especially for those accustomed to working in blogging software like WordPress) is that Joomla’s content editor strips out any embedding tags (like OBJECT, EMBED, and even SCRIPT tags). And since YouTube’s method of embedding video relies on OBECT/EMBED tags, you can see the problem: No videos in Joomla articles.

Example embedding code from YouTube:

<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/KLGClOOL62Q&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/KLGClOOL62Q&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>

There is always the option of adding a custom code module below your actual Joomla article using the Module Manager, but this is a complete hack that normal content authors will find too cumbersome to remember, much less execute. What’s needed is a simple method that doesn’t require much effort on the part of the user. Fortunately, there are a number of plugins to help out! We’ll be covering two of them: EasierTube by Lee Everson here, and AllVideos from JoomlaWorks in a follow-up article. Both are Open Source and non-commercial.

EasierTube

Let’s start off with the easiest, most simple to use video embedding method there is… EasierTube, available as a stable 4.4 version for legacy Joomla 1.0, or as a beta 5.5 version for Joomla 1.5 version installations. Just paste the URL of your video into an article and EasierTube converts it to the needed code so that viewers see your video instead of the link. To do this, EasierTube scans articles and converts any YouTube (or Google, UStream, Revver, mpora, mybreak and Myspace) video links it finds into the correct OBJECT/EMBED tags to display the video, but it doesn’t alter the Article Manager version of the article … just what the end user sees in their browser.

Example YouTube URL:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLGClOOL62Q

Settings: It defaults to a small width, so you’ll want to make sure to edit the default video sizes in the Plugins Manager (just find it in the list, click its name, and edit its settings). EasierTube provides two dimension settings: home page content and interior content. This accommodates folks who may have a narrow blog format on their home page, but a wider format when the complete article is viewed. There are a ton of settings, allowing you to loop, autoplay, provide full-screen viewing, and specify border settings. You can disable related videos, annotations, video info, stats, and even the title. You can turn off support for each of the individual formats it supports (YouTube, Google, etc.).

Possible Problems: This approach is drop-dead simple. All your content authors need is the URL to the video, not all the OBJECT/EMBED code. EasierTube takes any video URL it understands and takes care of the rest. Of course the devil’s in the details. It converts ANY video URL it understands, no matter where it finds it in the article (or the HTML code in the article). If you simply want to post a text or button link to your video, forget about it. EasierTube will commandeer the link, turn it into a video display, and cut off the rest of the paragraph. Not at all desirable. So, as long as your content authors don’t provide text links to videos, you’ll be fine. But be warned. =)

Installation: Like other Joomla extensions, just download the ZIP of the plugin and use your site’s Extension Installer. You’ll get a brief confirmation message, and once it’s installed you’ll need to remember to actually enable the plugin inside your site’s Plugin Manager.

Check back soon for our follow-up article on the AllVideos plugin from JoomlaWorks!