I often find myself in a situation where I’ll have to embed a YouTube video in a website, and even more often that I find that others out there have a need to embed YouTube videos but are just unsure of the specific steps. Either way, here’s a quick guide to easily and quickly getting the embed code from a YouTube video and embedding it in an HTML-based webpage.
First, you’ll have to go to the video on YouTube and find the video you want to embed. If you have the video on your computer first, you can upload the video to YouTube or look for a more advanced alternative. You’ll have to sign up for a YouTube account if you don’t have one, but since Google owns YouTube now you can use your Google Account to sign in. Once you’re logged into YouTube there will be a link in the very top navigation bar on the page to “upload”.
Once you’ve navigated to the video on YouTube you want to embed, we’ll get the HTML embed code to copy and paste into the body of your website or into the edit forms of your blog. First, you’re going to have to find and click the “Share” button. It’s right under the video window itself below and to the right of the time code indicator. This brings a drowdown window with facebook and twitter share buttons and a link auto-highlighted. This is the short link to this videos page in case you wish to share by e-mail or other messaging platforms.
To embed you’re going to want to click the “Embed” buton to the right of the short link. Once you click this button it will bring up a new window that contains the iframe code snippet that you will paste into your website or blog to embed your video.
This is the HTML embed code that you will need to copy and paste into your website to embed the video. Works pretty seamlessly with blogs and displays consistently across modern browsers. It’s easy to style with CSS and the interface that comes with the video has improved in great ways since the early days of YouTube so it’s a great way to bring motion into your website…if you don’t mind the YouTube watermark logo over the video player.
