myVideoPoster is a WordPress Plugin which was developed a little while back. The plugin is extremely powerful and easy to use, and it powers quite a few WordPress sites around the net by now.
The plugin is used in a variety of ways some of which are:
- Full blown, adds all relevant content to the blog from a selection of Youtube RSS feeds
- Publishes only the users own feed. Instant publishing, when you upload a video to Youtube, you do not have to worry about publishing it on your blog as well, it happens automatically.
- Additional content. Several niche bloggers use the plugin to add valuable content to their particular niche. If you have a specific niche which you add content to via external writers or article directories, you can use myVideoPoster to also add videos for a specific area.
For this How To, I will focus on how to use the custom field settings, which puts this plugin far ahead of any competetion.
myVideoPoster has the ability to not only add the video and thumbnail to the post, but also add them to specific custom fields. In this example I will show how to set up myVideoPoster with the eVid WordPress Theme from ElegantThemes.com
eVid WordPress Theme from Elegant Themes
After setting up your blog, installing the myVideoPoster plugin and the eVid Theme (its only $19.95 a year for full access to all their themes), go to the settings page of myVideoPoster:
Do not include Thumbnail or Video in post
Once there and you have set up the plugin to your liking, there are a few things you need to take change. Firstly you should turn off adding the thumnail and video to the post itself. You can do that by clicking off the two checkboxes which are turned on by default:
You can continue adding them to the posts if you care, but it is not necessary with the eVid WordPress Theme.
Secondly, you should ensure the size of the video is properly set, for the eVid Theme the sizes should be 560 for the width, and 340 for the height.
Thirdly, and most importantly, check the two checkboxes in the custom field area, and remember to fill in the input boxes with the names. Please remember to use the exact name as listed below, as the eVid theme is case-sensitive:
Custom Field Settings
The custom field for the thumbnail must be “Thumbnail” and the custom field for the video itself must be “Video”.
After saving the new settings, you can use the button “MANUAL RUN NOW” to check out how it works. Remember, these settings only affect NEW videos being posted, any previously posted videos will not be affected.
Thumbnails will now be automatically inserted into the proper places:
Thumbnails generated on the front page
And videos will now be inserted into the blogposts in the right place:
Videos Automatically Inserted
This how to was specifically set up for the eVid WordPress Theme, but you can change and use it for any WordPress Theme, the names of the custom fields might be different (look up the documentation from the developers).
Lars Koudal - WordPress Developer and SEO consultant based in Barcelona.