Whether you are a Stampin' Up! demonstrator or not, you still may like to know how to insert YouTube into your blog posts.  It is now even easier than in the past!

Find your video or a video you would like to feature (from YouTube), like the one I have below where it is featuring Stampin' Up!'s new Letterpress Plates.  Tomorrow is October 1st and new updates will be coming, and I wanted to share with fellow demonstrators who may wish to have this video posted on their blogs.

In this example, I went to www.YouTube.com/stampinupvideo and then from the right, selected (clicked) the Big Shot Letterpress Plates.  That video is then loaded into the center, view and begins to play.

How to Insert/Embed YouTube Video

• RIGHT-CLICK on the video and select "Copy Embed HTML".
• Go to your blog and compose a new post.
• Write what you would like, and when you're ready to insert the video, swith to HTML or Edit HTML view. Scroll to your last sentence (for example for placement), and paste.
• You will see something like this:

  
  Please note for BLOGGER users, you have to add the </embed> (which is called a close tag) before the </object> in order for it to work (at least I had to)!

Adjusting the Width

As you may notice that my blog has a thinner middle (main posting area) than most, so many of my images have to be resized to fit. Anyway, you can adjust the size of this video to better fit your posting area.  NOTE: 400px wide is a good standard and will fit most blogs.

• At this point, you've pasted in the HTML code from YouTube as shown in the image above. Notice the width is 640. 
• I manually changed the 640 to 400 (in both places). 
• So how to you determine how to shrink the height proportionally?  I divided 640/400 and got 1.6.  Then I divided 390 by 1.6 and resulted in 243.75 (which I rounded to 244). So, my YouTube video is now 400(W) x 244(H) and fits nicely in my blog.
• Then you can switch back to Compose or Rich Text view and continue your post. 
• You will NOT see the video running or may not see anything in Preview. This is OK.  It will appear once posted and live.
• When finished, publish your post and you're done!

NOTE: Stampin' Up! Demonstrators!

It's the first of the month and time for your updates. If you haven't already, then you should sign up for my monthly maintenance program where it is all done for you – swapping out the old promotions, catalogs, and such and replacing them with current information.

Keep your sidebars up to date for just $12.50 a month!

Happy Blogging!

Heather Wright-Porto
www.BlogsByHeather.com