YouTube Sidebar Widget

Widget Options

The YouTube Sidebar Widget is a WordPress plugin that displays videos from YouTube. You specify a YouTube username or Playlist ID to pull videos from. You can choose a title for your widget, select your data source(username or playlist id), provide the data source identifier, decide if you want to display video titles below the video thumbnails, the number of videos to display, the width of the video thumbnails, and lastly, a filter which will only display videos that match the filter you provide. The filter feature only works if you have your data source set to username.

The widget will display the videos neatly in your sidebar or footer. If you chose to display titles, you will see your video titles under their respective thumbnails. Overlaid upon the video thumbnails is a play button. This is the button you press to activate the video viewer. The site will turn dim and the video will appear in the center of the screen. From here you can click to play the video, or close the video viewer and return to the site content.

Video Viewer on Marketing Tech Blog

YouTube Sidebar Widget Thumbnail Viewer as seen on The Marketing Tech Blog

I forged this plugin at DK New Media as a tool for the Marketing Tech Blog. We liked it so much that we widgetized it and released it to the public by uploading it to the WordPress Plugin Repository. Through the Plugin Repo, the YouTube Sidebar Widget has been downloaded 6,641 times(or more since I’ve written this).

You can see the plugin working live at the bottom of my site on the left side of the footer or in the sidebar of Marketing Tech Blog.

  • http://www.stacyspaulding.com Stacy

    Love this widget. It does exactly what I want it to do. But I wonder if you might have a coding suggestion or two to help me with a slight problem: the video bleeds over my widget background:

    http://www.stacyspaulding.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/youtube-widget.png

    Thanks!

  • http://coley.co Stephen Coley

    Stacy, thanks for your support. I believe adding a “float: left;” style to “.s2 .widget”, on line 227 of your style.css file, will force the div to wrap all the way around the YouTube Sidebar Widget.

    Best of luck!

  • Jasonzulli

    It is not loading in IE, is there a fix.  It works on all other browsers

  • Flphil70

    It appears as if the widget only pulls in YouTube videos that have been posted within the last month.  Can you confirm that this is the case?  Anyway to deactivate that feature?

    Thanks.

  • http://coley.co Stephen Coley

    The next update will greatly improve IE rendering. Stay tuned.

  • http://coley.co Stephen Coley

    The widget is not designed to work that way. If you look on the Marketing Tech Blog sidebar, you’ll notice the oldest video that appears is from April.

    To help narrow down the problem, would you mind providing an screenshot of your YouTube Sidebar Widget settings(Appearance->Widgets) and also which operating system, browser, and browser version you are using.

    Thanks

  • Flphil70

    I should have been more specific in my original post.  This occurs when I use the FILTER option, which is required for my specific need.  I have done a decent amount of testing using different videos and different filter terms.  It seems like all videos posted within a month will display, those outside of a month will not.  Screenshot is attached.   MAC OS 10.6.8 / Firefox  7. 

    Thanks.

  • http://coley.co Stephen Coley

    This info will help a lot in the debugging process. Thanks for the feedback. I’ll get an update out soon!

  • Flphil70

    I’m looking to launch some sites in the coming weeks.  The other functionality with your plugin works great, but I need that filter feature.  Are you planning on offering an update in the coming days?  I like the plugin, but trying to figure out if I need to go with another solution given the timeframe.

    Thanks.

  • http://coley.co Stephen Coley

    Can you try replacing your youtube-sidebar-widget.php file with the one here? This should fix the bug with the data filter. After I get your confirmation. I’ll run it through some tests and update the plugin.

  • Dfueh673

    I’m noticing in ie8, the margin is throwing the play button way off.
    http://www.holyfamilyschoolberwick.org/Wordpress/faculty/academics/
    Any suggestions?

  • http://twitter.com/cwzone mec

    the arrow is shifted to about 100 pixels with ie8. I tried to change the css. and the new file youtube-sidebar-widget.php, but without success.The plugin works with firefox …thank you for this great plugin
    I try here  http://renove1mec.netbaze.com/

  • Warro

    HI

    For some reason the plugin will pull videos from the user ID but not the playlist ID. Is there something special I need to do. Ive attached a screenshot of the settings. Thanks!

  • Ernesto Pino

    Any solution ??? My problem is the same.