As I’m sure you’ve seen, YouTube displays related videos at the end of videos you have viewed. This can be useful, but this can also be problematic. For example, we were recently working on a very personal project for a client. This client had a great video to use for their cause, but because the project was so personal to them, they felt uncomfortable that all these random, unconnected videos were being offered to viewers at the end of the video.

I remembered that I had seen that you can remove related videos from the end of a YouTube video. It turns out, it’s really quite easy to do!

Let’s say I want to embed this adorable kitten video in my site to share it with my readers:

You see all those supposedly related cute kitten videos at the end? How can YouTube dare to even compare this video with others? In order to make sure you are completely focused on this cute kitten, I will remove the related videos from the end. Note: you can only do this on embedded videos, and not on YouTube itself.

1. Go to the video’s individual page on YouTube. In this case, the individual page is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8GHf-aELjY.
2. On the bottom of the video, click Share.
   
3. Once you click Share, a new area slides open underneath the video with a shortlink for sharing the video. It also presents an Embed button. Click that.
   
4. When you click Embed, another area opens up underneath that offers you the embed code, and also a number of options to allow you to customize the video’s appearance on your site. The first option is a checkbox that says “Show suggested videos when the video finishes.” Make sure that box is unchecked. If you look at the embed code, you’ll see that it adds a parameter after the video’s URL:

   ?rel=0

   . “Rel” means related videos, and 0 is a binary command, meaning No.
   

5. Copy the embed code and paste wherever you want the video to appear! See below:

While I was searching for this solution, I came across a list of parameters that you can add to YouTube embed code to customize the player: YouTube Embedded Players and Player Parameters. For example, let’s say I think that the above video speaks for itself, and doesn’t need the title to appear on the player. To remove the title, I would add another parameter to the video’s URL in the embed code. So the URL would change from

http://www.youtube.com/embed/z8GHf-aELjY?rel=0

to

http://www.youtube.com/embed/z8GHf-aELjY?rel=0&showinfo=0

(note the use of the & to add another parameter). Here’s the final embed code:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src=http://www.youtube.com/embed/z8GHf-aELjY?rel=0&showinfo=0

frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

And here’s how the video looks without the related videos or title:

Other things you can customize in your player with these parameters are if it autoplays, loops, starts or ends at a particular point in the video, and more!

About a year ago, WordPress added a feature that made it ridiculously easy to embed content from various sites (like YouTube, Slideshare, Vimeo) into WordPress sites.

How to embed media in WordPress in a second

If you want to embed, for example, a YouTube video in a post, all you do is paste the URL of the video into the editor, unlink it and save/publish. See our ultimate guide to embedding HTML and iframes in WordPress on WPGarage for more info on how this works.

The problem is that it doesn’t seem to work 100% of the time. Luckily, there’s usually a reason for this. So if you’re having trouble embedding media in your WordPress site, see if the following tips help you out.

1. Your WordPress site isn’t set to enable embeds of this kind.

Whenever you set up a WordPress site, you have the option to allow embeds or not. Make sure you’ve chosen this option.

1. Go to Settings > Media.
2. Under Embeds check the option: “When possible, embed the media content from a URL directly onto the page. For example: links to Flickr and YouTube.”
3. Save changes.

2. You aren’t using the right link

It’s possible you aren’t using the right link. For example, maybe you copied the link of a channel instead of an individual video.

Here is an example of a URL that won’t work:

http://www.youtube.com/illuminea#p/u/1/LlSeZIHroNw

Instead, the URL should look something like this:

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

Lets see it work (all I did was un-hyperlink the above link to get the embedded video below):

Man, it’s so easy I could spit!

3. Extra code is messing things up

Maybe extra code is being added to the WordPress editor without you realizing. Try embedding the link into the HTML editor instead of the Visual one. If you see any extra code aside from the link itself, remove it.

4. The YouTube user isn’t allowing embeddings of their media

When someone uploads a video to YouTube, they can choose whether or not others will be able to embed their video around the web. If they chose not to allow it, no matter what you do, you won’t be able to embed it into your site.

Want to know how to change the embedding settings on one of your YouTube videos? Here’s how:

1. Make sure you’re logged into YouTube (with your Google account).
2. Click on the arrow next to your username in the top right-hand corner.
3. Click on My Videos.
4. Click Edit info on the video you want to edit.
5. Scroll down to Embedding and click the arrow next to it in order to see the two options.
6. Choose whether or not external sites will be able to embed your video.
7. Click Save Changes.

Anything else?

These are the problems we’ve found that prevent the awesome WordPress embed function from working. Have you found any other issues that don’t allow you to embed using links in WordPress?