Jimdo – Inserting YouTube videos

This is pretty sneaky, but fortunately YouTube are decent enough to provide you with a way around this so that your video goes back to the beginning ready to go again.  Unfortunately, the standard Jimdo Video element doesn’t give you access to this method – but fortunately, when using YouTube at least, there's another way to do it.

Whatever method you are going to use to embed your video in your Jimdo website or blog post you must first upload your video to YouTube. 

To use the standard Jimdo Video element you simply insert the URL (web address) of your uploaded YouTube video (or any YouTube video that allows it) into the Video element to display the video on your web page.  However, to get access to the options that YouTube makes available for embedded videos, you must use a slightly more complex method, and instead of using a Jimdo Video element you must use a Widget/HTML element, which is a general-purpose element intended for those who understand HTML code.  

The process involves getting a block of special HTML code from the YouTube page for your video and adding that code to your web page or blog post.  Don't worry if you don’t know what HTML code is – you don’t need to know to sort this out!

To set the YouTube options and get the block of HTML code, you must first go to the YouTube page for your video. Below the video there is Share button:

Click on the Share button and then click on the Embed button that appears. A field containing a block of HTML code appears; click SHOW MORE under this field.

The embedding options appear at the bottom of the window:

There are four options, controlled by tick-boxes.

The one that we are primarily interested in here is: 'Show suggested videos when the video finishes'; so untick this one.

I usually leave 'Show player controls' ticked; player controls are the play/pause button, the time slider, and other controls along the bottom of the video window, which auto-hide once the video is playing.

I usually untick 'Show video title and player actions'; I don’t need the title to be shown.

I usually untick 'Enable privacy-enhanced mode' which YouTube describes as: "When you turn on privacy-enhanced mode, YouTube won’t store information about visitors on your website unless they play the video."; however, I should probably leave this ticked.

As you change these options the Preview video above them changes to show you how it will look and play on your webpage or blog post. The content of the block of HTML code changes, too.

The other useful option here is the Video size option; this sets the size of the video, in screen pixels, as it appears within your webpage or blog post. There are a range of standard sizes offered – you can choose one of these standard options or you can enter your own values by selecting Custom size. When you put a value in the custom size width field, which is the first field, the height field is automatically filled for you.

You can experiment with the sizes until you get the look that you want. If you enter a value in the width field that is too wide for the content area of your Jimdo website your video will be truncated.

You may want the video to be the full width of the content area in your webpage or blog post. This can't be done automatically – you have to enter the correct value in the width field, and, as I said before, if you make it too wide your video will be truncated.  There is no standard width in Jimdo web pages – it depends of the template that you are using – so you must determine the width  of the content area for your webpage.

You can determine the width of the content area by setting a picture in a Photo element to Full size, then go to View Mode and right-click on the picture, select 'save as', and click the save button. Right-click on the picture again and select 'save as' again, and you will be able to find the saved picture in the folder window that opens.  Hover over the picture to see its pixel dimensions – the first figure is the width and this is the one that you want. While you are in this folder window you can now delete the unrequired picture.

The Journey and the Destination uses the Verona San Zeno template, which has a content area 654 pixels wide.

As you enter your settings the block of HTML code above the Preview video changes to reflect your settings.

Once you have completed all of your settings you must copy this block of HTML code (click in it, and go Control-A and then Control-C to make sure that you get all of it.) Open a Widget/HTML element on your Jimdo page or blog post and past the HTML code that you copied into it; when you save it your video will appear!

This is what the block of HTML code looks like for one of the videos on The Journey and the Destination:

<iframe width="654" height="368" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lMKRiXRAQuI?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>

The part of this code that is highlighted is the YouTube video's file name.  Once you have completed this process once, you can save your block of code and just replace the YouTube video's file name to make the process even easier next time!

While this blog explains how to embed a YouTube video into a Jimdo webpage or blog post, the block of HTML code will work for any website that allows you to insert HTML code, so you can use it for other website builders, too.

A similar system of using options probably exists for other video services like Vimeo, too; however YouTube is the only one that I specifically know about.

If you have any questions on this process put them into the comments below, and I'll try to help you out with it.

Unfortunately, this method no longer works!  Above, I said "YouTube are decent enough to provide you with a way around this..."; well, this is no longer the case – Google (YouTube) have removed the option to turn off related videos display. 

Fortunately, there is a work around. 

If you insert the  block of HTML code as I describe above, and set ALL of the video that are in the YouTube channel that contains the video that you want to display in your webpage from "Public" to "Unlisted" YouTube won't find them to play next, and will simply return your video to its beginning. 

Unfortunately, it's only a matter of time before Google realises that they've left this loophole open, and closes it. If they don't close it, I will eventually re-write this post to incorporate this change.

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