The Embed Block is a core block in Headway – that means if you have Headway, you have this block. But are you using it?  The Embed block is incredibly flexible – just place a block in the desired size on the page, drop in the URL of the embeddable media and Save.

Yup, it’s that easy!

The Embed Block supports a ton of media services by default – and this list can be expanded, if you’re familiar with WordPress Hooks and PHP.

• blip.tv
• DailyMotion
• Flickr
• FunnyOrDie.com
• Hulu
• Instagram
• Qik
• Photobucket
• PollDaddy
• Revision3
• Scribd
• SlideShare
• SoundCloud
• SmugMug
• Twitter
• Viddler
• Vimeo
• YouTube
• WordPress.tv (only VideoPress-type videos for the time being)

Examples

To embed a TV show or movie from Hulu, you’d enter the link to the episode page in the block options for the Embed Block, i.e. : http://www.hulu.com/watch/486599

A YouTube embed would be similar – just link to the YouTube Video. Note that you do not have to generate a special URL or pull the URL from the iFrame source – nothing fancy here, folks. Just grab the link you’d normally share, and drop it into the Embed Block, i.e. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6DJcgm3wNY

With non-video services like Twitter or SoundCloud, you aren’t embedding video – you’re embedding the media that service collects along with the proper controls to interact with that media. So a single Tweet includes controls to reply, retweet, etc, and a SlideShare presentation has controls to page through the presentation, and a SoundCloud link will let you play the audio.

So what are you waiting for? Start using the Embed Block to create more interesting and dynamic layouts!