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
- Qik
- Photobucket
- PollDaddy
- Revision3
- Scribd
- SlideShare
- SoundCloud
- SmugMug
- 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!