This plugin hasn’t been tested with the latest three major releases of WordPress. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.

Embedly

Description

Enhance the default WordPress embedding to get previews for any article,
including your own blog posts. You also get embeds for Gfycat, Twitch, Google
Maps, and Embedly’s growing list of 500+ supported
providers
.

You can customize the style of the embeds, to optimize for darker WP themes,
alignment, and width. In addition, social buttons can be added around the embeds
to make it easier to share content from your blog posts.

If you have an Embedly Cards account, you can link it to the plugin with your Embedly API key. Not only does this remove branding from the cards, it also gives you access to analytics and viewer behaviors for most popular music and video player embeds (YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, SoundCloud). Find out how many people viewed your embeds for how long. To learn more about Embedly Cards please visit our website.

Using it is as simple as the default WordPress embedding. Embed media by pasting its URL in a single line when writing a post

The plugin automatically displays an embed of the media in the WordPress post
editor (for WP 4.0+).

Fair Warning: This plugin generates static HTML content for your posts. After you deactivate
the plugin, that HTML will still remain behind in all posts where the plugin was used to create
embeds.

Screenshots

  • Advanced Embed Settings

  • Writing a post and embedding.

  • Sample Post.

Installation

Using the Plugin Manager

  1. Click Plugins in the WordPress Dashboard sidebar.

  2. Click Add New.

  3. Search for Embedly.

  4. Click Install

  5. Click Install Now

  6. Click Activate Plugin

  7. Create a new post and paste a URL. It will automatically turn into an embed.

  8. (optional) Save your Embedly API key to link your Embedly Cards account for analytics and unbranding

Manually

  1. Upload embedly to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory

  2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress

  3. Go through the sign up flow as described above.

Multi-Site

  1. Navigate to My Sites -> Network Admin

  2. Follow Steps 1-5 in Using the Plugin Manager setup above, Do not Network Activate

  3. Go to each site’s dashboard and activate Embedly in Plugins section

  4. Go through the sign up flow as described above.

FAQ

The embeds from the Embedly WordPress plugin include title and description meta
information that can provide relevant information to search engines about the
embeds to boost SEO.

Installation Instructions

Using the Plugin Manager

  1. Click Plugins in the WordPress Dashboard sidebar.

  2. Click Add New.

  3. Search for Embedly.

  4. Click Install

  5. Click Install Now

  6. Click Activate Plugin

  7. Create a new post and paste a URL. It will automatically turn into an embed.

  8. (optional) Save your Embedly API key to link your Embedly Cards account for analytics and unbranding

Manually

  1. Upload embedly to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory

  2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress

  3. Go through the sign up flow as described above.

Multi-Site

  1. Navigate to My Sites -> Network Admin

  2. Follow Steps 1-5 in Using the Plugin Manager setup above, Do not Network Activate

  3. Go to each site’s dashboard and activate Embedly in Plugins section

  4. Go through the sign up flow as described above.

Reviews

5 June 2018 1 reply
When I first discovered this plugin I wanted to write a stellar review and give it like 20 stars, as it seemed to solve one of the biggest problems of BuddyPress. But when by solving a problem you create an even bigger one, it kind of defeats the purpose. In BP when you post a link on the activity stream, it doesn't generate a preview unless it comes from some specific big websites (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo). Even links from sites like Facebook, Apple or IMDb show no preview. I tested many, if not all, free plugins that claim to tackle this issue - almost none worked with BP. Now, this plugin does a great job. It must support a huge number of websites, because I posted from some unknown ones with no problem whatsoever. Seemed too good to be true. And unfortunately it was... As I found out later, when Embedly is activated posts from some sources that BP supports by default stop working correctly (happened with YouTube and Vimeo). A preview is still generated, but it is only a dead image of the video. By dead I mean you cannot click play or even click on the title and open the video in a new tab. Since nobody in their right mind would be OK with building a social network where users cannot post YouTube videos, this otherwise great plugin becomes essentially useless. An easy solution would be what Iframely Responsive Embeds plugin does: it has an option "Do not override default embed providers" (the problem is that they do not support so many websites as Embedly). Hopefully Embedly will provide something similar in the future, because it really is a shame - I tried some crazy URLs, even from sources not on their list, and it still generated a perfect preview! The other problem, as you can tell by the title, is support. Not to put too fine a point on it, it simply doesn't exist. I opened a ticket and described the bug, asking if there is a solution. It's been five days now and counting... It seems that support is there just for effect. And imagine that I am a potential paying customer, as I clearly stated that if the problem is solved I would like to purchase a premium package or custom code or something, in order to remove their branding from the previews. Again, a shame... So it has to be one star.
28 September 2017
Dirty uninstallation and branding is why I gave this 4.
25 July 2017
I use and have used Embedly for years now. Ultimately it's handy and it's a plugin I consider "core". However... It doesn't allow you to play with the back end of the plugin anymore. This means no changing fonts, no changing preview dims, no changing font colors and background colors. You can set these options in settings panel, but they don't always translate to what displYs inn the screen. But that being said, I'm giving this A 5 ⭐️ review because, when everything is said and done: This plugin flat out rocks and I use it on practically every article I write. I can insert a link to Wikipedia or IMDB when writing an article, and Embedly will take that link and change it from a bunch on letters to a preview of the page, see examples in article: I am a paying customer of theirs I dig the plug-it so much. If you want to see it in action, go to my site here: http://voicesfilm.com Rock on boys. Please consider letting us play with backend of plugin .php...
28 June 2017 1 reply
After deactivating the plugin I still have embedly script running from the database leftover that is not cleaned up and now I have to trace the leftovers manually. Stay away from this plugin.
10 April 2017
Embed.ly is a great tool to neatly embed all kinds of sources into your blog posts as stylish "cards". It works like a charm. The only drawback I see is that changes in the plugin settings don't affect cards on existing posts. E.g. if you change the theme of your blog to something darker and you hence change the Embed.ly theme from light to dark, it won't update the existing posts but only affect newly created cards. Same if you want to deactivate the social sharing buttons on all existing cards. So I give only 4 stars.
Read all 30 reviews

Contributors and Developers

“Embedly” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

Translate “Embedly” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Change Log

4.7.0

  • Having an active app.embed.ly account is now optional to use the plugin! Users who want access to unbranded
    card embeds and/or analytics can elect to input their Embedly API key in the plugin settings, but users who just want
    to get started embedding no longer need to create an embedly account and activate the plugin.

4.0.9

  • Improved plugin security.

4.0.6

  • Embedly is not currently supporting historical analytics for embeds, but you can still see realtime views.
  • Improves the implementation of javascript dependencies via the wp_enqueue_script api.

4.0

  • Removed Embedly TinyMCE Button.
  • Added Editor Preview URL functionality for all URLS (WP v4.0+)
  • Redesigned Embedly Admin page
  • All embeds will be generated as Embedly Cards

3.2

  • Embedly TinyMCE dialog and dependencies managed server side.
  • Refactor code to use class structure.
  • Clean up deprecated SQL generation to make compliant with WP3.6 and above.

3.1.3

  • Fix Add Post bug in IE.

3.1.2

  • Enable Twitter WP OEmbed.

3.1

  • Fixes issue with Embedly not loading on WP3.9.
  • Load tiny_mce_popup_4_0.js when TinyMCE is v4.0.

3.0

  • Upgrade Embedly TinyMce editor option to use Embedly Cards.

2.3.0

  • Use TinyMCE provided by WP Core.
  • Fixes issue with HTML editting and formatting.

2.2.2

  • Change server side calls to HTTP to avoid issues.
  • Disable rocketloader syntax.

2.2

  • Update TinyMce Popup js to latest.
  • Update to latest JQuery 1.10.2.
  • Update Powered by link destination to code generator.
  • Fix powered by logo for RSS generation.
  • Add support for links to open in new window.

2.1.4

  • Support for blogs using HTTPS.
  • Steps for multi-site setup.

2.1.2

  • Use wp-includes tiny_mce_popup.js
  • Compatible with WP 3.5

2.1.1

  • Providers save fix.

2.1

  • Admin Redesign.
  • embedly_settngs option for wp_options table.
  • SQL optimizations.

2.0.9

  • Fix for feature status check.

2.0.8

  • Allow script tag embeds.

2.0.6

  • Add Embedly providers on ‘plugins_loaded’ instead of ‘init’ and other tweaks

2.0.5

  • Fixing the path to TinyMCE plugin.

2.0.4

  • Updated flow for previewing and updating embeds.

  • Improved previews for preview endpoint.

  • Better error handling for loading plugin in Post Editor.

2.0.3

  • Resolve issue with tag attributes getting stripped

  • Resolve quirks with height getting set incorrectly

2.0.2

  • Resolve conflict with WordPress image editing

2.0.1

  • Resolves Rich Editor not showing up.

2.0

  • Adds Embedly TinyMCE plugin to Rich Editor.

  • Support for Embedly Key to Embed “any” URL.

1.0

A few fixes.

0.9

Initial Version