By now, I don’t think anyone needs to be told how awesome video content is. It’s easy enough to create with your own personal mobile device. There is a multitude of video editing tools to trim, filter, and personalize those videos. And there are free-to-use video streaming platforms like YouTube that empower users to publish that content on the web for all to see.
Beyond just the ease of creating video content, there’s also the ROI to think about. Consider the following:
- Based on Wistia’s observations, people spend 2.6 times longer on a page that contains video content.
- Marketers report 75% more click-throughs and 35% more conversions on pages that have videos than those without.
- 25% of Animoto’s survey respondents said they have lost interest in a website if it doesn’t contain video content.
Needless to say, video has demonstrated how powerful a content marketing tool it is for websites.
Now, for some businesses, a singular video is all your site needs or that you currently have the capacity to create. For other businesses, however, video plays a much larger role in your brand’s marketing—so much so that you’re wondering how you can fit all of them on your site without slowing everything down to a glacial crawl.
That’s why hosting your videos on a site like YouTube is the optimal option. YouTube manages the weight of the videos, and then it’s up to you to embed that content within your pages. And while there are other video streaming services available to store and organize your video content, YouTube is kicking butt. Google found that “in 2015, 18- to 49-year-olds spent 4% less time watching TV, while time on YouTube went up 74%.”
With Internet users gravitating towards video, it’s time to start thinking about the best ways to display all that high-quality video content you’ve got stored on YouTube on your site. A video gallery plugin would definitely seal the deal, and give you a stylish way to organize and lay out videos in bulk across your site. In today’s article, we’re going to take a closer look at the top 11 WordPress YouTube gallery plugins available in 2017.
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Top WordPress YouTube Gallery Plugins
As a general rule, if you have more than three videos you want to display on a single page of your WordPress site, you should think about using a video gallery plugin. Here’s why:
- Minimalism: Much like any gallery plugin, one dedicated to hosting YouTube videos would help cut down on clutter and consolidate all video content into a well-organized space.
- Weight Loss: Sure, you’ll be adding a new plugin to your site, but you’ll cut down on the number of videos you’d actually need to upload to your site.
- SEO: Consistently longer times on site generally lead to the perception that your site has something of value. With videos compiled in a gallery format (that people stay to watch all the way through), this will add to the impressiveness of those time-on-page statistics.
- Engagement: There’s something about placing related videos in a single space that not only increases the convenience for your visitors to view them, but gives them a real value-add experience.
- Multi-Purpose: There are a number of reasons why you’d want to import your YouTube video content into a gallery. To create a course playlist. To build out a video portfolio. To launch a video blog channel for your site. Or maybe to feature user-generated video content all in one place.
Regardless of how you hope this YouTube gallery will help you, the next step is to find the right WordPress plugin for your site. There are a number of factors to consider—like price, SEO friendliness, responsive design, ease of management—so I’ve compiled a comprehensive list of the most popular and top-rated WordPress YouTube gallery plugins currently available:
Envira Video Gallery Plugin
Envira Gallery is already a well-trusted plugin for image gallery creation in WordPress, but did you know the premium version of the plugin comes with a video add-on option? This video gallery add-on enables you to input all your YouTube video links at once and then you can configure the lightbox or gallery layout as you see fit. Envira also has a smart thumbnail feature that will automatically pull them in for you, saving time in having to do it yourself.
FooVideo Plugin
This one’s a two-parter. First, you’ll need to download the FooBox image lightbox plugin from WordPress (that one’s free). Once you have that in place, you can then purchase the premium FooVideo upgrade (link below). And, boy, is that plugin cool.
FooVideo isn’t your basic YouTube gallery plugin. Yes, all you need to do is paste the URL or keyword from YouTube and it’ll grab the video for you. However, this plugin integrates so well with your media library that it’ll automatically grab thumbnails from the video and apply all the metadata you need. In addition, this comes chock-full of personalizations, so you can change not only how the gallery is laid out, but also the sizing of the lightbox, the shape of the video player, as well as the hover effects.
Huge-IT Video Gallery Plugin
If you’re looking for a gallery plugin to display both images and videos, Huge-IT has one here. However, if you want one solely dedicated to showing off your videos, the Huge-IT Video Gallery plugin deserves a look.
Since this plugin is free, it won’t come with all the bells and whistles you’d get with a premium plugin, but it’s nevertheless comprehensive. It’s fully responsive, has no limit on how many videos or galleries you can create, and includes seven different gallery layout options.
Photo Gallery by 10Web
Although the Photo Gallery plugin is labeled as a “photo gallery” plugin, it does come equipped with video integration capabilities too. So whether you want to mix and match your photo and video content or want to use this strictly for video galleries, that’s up to you. Just know that this one comes with a lot of customization possibilities, including gallery layouts, lightbox options, transition effects, as well as ecommerce integration.
Smart Grid Gallery Plugin
For when you want a beautiful, responsive video gallery on your site, take a look at this Smart Grid Gallery plugin. It’s one you have to pay for, but may be worth the investment if you need something that allows you to create really stylish-looking galleries. You can customize colors, add captions using your choice of one of over 600 Google fonts, add an infinite scroll, display videos in a popup or on-page gallery, apply CSS3 hover effects, and more.
Unite Gallery Plugin
Despite the fact you can use this premium gallery plugin to organize and display images, where it really shines is in how it handles video content. In addition to integrating with YouTube, it also works with Vimeo, HTML5, and Wistia in case you have video content you need to grab from different sources. The Unite Gallery plugin also has the option to create video galleries with built-in playlist sidebars, making the experience more convenient and professional-looking for your visitors.
Video Gallery by Huzzaz Plugin
This free Video Gallery plugin from Huzzaz may be one of the easier ones to use on this list with its drag-and-drop interface. It also comes with a bookmarklet tool so you can more quickly and easily import new video content into your gallery when you encounter it around the web. In terms of the actual gallery, the layout looks quite similar to what you’d find on YouTube which will make this a comfortable viewing experience for visitors. Videos can even auto-play if you like.
WordPress YouTube Video Gallery Plugin
If all you need is a simple solution for creating a gallery of YouTube videos on your website, the free WordPress YouTube Video Gallery plugin is a good one to look at. There are two gallery display options available as well as a special pagination display for mobile device users (basically, it removes the gallery of thumbnails and replaces it with a “Next” button).
Yottie WordPress YouTube Channel Plugin
In terms of flexibility, the Yottie plugin has got it. You can use this plugin to import an entire YouTube channel for your site or you can select single videos and compile them into your own unique gallery. In addition, once you’ve collected the video content you want to feature, you can group and structure them as you see fit. And, of course, the gallery can be personalized as much or as little as you want, including the header logo, banner, metadata, views and subscriber counters, and more.
YourChannel Plugin
The YourChannel plugin is solely for people who want to import their full YouTube channel into their site. So whether you have your own channel of music videos, WordPress tutorials, geometry courses, or what-have-you, you can use this plugin to make a copy of it on your site. Of course, there are customizations you can make in terms of thumbnail styles, icon designs, and transitions, but for the most part, there isn’t much to do with this but provide your channel name.
Wrapping Up
Video marketing is not a trend we’re likely to see disappear any time soon, which means if you have the time and ability to start creating it for your WordPress site, by all means, get on it! With so many WordPress themes and plugins built specifically to cater to this trend, there’s no reason not to.
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Keep reading the article at WPMU DEV Blog. The article was originally written by Brenda Barron on 2017-07-09 09:00:55.
The article was hand-picked and curated for you by the Editorial Team of WP Archives.