What do you need to know?

Create Video Pages on Website

Basic Checklist:

  • Add post
  • Give it a title
  • Embed the video
  • Copy the description from Youtube. Improve if possible
  • Give Category
  • Give Tags
  • Upload resized feature image
  • Create excerpt
  • Set Publish date
  • Preview
  • Publish
  • Send to another volunteer for them to check your work

Add Post

Be sure to click add post and not “add page.”

Give title

Generally, use the same title as found on the YouTube video.

HOWEVER: Many of the titles include a line to separate parts of the title. This line should be the pipe character | (found as shift \, above enter key). But many times they have used the number 1 or the lowercase l.

When you look closely, you can see how the pipe character drops below the baseline like the letter p.

Embed video

Find the proper url

Learn to recognize the difference between a link to a single video and a link to a video that is part of a playlist. Notice the bold part of the second link

Single:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK_HKy8nvLQ

Part of Playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK_HKy8nvLQ&list=PLIqIzb1e84AVLZN0L7Wtt2mZgkTdjQjSK&index=26

You can be sure to get the link with the playlist if you start out going to the playlist first. Then all the videos from that page should be correct.

Embed

Paste the link into a completely empty paragraph block. The embedded video should appear about 10 seconds after pasting. This only works if the paragraph block is completely empty.

Copy description

You can just use the description on the YouTube page. If you like to expand it a bit that’s good too.

Do not include the paragraph that says things like “We’d love to hear from you! contact us at…”

Give category

Each youtube playlist should have its own category under the main category “Buddhist Videos.” However, do not give them the category “Buddhist Videos.”

If the proper category doesn’t exist, check with the Bhantes first. You can always pick the closest category and then change it later.

Give tags

Try to give at least one tag. Read these articles about tagging.

Please follow our Tagging Guidelines carefully.

Upload featured image

Check the sub-album on the Media Archive website to see if the thumbnails are there. Otherwise you can use thumbnail-download.com on the video you are uploading. Save the full sized version. Read the full instructions here.

Then you need to resize to 900px wide and compress at compression level 80 to try to get the file size below 100kb. in most cases you will save them as .jpg. You can use a website like jpeg-optimizer.com. If you have a bunch of images to resize, you can use Fast Stone Image Resizer. Read the full instructions here.

Give excerpt

This should be a single sentence. Could be taken from the description. This is what will appear on pages that collect all the videos from a category. End the excerpt with how long the video is, for example: (10 min).

This is where the featured images and excerpts will appear on the site:

Set publish date

Click on Immediately under Status and Visibility. Then set the publish date to the date the post should appear on the website. Please check to see when the last post was published or when the last scheduled post is set to be published. (You can see that here.)Then set the publish date to be two days after that.

Preview and Publish.

Check your post by previewing in a new tab. You won’t see the featured image or excerpt on the preview page. After publishing, you can find your post on one of the pages that shows all videos in a category, such as serenecolombo.org/buddhism-for-lasting-happiness/. If a page like that does not exist, please let the Bhantes know.

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