Recommended installation instructions for sites built on WordPress
It’s never been easier to get SmartVideo installed on your WordPress site. WordPress users can now install and manage SmartVideo right from their WordPress dashboard. No more messing around with JavaScript or your site’s header 🙌
Account setup
If you do NOT have an account yet, create your SmartVideo account for free. Once registered, you’ll be given a unique key to access the Swarmify API. This Swarm CDN Key is required to configure your site for video delivery by Swarmify.
Installing and using the plugin
- Login to your WordPress admin dashboard.
- Hover over Plugins and click Add New.
- Search SmartVideo, click Install Now, wait a beat, and click Activate.
- Copy the Swarm CDN Key from the Configuration tab in your Swarmify Dashboard.
- From the WordPress admin sidebar, click SmartVideo, paste your unique Swarm CDN Key into the field on the Setup tab, and click Enable SmartVideo. (The screenshot below predates the current plugin, which no longer has a Configuration tab.)
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Now click on the Settings section of the SmartVideo plugin. From here you can configure how SmartVideo handles videos on your site — including Vimeo auto-conversion. To put YouTube videos through SmartVideo today, download the YouTube video and upload it to your SmartVideo library (auto-conversion from YouTube is currently paused; see Automatic Vimeo conversions for the full picture).
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Our WordPress plugin provides a widget when you are editing your posts & pages (even in some third party builders). You should now see a SmartVideo logo at the top of your posts that looks like this:
Any time you want to insert video, you can just click that button to use our SmartVideo player. It works very similarly to inserting images. You just upload your video to your media library, select it with the widget, set the size, and you’re done!
In the background the SmartVideo player is doing all the hard work for you. It’s generating optimized videos that play back perfectly on every device as well as making sure that video loads instantly no matter where in the world your customers are located.
Not bad for a little bit of copy/paste and a couple of button presses.
Need some more detailed instructions for uploading a video to SmartVideo via WordPress? See how to upload a video with our WordPress plugin.
What happens after I install?
After enabling SmartVideo, our system will begin scanning your site for videos. If you’ve enabled Vimeo auto-conversion in the plugin’s Settings tab (check the Auto-convert YouTube & Vimeo videos box), Vimeo videos on your site will be automatically converted to SmartVideo. (Auto-conversion from YouTube is currently paused — see Automatic Vimeo conversions.)
A video can take up to 30 minutes to convert to SmartVideo depending on the length and resolution of the video file. You’ll know a video has been converted when it plays in the SmartVideo player — look for its floating rounded control bar in place of your original embed. For more ways to confirm it’s working, see How do I know SmartVideo is working?.
Any questions? Just send me a message via our live chat button in the bottom right corner of this page 👍
Evaluating SmartVideo for WordPress? See the WordPress video hosting overview.
Keywords: smartvideo on wordpress