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 with a 14-day free trial. A credit card or PayPal is required at signup, with no charge until the trial ends on day 15. 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 Dashboard tab, the first screen after you log in to 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 clip 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 reliably, bring the video into your SmartVideo library (YouTube conversion is best-effort — some videos convert and some don’t; see Can I use YouTube videos? 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, SmartVideo encodes your video into optimized renditions and delivers them from its own CDN.
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. Vimeo auto-conversion is on by default: in the plugin’s Settings tab, Replace YouTube & Vimeo embeds stays on unless you turn it off, so Vimeo videos on your site will be automatically converted to SmartVideo. (YouTube conversion is best-effort — some videos convert and some don’t — see Can I use YouTube videos?.)
SmartVideo imports Vimeo videos whose Who can watch setting is Anyone. To keep those videos private to your own site while SmartVideo serves them, set Where can this be embedded to Specific domains and list your website’s domain. Password-protected and Only me videos stay on Vimeo; change the setting to convert them.
A video usually converts to SmartVideo in about as long as it runs, so a 10-minute video takes about 10 minutes. The plugin’s Legacy player (the default in plugin 2.4) shows the SmartVideo player in place of your YouTube and Vimeo embeds right away, so confirm a video has converted with the Network tab check in How do I know SmartVideo is working?.
Any questions? Just email support@swarmify.com or send us a message via the widget in the corner of this page 👍
Evaluating SmartVideo for WordPress? See the WordPress video hosting overview.
Keywords: smartvideo on wordpress