Embedded Youtube Video and Autoplay suggestion

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  commorancy · Member · Mar 29, 2015 at 4:40 am

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  I just got finished reading this forum article regarding YouTube autoplay. I don’t agree with the wordpress.com staff stance.

  Unless you’re blocking a feature to increase blog or site security, WordPress.com staff should not make unilateral decisions about blog user experience. It should be left to the blog administrator to decide what is a bad user experience on their blog.

  It is a clearly controversial stance to definitively state that auto playing of YouTube videos constitute a bad user experience. If auto playing of YouTube videos were a bad idea, YouTube would never have implemented the feature.

  If you’re going to support YouTube embedding, then you need to support all of the embedded player code features fully or not allow embedding at all. Breaking some of the embedding features only serves to cause more questions on your site than answers. It also means that you’re likely to have a lot of people hopping over to the support areas asking you why it’s not working. You probably don’t want to have to answer this question tons of times.

  It could be argued that allowing embedded YouTube videos alters user experience in a bad way. After all, WordPress is about words, not videos. So, embedding YouTube videos detracts from that experience. Yet, you allow embedding YouTube videos, but then restrict some of the embed settings for arbitrary reasons.

  While I agree that auto play settings can be abused or used incorrectly, instead of blocking it outright, add a setting to the blog admin area. A simple checkbox that says ‘Allow auto play of YouTube Videos’ as an advanced admin setting. By default, it can disabled. This allows blog admin to make the choice of whether or not to allow auto play instead of outright banning it.

  I also advocate for allowing all YouTube documented embed codes through to the YouTube player. If you’re going to allow YouTube videos, then you should support all player embed code settings (unless one of those settings could somehow compromise the site or blog security).

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)