SDAweb Channels for YouTube

SDAweb Channels for YouTube is a lightweight, privacy-friendly way to showcase YouTube content on your WordPress site. Add any number of public YouTube channels and display their videos using shortcodes or a Gutenberg block. Videos are cached locally so visitor page views consume zero API quota.

Layouts & Playback

• Grid — Responsive multi-column grid (1–4 columns)
• Tabs — Channel-tabbed interface with 3 navigation modes: scroll, wrapping pills, and avatar strip
• Slider — Horizontal carousel with arrow navigation
• Auto player (default) — Adapts to screen size: inline on desktop, lightbox on mobile phones
• Lightbox player — Fullscreen overlay with keyboard shortcuts (arrow keys, Escape), swipe gestures, and prev/next navigation
• Inline player — Play directly inside the video card with expand-to-lightbox
• Link mode — Opens videos on YouTube in a new tab
• Avatar strip — Compact row of channel avatars with labeled names and smart truncation
• Mobile bottom sheet — Touch-optimized player with swipe-to-dismiss
• Landscape mobile — Optimized layouts: horizontal cards for live streams, 2-column grid for regular content

Live & Upcoming Streams

• Automatic detection of live broadcasts and scheduled upcoming streams
• Smart sort order: live streams first, then all streams sorted by proximity to the current time — the most relevant broadcasts always appear first
• Dedicated [sdawchfo_live] shortcode for live and upcoming content
• Live badge with concurrent viewer count and pulse animation
• Upcoming badge with scheduled start time countdown
• Toggleable „Live now“ and „Coming up“ section headings
• Stale guard: upcoming streams auto-expire after 6 hours, live after 24 hours — no stuck statuses
• 5-minute background polling keeps live status current (1-minute with Broadcast Boost)
• Live Broadcast Boost — configurable day/time window for 1-minute polling during scheduled broadcasts
• Zero-quota RSS feed discovery catches scheduled broadcasts not in the uploads playlist
• Live and upcoming streams are automatically excluded from regular shortcodes

Channel Management

• Add channels by URL, handle (@username), or channel ID
• Drag-and-drop reordering controls tab and section display order
• Custom labels per channel for friendly display names
• Automatic video caching with configurable 1–24 hour refresh intervals (up to 3 channels per cron run)
• Manual refresh per channel or all channels at once
• Import and export channels and settings as JSON

Shortcodes

Four shortcodes cover every use case:

• [sdawchfo_channel] — Videos from a single channel (by id, handle, or label)
• [sdawchfo_channels] — Multiple channels in grid, tabs, or slider layout
• [sdawchfo_feed] — Combined feed mixing videos from all channels
• [sdawchfo_live] — Live and upcoming streams with empty-state message

All shortcodes support these attributes: count, columns, layout, sort, player, pagination, per_page, show_stats, show_duration, show_channel, and live_only.

Additional Features

• Gutenberg block with live preview and inspector controls
• Shortcode builder in the admin dashboard — no coding required
• Customizable frontend labels (26 strings) for full translation support
• Customizable appearance: badge styles, button styles, tab colors, and time text colors with color pickers
• Load More pagination with configurable batch size
• Video stats: views, likes, duration, publish date
• Detects and labels YouTube Shorts
• Up to 100 videos per channel with automatic API pagination
• Import/export for easy migration between sites
• Tab navigation modes: scroll, wrapping pills, or avatar strip
• REST API endpoints for custom and headless integrations
• Server cron setup guidance in the admin settings
• Channel name truncation setting for the avatar strip
• Automatic cleanup of private and deleted videos from cache
• Dark theme support via CSS custom property (–sdawchfo-card-bg)
• Admin settings: tabbed Plugin Overview with 7 sections, quick-access links, and info tooltips explaining technical terms

Privacy & Performance

• All video data is cached in your local database
• Visitor page views make zero external API calls
• No cookies are set and no visitor data is sent to third parties
• YouTube embeds use the privacy-enhanced youtube-nocookie.com domain
• YouTube embeds load only when a visitor clicks play
• Lazy loading: thumbnail images load only when they scroll into view

Third-Party Services

YouTube Data API v3

This plugin connects to the YouTube Data API v3 to fetch channel information and video data. API calls are made server-side only when:

• An admin adds or refreshes a channel
• The scheduled cron refresh runs (configurable interval, default 6 hours)
• The live status cron runs (every 5 minutes, or every 1 minute during a configured Broadcast Boost window)

No API calls are made during normal visitor page views — all data is served from the local cache.

• Service provider: Google LLC
• API endpoint: https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3
• YouTube API Terms of Service
• Google Privacy Policy

A YouTube Data API v3 key is required. You can obtain one for free from the Google Cloud Console.

YouTube RSS Feeds

This plugin fetches public YouTube RSS feeds (https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml) to discover recently published and scheduled videos. These requests are read-only, use no API quota, and contain only publicly available video IDs.

• Service provider: Google LLC (YouTube)
• YouTube Terms of Service
• Google Privacy Policy

YouTube Embeds

When a visitor clicks play on a video, an iframe loads from YouTube’s privacy-enhanced domain (youtube-nocookie.com). No embed loads until the visitor initiates playback. No cookies are set by this domain.

• Service provider: Google LLC (YouTube)
• YouTube Terms of Service
• Google Privacy Policy