“A picture is worth a thousand words. How many words is a video worth?” says Alexander Hoereth, developer of Featured Video Plus, a WordPress plugin. He has programmed an awesome WordPress plugin that allows you to display featured videos in place of featured images i.e. post thumbnails.
We have just tested this plugin on all new WordPress versions release after 3.8 and it works same as advertised.
The plugin upon activation, add a new meta box in your ADD NEW/EDIT post screen. All you have to do is, while writing any post simply paste your video URL (in Featured Video meta box) and UPDATE/PUBLISH your post.
The plugin automatically grabs and embeds the video in place of post thumbnail area of your theme.
How To Display Featured Post Videos?
Suppose you are using Twenty Fourteen (default WordPress theme) then simply install and activate Featured Video Plus plugin.
After activation visit your ADD NEW/EDIT post screen and you will be noticing a new metabox is added on the right section of your screeen.
You simply have to paste your video URL and PUBLISH/UPDATE your blog post. That’s it.
Screenshot showing featured video in Twenty Fourteen Theme:
Screenshot showing featured video in Twenty Twelve Theme:
Now visit the frontend of your website and you will be noticing that your assigned post thumbnail has been changed to the video you have added, as shown in the given screenshot.
Customization:
The plugin provides you a set of options and features you can select from your admin are dashboard Settings -> Media screen.
You can set options like:
- You can enable autoplay
- Replace featured image automatically if possible (default)
- Enable video overlay when featured image is clicked
- Replace featured image with video on click & auto play if possible
- None of the above: Manually use PHP-functions or shortcodes
- Set a custom video sizing and options for YouTube, Vimeo and Daily Motion featured video embeds