When we’re not working on building cool new plugins for WordPress here, we are building new sites on WordPress over at The DMA – an Australian based WordPress Agency. Much of the inspiration for new plugins comes directly from that work. We see similar problems that we have to solve over and over and that regularly will lead us to this thought – “we should build that out into a plugin“.
Our first Genesis Theme Plugin, Video Manager For WordPress is no exception.
In some ways the idea is not unique. Already there is Agent Listings, a plugin that creates a new custom post type to hold real-estate listings. And Genesis Portfolio Pro that does a similar thing but this time to create an image portfolio inside a Genesis site.
During this year we have done a number of WordPress site builds where there was a need to create a video listing (or archive) that displayed videos from a streaming service; usually YouTube or Vimeo. Some of these were training sites that used a lot of video, some posting video content like webinars. Either way there was a similar set of requirements:
- An archive page that showed a list of videos
- Single page display of the video where a user could watch it
- Ability to add attachments (think PDF files that were slide decks) to each of the videos
Over 4 or 5 site builds we added to what is now Video Manager For Genesis.
What does the plugin do?
First up it creates a new custom post type inside WordPress to hold the video content. This keeps it nicely separated from your blog and other content.
When you add a new video post there is a group of custom fields to help you manage the video and its related content. The screen shot below shows the customised WordPress editor.
You add a video by copy/pasting the URL from the streaming service. That could be YouTube, Vimeo or any other service that WordPress supports with its oEmbed system. Then if you’re in a training situation you may like to attach a PDF file or perhaps a link to a slidedeck that’s available on a service like Slideshare.
You can choose to categorise the videos, similar to the way the you categories normal blog posts. Again though this is done with a separate taxonomy so it does not get in the way of your blog content.
Watch the video
We have produced a short walk through video that shows the basic setup and usage of the plugin.
Purchasing options
We have different licences available for purchase, depending on the number of sites you would like to use the plugin on. Pricing information is available below. We also have extensive documentation available here to get you up and running.
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