Today, we’re announcing a complete overhaul of VideoPress, the service that has powered more than 3,000,000,000 video plays on WordPress.com and Jetpack-connected self-hosted WordPress sites around the world. We’ve made the next-generation VideoPress dynamic, responsive, and lightning fast to support the ever-evolving needs of content creators everywhere.
Take a peek at what’s under the hood!
Embed anywhere, play anywhere
Out of the box, the new VideoPress is lightweight and responsive for beautiful playback on any screen, from smartphones to desktops. VideoPress works on all modern browsers and devices, and gives blog and site authors the power to engage their audiences no matter where they are.
Not only do videos look amazing on WordPress sites, but you can also embed your videos anywhere on the web — other websites, social media, chat services — by using a permalink or a snippet of code.
Major speed enhancements
VideoPress now takes a fraction of the space it used to and is optimized for speed, so pages and posts with video content load faster. This is a huge plus for viewers who use slower connections or rely on bandwidth-strapped mobile devices.
It’s your content
At Automattic, we believe wholeheartedly that you own your content — video or otherwise.
The new VideoPress puts your content front and center. The player is ad-free and unbranded to ensure your videos look and feel like an integral part of your website or blog, not like they belong to a third-party video platform. Unlike other video hosting services, VideoPress starts and ends on your video, keeping traffic on your site and giving you full control over the content to which your visitors are exposed.
New features, new look
A real-time “seek” feature lets you skim through any video and helps you start playing at the desired point in the video. Here’s a sneak peek that our developer community will particularly enjoy: the player’s skin and behavior is controlled entirely by JavaScript, HTML and CSS, opening up a malleable slate for customizations by themers in the future.
Everything you love, and more
VideoPress embraces the features that users have come to love, like privacy settings and rich stats, but also includes additional enhancements. Every video now features its own permalink, and the sharing pane has been redesigned to offer different options for embedding, like starting playback at specific times, looping, and autoplay.
OpenSource ?
The rebuild of VideoPress revolves around a robust API for embedding videos easily in WordPress.com and Jetpack-enabled self-hosted websites. Though the API is private at the moment, many components of the new VideoPress libraries have been open sourced, including jpeg-stream, pixel-stack, and video-thumb-grid.
Get the goods
Once a standalone upgrade, VideoPress is now available exclusively in paid WordPress.com Plans to streamline updates, payments, and security enhancements.
To enable all the goodness of video support on your site, upgrade your WordPress.com Plan to Premium or Business. Then, upload and share videos as you please. If you already have a Premium or Business plan, sit back and enjoy. VideoPress will automatically handle the nuts and bolts to deliver an amazing viewing experience for your fans, followers, and friends!
Correction: an earlier version of this post insinuated that the new VideoPress is accessible for Jetpack users who upgrade to WordPress.com Premium or Business. Though videos can certainly be embedded anywhere, the option for Jetpack users to upload videos directly to VideoPress via a WordPress.com Premium or Business plan is scheduled for a future Jetpack release.
