Review<Web>: Embeds ‘ANY’ Flash widget in WordPress.com using the incredible Vodpod.

VodPod by Remixation, Inc., is based in downtown San Francisco, California, and founded in late Spring 2006. Development of Vodpod started on June 1, 2006 and it was launched publicly on December 4, 2006. Review in http://www.techcrunch.com/tag/vodpod/

 

Please be reminded that WordPress.com prohibits any form of advertisement that will generate revenue for the blogger and has been known to unhesitatingly remove any blog hosted on its site that infringes its non-advertisement policy. So for those who wish to place advertisement will want to use paid WordPress hosting service instead of WordPress.com.

Although the review focuses on WordPress.com, the free blogging service, it also applies to those paid WordPress hosting service as well. 

 

Introduction

Have you ever get disappointed with because in order to embed your favourite Embeddable Flash Widgets (EFW) like

Google Picasa Slideshows

Imeem Playlist

Comiqs Comics

(Click here to review a post that contains the above widgets)

into your WordPress.com blog, you have no choice but to pay monthly subscription to WordPress hosting service just to allow full access for installation of widget’s plugin ? Moreover I yet to even talk about time wasted in searching and installing individual plug-in for each widget.

So how you wish that the free blog hosting WordPress.com allows virtually any flash widget to be embedded without restriction. In other words, unless you constraint yourself using ’supported’ widgets like YouTube, Google Video, you find WordPress.com wanting. In addition, ’s recent announcement of giving 5GB of free hosting storage space over the previous 50MB really exacerbate the frustration over the limited supported for EFW.

However, with the amazing , the wait is finally over and those issues become things of the past. No more waiting, no more frustration. Embed any flash widget to your heart’s content without limitation from WordPress easily and your blog suddenly comes alive with interactivity and multimedia.

One thing for sure. With WordPress’s power, flexibility and the ‘ability to embed any flash widget’ with Vodpod, WordPress.com will be the undisputed future blogging platform of choice for those looking for free reliable hosting service with generous storage space.

 

Vodpod’s answer to EFW

Vodpod keep track of all user’s widgets

At first glance, Vodpod is a easy-to-use social-network video service just like Youtube, though less sophisticated in function. Although Vodpod markets itself as video service, its simple look beguiles its versatility. What makes the service distinguishable from others is that it is actually managing EFW, not just Video, and ‘it just works’ embedding capability in popular blog systems (WordPress, Myspace, Facebook) gives it a differential advantage. In other words, if the widget is embeddable , it can be ‘vodpod’ into the WordPress post without hassles. And if there’s ever a widget that refuse to work, you can report it and assure that Vodpod is there to ‘tame’ it.

Vodpod’s embedding capability is top-notched and videos are shown in WordPress’s sidebar.

 

How Vodpod works

Vodpod works by allowing one to capture the widget from a webpage using browser’s extension/ bookmarklet, import from existing webpage or upload locally. This will then add to user’s pod page show all the video associated with the user.

 

 

This page allows user to directly add widget/video through URL or embedding code.

 

How Vodpod manages to coerce those widgets to work in WordPress without compromising the latter’s security is nothing short of amazement. WordPress.com is very stringent and each widget need to be approved and explicitly support through ShortCode. What Vodpod simply do is to decipher the shortcode for the widget automatically that works flawlessly by bypassing the limitations in WordPress.

For example, WordPress’s shortcode for Youtube is

Vodpod automatically create the following shortcode for Comiqs to work with WordPress.

 

Tips: A ShortCode is only relevant to WordPress only. The ShortCode will be intercepted by WordPress and then route to desired service. Needless to say, the vodpod’s shortcode is supported by WordPress in the first place, otherwise WordPress may not know how to handle the ShortCode.

For webpage, use the standard div/embed html code assign to each widget. Yes, it looks #$%&#*$ but who cares if it works

QuickStart: Adding Widget in WordPress.com through Firefox

Vodpod offers many features which I yet to fully explore. However, I elaborate on the most interesting feature which allows one to virtually add a ‘WordPress-unsupported’ embeddable widget, Google Picasa Slideshows in this case, quickly to WordPress.com blog site using Vodpod in Firefox. Remember, you can substitute any widget. As so far, this is the only foolproof way I found that ensure that any widget appears in WordPress.com as other ways that make use of embed/div tags get stripped off ‘rudely’.

Another source on capturing widget from Vodpod’s blog 

 

Step 1: Install the Vodpod extension into Firefox

Install the Firefox extension from http://vodpod.com/wordpress

Firefox extension is preferred method over bookmarklet because it operates faster and allow the widget to be directly post to WordPress. It is important to note that no extension or plug-in is necessary for other browsers to display the widget in WordPress.com. The extension is installed in Firefox is primarily a tool to capture and post to WordPress.

When installed, make sure it is added to the toolbar (View -> Toolbars -> Customize). The icon shows a WordPress image.

 

Step 2: Capture the widget and post directly to WordPress

Visit the page where the widget appears or anytime that one want to create a post from widget, then click on the ‘Post To WordPress’ icon to show the following popup. Enter the necessary information required to publish to WordPress. The reason is to create the blog post is to retrieve the shortcode generated by Vodpod for the widget (How I wish that the popup include a function to generate the ShortCode without resorting to create a post first.).

With the ShortCode (eg), the user can essentially paste the ‘widget’ everywhere within a WordPress post. 

Note that if there are multiple widgets, Vodpod might get confused and only display certain widgets.  If that’s the case, copy the embedded html code and paste in the textarea box and preview it. The widget will then appear below the code.

Popup allows the user to enter the embedded html code manually for the widget

Popup that detect Widget automatically

 

Step 3: Embellish the blog post

Once the widget is posted to WordPress, a new post will be created that shows the Widget. Use a visual blog editor like Windows Live Writer (Left image) to edit the content while making sure that Vodpod’s embedded code remain intact. Published the change as usual as WordPress will not strip the Vodpod’s code. Yes, that’s all to it. It’s really that simple.

Congratulation. You now have a WordPress post with a ‘unofficially-supported’ widget.

Happy ‘Vodpoding’

 

Conclusion

The aftermath of such service like Vodpod only means that WordPress’s brand and popularity will continue to grow rapidly.

This really is one amazing web service whose ‘embeddable widget’ capability has to be experienced to believe. Now, who dare says that WordPress doesn’t support your favourite embeddable flash widget “out of the box” ? No more messy plug-ins, workarounds and subscription to hosted WordPress service just to embed any flash widget in blog site anymore. Now you have unlimited flash widgets to be embedded pleasantly at your disposal. So why not start ‘widgetizing’ your blog to your heart’s content.

A sample post containing interesting widgets

 

Other Videos

Founder Mark Hall introduced Vodpod

 

Demonstrating Vodpod

 

Vodpod www.vodpod.com

Type: Video Web Service with unique flash widget embeddable functionality that simply works flawlessly and easily with WordPress.

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