Install LongTail JW FLV Player on WordPress

Oh, the joy. Another tutorial born of my frustrations and annoyance over the lack of ease of installing something that should have been much easier than it was.

Installing the commercial (paid) version of the LongTail JW Player for WordPress should only take about 5 minutes, but I swear all of the directions for a successful install and implementation of the tool cannot be found in a single location. This is the goal of this post. I’ll take you from purchasing the JW Player to installing it on your WordPress blog to posting your first video.

Stuff You Need to Know

• How to Install a WordPress Plugin
• How to Upload files & an .flv (flash video) file to your own website.
• How to Edit a simple line of code.

Quick Instructions:

1. Buy a License
2. Download JW Player Files
3. Install JW Player Plugin for WordPress
4. Upload player-commercial.swf and yt.swf to the JW Player Plugin for WordPress directory. Rename to player.swf.
5. Upload or locate the .flv file that you want to use.
6. Create a player in the plugin settings. Note: remember the name of the player.
7. Create a new post and insert shortcode: [jwplayer config="<Player name>" file="<your video>"]

Detailed Instructions

• Buy a license for the LongTail JW Player. Cost: €49.00 EUR which was roughly $73.20 USD when I bought it.

JW Player is an open source project and you can use the player for FREE. So why pay for it? Well, if you’re using your website – and in turn the JW Player – to make money, well, then you have to buy a commercial license. Sucks, but gimme a break. Just pony up the $70 bucks. It’s worth it.

• Download the JW Player files

Click on the link in the email you are sent after purchasing the product. You’ll need to know your license code to log in to the site. The license code will be emailed to you as well. Easy enough.

• Install the JW Player Plugin for WordPress

Installing plugins is super easy. Especially with the recent advancements WordPress has made. It used to be that you had to download the plugin from the WordPress site, then upload it manually to your server, but now, you just go to Plugins > Add New > then search for the name of the plugin. Then just click install.

• Upload the commercial player-commercial.swf and yt.swf files to the JW Player Plugin for WordPress directory.

After you download the JW Player files from the LongTail site, you’ll need to extract the folder. (This can be done very easily with 7zip). Once the folder is extracted, you’ll see two files inside of it (among others). Find the player-commercial.swf and the yt.swf file and then navigate to this directory of the plugin (on your server) /wp-content/plugins/jwplayerplugin. Now copy the player-commercial.swf and the yt.swf files into this directory. Now, change the name of the player-commercial.swf to player.swf on your server. Now activate the JW Player Plugin for WordPress.

• Upload the .flv file, or locate the directory in which there is a .flv file that you want shown on your post.

By this, I just mean find the link to the .flv video file. Something like http://yoursite.com/video/movie.flv.

• Create a player within the JW Player Plugin for WordPress.

You can create a new player with your custom options and stuff by going to Settings > JW Player Plugin > then look for “New Player” and name it something. Click “Create”. The name of this player is important because you’ll insert it in the “<Player name>” bit of shortcode in the next step below.

• Create a new post and insert a bit of shortcode.

This was the major missing link for me when I was trying to get this bad boy working. Turns out, you just need to insert a bit of code in the “HTML” view of the WordPress editor, and then insert the link to your .flv file as well as the name of your player. The code you need is simply this:

[jwplayer config="<Player name>" file="<your video>"]

So if your player name is “myplayer” and the location of your file is http://mysite.com/video/movie.flv then your short code will look like this:

[jwplayer config="myplayer" file="http://mysite.com/video/movie.flv"]

If you’ve done everything properly as shown above, then you should be able to publish your post and see your video in the the JW Player on your site.

Hopefully I didn’t miss anything. If something’s jacked up, let me know in the comments. It’s a Saturday afternoon and I’m too lazy to double check everything.