My YouTube Channel FAQ

Please follow Installation instructions.

Login to your YouTube account and visit page Account Advanced.

You’ll find your Vanity Name as “Your custom URL” in Channel settins section on that page. For YTC plugin use only part after http://www.youtube.com/c/, not full URL.

Channel ID is YouTube Channel ID value composed of mixed characters starting with UC.

You will not need that two ID’s, in general. But, if you really wish to know, these two ID’s are produced from your Channel ID. Channel ID start with UC (likeUCRPqmcpGcJ_gFtTmN_a4aVA)

• For Favourites ID replace UC with FL (so you get FLRPqmcpGcJ_gFtTmN_a4aVA)
• For Liked Videos ID replace UC with LL (so you get LLRPqmcpGcJ_gFtTmN_a4aVA)

Playlist ID can be manually extracted from YouTube playlist URL.

Just look for string after &list= parameter in URL which can contain lowercase and uppercase letters, dash and underscore characters.

Regular playlist starts with uppercase letters PL (like PLEC850BE962234400), but Playlist ID for YouTube mix starts with uppercase RD (like RDCfMMlT8Lyns).

Login as user with Administrator role and you’ll see YTC ERROR message with explanation what’s wrong. Examples:

YTC ERROR: Please check did you set proper Channel ID. You set to show videos from channel, but YouTube does not recognize MyCoolLegacyName as existing and public channel.

Do exactly what message says – check and correct Channel ID in default settings/widget/shortcode.

YTC ERROR Check YouTube Data API Key restrictions, empty cache if enabled by appending in browser address bar parameter ?ytc_force_recache=1

1. Try to remove restrictions by referer or IP in your YouTube Data API Key and refresh page after couple minutes.
2. If that does not help, please try to create new API Key for Server w/o restrictions (not to regenerate existing one).

You will be able to reproduce HTTP Error w/o WordPress if you have SSH access to server where you host your website. Simply login to shell and run following command:

curl https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlistItems

If you do not receive response like one below, then you’ll receive HTTP Error from curl command.

{
 "error": {
  "errors": [
   {
    "domain": "global",
    "reason": "required",
    "message": "Required parameter: part",
    "locationType": "parameter",
    "location": "part"
   }
  ],
  "code": 400,
  "message": "Required parameter: part"
 }
}

error:0D0890A1:asn1 encoding routines:ASN1_verify:unknown message digest algorithm

The remote connection software you are using on your server might be compiled with a very old version of OpenSSL that does not take certificates signed with sha256-With-RSA-Encryption into account. It requires at least OpenSSL 0.9.8o for a total management of SHA256.

Please contact your server admin or hosting provider about this issue.

Problem with the SSL CA cert (path? access rights?)

This is a server related issue (not related to YouTube Channel or WordPress).

To resolve the issue, you’ll need to restart Apache (or nginx). If that doesn’t fix the problem, you’ll need to restart your entire server. Or simply contact server support.

So you does not have enabled option to display random videos from channel, but you getting only some of videos from your channel but not all (like 1st, 4th and the 6th).

We can help only if you can get missing videos from your channel in Google Developer Console, as that means that problem is with YouTube Channel plugin and not with YouTube feed.

Follow instructions provided as answer to question How to use Google APIs Explorer to verify YouTube feeds?.

You can try with shortcode combination:

Oops, something went wrong.
Visit my channel

and custom CSS code added to theme style.css or similar customization:

.youtube_channel.ytc_wall_1-6 .ytc_video_container {
    padding: 5px;
    box-sizing: border-box;
    max-width: 33.333%;
}
.youtube_channel.ytc_wall_1-6 .ytc_video_container.ytc_video_1 {
    max-width: 100%;
}
@media screen and (max-width: 768px) {
    .youtube_channel.ytc_wall_1-6 .ytc_video_container:not(.ytc_video_1) {
        max-width: 50%;
    }
}
@media screen and (max-width: 480px) {
    .youtube_channel.ytc_wall_1-6 .ytc_video_container:not(.ytc_video_1) {
        max-width: 100%;
    }
}

So, we display thumbnails for 7 random videos from default (global) playlist, and distribute small thumbnails to 3 columns on wide screens, 2 columns under 768px and single thumbnail per row under 480px.

Unfortunately, YouTube Channel does not support pagination, so you’ll get only defined number of YouTube items in block in single view, no matter did you choose thumbnail or HTML5 Embed as mode.

Since v3.0.8 we changed how thumnail Play button is embedded. If you wish to reduce button size, tune transform CSS property in theme’s style.css, like this:

.youtube_channel .ytc_thumb span:before {
    transform: scale(.65);
}

If you wish to remove (hide) play button from thumbnails, simply set display property to none, like this:

.youtube_channel .ytc_thumb span:before {
    display: none !important;
}

If you inserted videos by shortcode previous v3.0.8 then you probably have set parameter showtitle=1

Since v3.0.8 of plugin this parameter has been changed to accept values none, above and below, depending do you wish to hide video title, or to display them above/below video thumbnail.

So, you can:

1. Remove showtitle parameter from shortcode and set Show title global plugin option on Content tab, or
2. Change parameter showtitle to above or below.

Modest branding option does not work for all videos, so a lot of videos will still have YouTube logo in control bar. I recommend to enable option Hide player controlsinstead.

Also, even when hidding logo works for your video, on hover or when video is paused in upper right corner will be displayed YouTube link/logo. Read more here

Visit Google API Explorer and append to the end of URL one of resource ID’s based on your Channel ID:

• For videos from channel (User Uploads) replace UC with UU in Channel ID (so UCRPqmcpGcJ_gFtTmN_a4aVA becomes UURPqmcpGcJ_gFtTmN_a4aVA)
• For videos from Favourited videos replace UC with FL (so UCRPqmcpGcJ_gFtTmN_a4aVAbecomes FLRPqmcpGcJ_gFtTmN_a4aVA)
• For videos from Liked Videos replace UC with LL (so UCRPqmcpGcJ_gFtTmN_a4aVAbecomes LLRPqmcpGcJ_gFtTmN_a4aVA)
• For videos from Playlist simply use Playlist ID (like PLEC850BE962234400 or RDMMjUe8uoKdHao)

Note that all four resources are playlists (including uploads to channel), so append mentioned ID to field playlistId (not to id), and click Execute button at the bottom of that page.

1. If you receive some error in results, tune parameters in APIs Explorer.
2. If there is no error but you do not get any video in results, and you are sure that there is public videos in selected resource – contact Google Support.
3. If there are video results but not displayed with YouTube Channel plugin – check topic Read before you post support question or report bug and then start your own support topic.

YouTube provide 320p videos if height of embeded video is set to 320 or more. If you use small YTC video size, 240p will be loaded instead. So, you could not force 720p in tiny YTC.

Check out Channel custom URL article.

If you really need that missing feature ASAP, feel free to contact me. Select Subject option “Quote For New Feature in YouTube Channel”, provide detailed explanation of feature you need, also provide some example if there is such, and I’ll send you price for implementation.

If you don’t wish to pay for enhancements (then you don’t care would that be implemented in a week, month, year or so), then send new Support topic with Topic title in format [Feature Request] …