Update: JW7 is now available. Check it out here.
With over 400,000 downloads and counting, the JW Player for WordPress Plugin is an extremely popular way that our publishers go live. We are now proud to announce the general availability of our WordPress plugin for JW Player 6, as part of the plugin’s 2.0 update. We are excited to have our WordPress users upgrade to our newest major JW Player version – JW Player 6.
Read about what’s new in our WordPress plugin for JW6 and then visit our Getting Started Guide to get JW Player 6 up and running on your WordPress blog.
What’s New
There’s quite a bit of new functionality in our WordPress Plugin 2.0 update, mostly centered around JW Player 6:
- First and foremost – there is JW6 itself, with its slick new skin and mobile-optimized interface. JW6 also supports many of the newer HTML5 capabilities, like subtle CSS3 animations and HTML5 Fullscreen support.
- Second, we changed the way you install JW Player. Instead of requiring you to download/upload it, you simply load JW Player from our CDN. Player updates are included with updates of the WordPress plugin itself, and the player is now cloud-hosted.
- Last, we added full support for all features in the commercial Pro, Premium and Ads editions of JW Player 6. This includes setting your own player logo (Pro), loading skins or playing HLS streams (Premium) and playing VAST or IMA pre-roll ads (Ads).
Please note that certain functionality is no longer supported in JW Player 6 when compared with JW5. Some of those key items are ZIP skins, SWF plugins and the playback of JPG/PNG images. Existing WordPress users should read Upgrading Your WordPress Plugin from JW5 to JW6 for more info.
Deep Integration
Our deep integration with WordPress has long separated us from other video plugins. In the plugin upgrade for JW6, we have enhanced the player’s integration so you can:
- Embed videos with JW Player directly from the Media Library.
- Add external URLs, like YouTube and RTMP streams, to the Media Library.
- Create and manage multiple JW Player templates in the WordPress Admin.
- Create and publish playlists of multiple videos in the Media Library.
- Add last-minute configuration options to the [ jwplayer ] shortcodes.
See our WordPress Plugin Reference if you’re interested in a full overview of functionality. And note we have made sure that all of this works with the new Media Manager that was introduced in WordPress 3.5.
Get Started
We very much encourage you to install or upgrade your WordPress plugin
and let us know what you think. We are always interested in feedback on items we can improve upon or extend!
One option that is definitely coming soon is an option to have JW Player scale automatically according to the width of the page. This feature will make including JW Player in a Responsive Design setup a breeze.