Two useful WordPress plugins for ds106 that I’ve come across so far are SoundCloud Shortcode and WP Youtube Player.

SoundCloud Shortcode allows you to quickly embed the SoundCloud player into your blog posts, like you see below.

Instead of needing to grab the longish, HTML embed code from the SoundCloud website, you just place the following “shortcode” into your blog post and the plugin takes care of the rest.

[soundcloud url = "http://soundcloud.com/thelivingtombstone/tombstonediscord"]

WP Youtube Player does pretty much the same thing, except for YouTube videos. Note that the shortcode has a slightly different format to it. Once you’ve installed and activate WP Youtube Player, you can enter in the following and the plugin will handle the embed code.

[tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aPvL-lty4Y[/tube]

This example results in the following video being embded.

Each of the above plugins come with options to customize the way the embed players display in your blog, so play around with them until they work like you want.

Sounds good. So how do I install a plugin?

To install a WordPress plugin:

1. Log into your WordPress admin (www.yoursite.com/wp-admin).
2. Navigate to Plugins -> Add New.
3. Search for the plugin you’d like to add. For example, you can type WP Youtube Player into the search box and press the Search Plugins button.
4. Once you’ve located the plugin you’d like to install, click the Install link.
5. WordPress will download and install the plugin.
6. You will then have the option to activate the plugin, do so by clicking the Activate link.
7. Depending on the plugin, their may be some customization you need to do before you can use it, but in many cases the plugin should now be ready to use.

Feel free to ask questions and I’ll do my best to help.