Our old plugin was based on the oEmbed support already built in to WordPress. It only extended the number of content providers supported to include the 218 providers Embedly supports. All of that is still there. Users can still type a URL into a single line of a blog post (with at least 1 empty line above and below) and WordPress will convert it into an embed (if it's one of the 218).

We have created a screencast to demo all of the new features of the Embedly WordPress Plugin. You can listen to Arthur's dulcet tones as he walks through how to embed any URL into a post.

Having 218 providers is great and all, but we needed a way to embed any URL into WordPress posts.

Keys

We have been encouraging everyone to sign up for an Embedly Key. A key is required to activate the new and advanced features we are introducing in this update. If you don't yet have one, you can sign up here. If you do have a key, we've added an area to the Embedly Plugin settings tab for you to enter your key.

TinyMCE

We wanted to give users more control over the URLs they are embedding in their posts. We decided to write a plugin for TinyMCE, the rich-text editor bundled with WordPress. It's surprisingly robust and easy to extend. When you go to write a blog post, you should see an Embedly button in the text editor. Clicking on that button will bring up a modal window for you to enter a URL. If space is a concern you can set a maximum width and height.

Based on that information you will get a preview of your embed. For those users who have a paid Embedly account (Starter plan or higher), you have the ability to select a thumbnail to display. Users with the free plan will get whatever image Embedly finds first.

This process creates a blue Embedly object in your WordPress post that users can move around and resize. When the post is published or previewed, that blue object is converted to the represented embed.

Support

The new advanced features have been tested in WordPress 3.2 and 3.1. They work marvelously in 3.2, and are slightly buggy in 3.1. This is because of the severely stripped down version of TinyMCE that comes bundled with WordPress 3.1. We have tested it in Safari, Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer 8 and 9.

We are really excited about this new plugin. Please send any questions or bug reports to support@embed.ly.