Description
AI assistants and search engines cannot watch your videos. They read text. A video embedded on your site is a black box to them, so what you say in it never becomes something they can quote, summarise or recommend.
Share of Answer Video Pages gives every YouTube video its own page on your domain, with the transcript as readable text and VideoObject schema. YouTube is the player, your site is the source.
What it does
- A page per video at an address like /videos/your-video/, with the date, the player, your description and the transcript.
- The transcript is what you actually said. Upload the subtitle file (srt, vtt or txt) and it becomes running text with paragraphs. No AI rewriting, no generated article, just your words.
- VideoObject schema with name, description, upload date, duration, thumbnail, embed address and the full transcript.
- Series with a chosen order, an archive page, series pages with pagination and “More in the series” on each video page.
- Shortcodes and blocks to show the latest videos or a single video anywhere.
- Import many videos at once from a zip with a CSV file, subtitle files and cover images, with a preview before anything is saved. Also available in WP-CLI.
Privacy
- The player is a cover image with a play button. Nothing is loaded from YouTube until the visitor clicks play.
- The video is then loaded from youtube-nocookie.com.
- Cover images are served from your own media library, never from YouTube.
- A short text under the player tells visitors that the video plays via YouTube, with a link to your privacy policy. You can change the text.
Works with your SEO plugin, or without one
- Rank Math: the VideoObject is added to the Rank Math schema graph and linked to your organisation and web page. The videos are included in the Rank Math sitemap.
- Yoast SEO: the VideoObject is added to the Yoast schema graph in the same way.
- No SEO plugin: Share of Answer Video Pages prints its own VideoObject, and the videos are included in the WordPress sitemap.
Works with your theme
Video pages use your theme’s own single template, so classic themes and block themes both work. The archive wraps your theme’s header and footer. Every template can be overridden from your theme, and the colours, aspect ratio and widths are settings.
Made by Share of Answer, which measures how often AI chooses your brand.
External services
This plugin connects to YouTube, a service provided by Google, in the following situations. No other external services are used.
- The video player, after the visitor clicks play. The facade player loads an embedded player from https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/ only when the visitor clicks the play button. YouTube then receives the visitor’s IP address, browser information and the address of the page, and may store data in the visitor’s browser. Nothing is loaded from YouTube before the click.
- The thumbnail, when a video is saved without a cover. If you save a video without choosing a cover image, your server downloads the thumbnail from https://i.ytimg.com/ and adds it to your media library. Only the YouTube video id is sent, from your server. Visitors never load images from YouTube.
- The title, when a video is saved without a title. If you leave the title empty, your server asks YouTube’s oEmbed endpoint at https://www.youtube.com/oembed for the title of the video. Only the address of the YouTube video is sent, from your server.
YouTube Terms of Service: https://www.youtube.com/t/terms
Google Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy
Screenshots
Blocks
This plugin provides 2 blocks.
- Latest videos
- Video
Installation
- Install the plugin from Plugins > Add New, or upload the zip file, and activate it.
- Go to Videos > Settings. Choose the archive address, the aspect ratio of your videos (16:9, 4:5, 1:1 or 9:16) and, if you want, an accent colour.
- Add a video under Videos > Add new: paste the YouTube link, upload the subtitle file and a cover image. The title is fetched from YouTube if you leave it empty.
- Create series under Videos > Series and set their order with the Order field.
- Add the archive to your menu: Appearance > Menus, Screen Options, tick Videos, then the archive link under View all.
To add many videos at once, use Videos > Import.
FAQ
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Which subtitle formats are supported?
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srt and vtt subtitle files, and plain text. Time codes and cue numbers are removed and the cues are joined into running text. A new paragraph starts after a pause after a finished sentence. In plain text, each empty line starts a new paragraph. The length of the video is calculated from the last time code if you do not enter it.
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My videos are vertical. Does that work?
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Yes. Choose 4:5, 1:1 or 9:16 under Videos > Settings. The player, the cover images and the video cards use the chosen aspect ratio, and portrait players get a sensible maximum width.
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Why does the video start without sound in Safari?
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Safari and every browser on iPhone and iPad use WebKit, which blocks autoplay with sound in an embedded player unless the click lands inside the player itself. Without help the visitor would need to click twice. So in WebKit the video starts muted on the first click, and the visitor turns the sound on in the player. Other browsers start with sound. You can turn this off under Videos > Settings.
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Nothing is loaded from YouTube before the visitor clicks play, and cover images come from your own media library. When the visitor clicks, the player is loaded from youtube-nocookie.com, YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode. YouTube still receives the visitor’s IP address and may store data in the browser when the video plays, so mention YouTube in your privacy policy. The text under the player says this and links to your privacy policy page. Whether you need consent depends on your situation, so check with your own legal advice.
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Can I change how the pages look?
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Yes. Copy any file from the plugin’s templates folder to a folder named share-of-answer-video-pages in your theme and edit it there: single-content.php (the video page), archive.php (the archive and series pages), player.php and card.php. The templates receive their data in $args. You can also add body classes to the archive and the video pages under Videos > Settings, for example your theme’s class for wide content.
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Which shortcodes are there?
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[vpfais_videos count=”3″] shows the latest videos as cards, optionally from one series with series=”slug”. [vpfais_video id=”123″] shows one video with the player and a link to its page. The blocks Latest videos and Video do the same in the block editor.
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What happens to my videos if I uninstall the plugin?
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Uninstalling removes the plugin’s settings. Your videos, series and images stay in the database and the media library.
Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
Contributors & Developers
“Share of Answer Video Pages” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
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Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
1.0.1
- The Share of Answer box on the settings page can be closed, and stays closed for that user.
- Code cleanup.
1.0.0
- First version.