YouTube Link Card

A WordPress plugin that renders styled YouTube link cards — single videos, playlist grids, and channel banners — without loading the heavy YouTube iframe player. Cards link out to YouTube on click.

Version 2.0 adds per-card before/after title text, call-to-action buttons, three layout presets, Gutenberg blocks, a Classic editor toolbar button, an Elementor widget, full caching of titles and thumbnails, Schema.org video markup, and WP-CLI cache commands.

Features

• Single video cards via [youtube_link_card] shortcode
• Playlist grids via [youtube_playlist] shortcode (requires YouTube Data API key)
• Channel subscribe banner via [youtube_channel_banner] shortcode
• Embed hijack — automatically replaces existing YouTube embeds sitewide with link cards
• Gutenberg blocks — three dynamic blocks with live preview in the editor
• Classic editor toolbar button — opens a modal to build any of the three shortcodes
• Elementor widgets — three native Elementor widgets with full control panels
• Cached data — video titles, resolved thumbnails, playlists, and channel data all cached as transients
• Schema.org VideoObject markup for SEO rich results
• Layouts — default, compact, and minimal presets
• Before/after title text and CTA button with customizable colors

Installation

1. Upload the youtube-link-card folder to /wp-content/plugins/
2. Activate through the Plugins menu
3. Go to Settings → YouTube Link Card
4. For playlist and channel features, paste a YouTube Data API v3 key

Shortcodes

Single video

[youtube_link_card url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"]
[youtube_link_card url="..." before_title="Featured Film" after_title="A documentary by AAF" button_text="Watch Now" layout="compact"]

Attributes: url, title, before_title, after_title, button_text, layout (default|compact|minimal), max_width

Playlist grid

[youtube_playlist id="PLAYLIST_ID"]
[youtube_playlist id="PLAYLIST_ID" per_row="3" max="12" layout="compact" button_text="Watch"]

Attributes: id, per_row (1-6), max (1-200), layout, before_title, after_title, button_text

Channel banner

[youtube_channel_banner id="UC..." style="dark"]

Attributes: id, style (dark|light|red)

WP-CLI

wp ylc cache clear              # wipe all cached data
wp ylc cache stats              # show how many items are currently cached
wp ylc cache warm <post_id>     # pre-fetch and cache every YouTube URL in a post

Changelog

2.0.0

• New: Unified renderer - single source of truth for all card HTML
• New: Before/after title text (global + per-shortcode)
• New: Call-to-action button with customizable text and colors
• New: Three layout presets: default, compact, minimal
• New: Gutenberg blocks for single card, playlist, and channel banner
• New: Classic editor TinyMCE toolbar button with modal
• New: Elementor widgets (three) with full control panels
• New: Video thumbnail URLs now cached alongside titles (eliminates per-render HEAD request)
• New: "Clear All Cached Data" AJAX button on settings page
• New: Schema.org VideoObject JSON-LD markup (toggleable)
• New: Graceful error cards for unavailable/deleted videos
• New: WP-CLI commands (wp ylc cache clear|stats|warm)
• Changed: Playlist shortcode now supports layout, before_title, after_title, button_text
• Changed: Error results are cached briefly (10 min) so we retry soon without hammering the API
• Removed: Hardcoded YouTube API key in defaults (security)

1.0.0

• Initial release