SimpleTube Feed (Lite)

The lightweight YouTube channel feed plugin for WordPress.

SimpleTube Feed Lite displays the latest videos from any YouTube channel on your WordPress site — fast, clean, and free from the bloat of larger social-feed plugins. It works over YouTube's official public RSS feed, so no API key is required and there are no recurring subscription costs.

This is the free, open-source (GPL-2.0) Lite version. The paid SimpleTube Feed Pro adds multiple feeds, playlists, Shorts, carousel and featured layouts, metadata controls, custom CSS, and import/export — see the product page.

Features

• Official YouTube channel RSS — no API key needed, no scraping.
• Responsive grid and list layouts.
• Shortcode — [simpletube_feed channel="CHANNEL_ID" limit="6"].
• Gutenberg block — insert and configure visually.
• Configurable number of videos, title/date display, new-tab behavior.
• Smart caching (WordPress transients) — fast, no hammering YouTube.
• Graceful fallback when a channel is unavailable or the feed is empty.
• Accessible, mobile-first markup.
• No advertising, no tracking, no external accounts, no license server.

Requirements

• WordPress 5.8+
• PHP 7.4+

Installation

1. Download the latest release ZIP or clone this repository.
2. In WordPress: Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, choose the ZIP, install, and activate. (Or drop the simpletube-feed folder into wp-content/plugins/.)
3. Go to Settings → SimpleTube Feed and enter your YouTube channel ID.
4. Add the block or the shortcode to any post, page, or widget:

[simpletube_feed channel="UCX_your_channel_ID" limit="6"]

Getting your channel ID

Open your channel on YouTube. The URL looks like youtube.com/channel/UCxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. The part after /channel/ is your channel ID.

Documentation

Full documentation for both Lite and Pro is on the product site.

Privacy

The plugin fetches the public RSS feed from YouTube directly from your server using WordPress's HTTP API. No analytics, no cookies, no external accounts, and no data sent to third parties or to any SimpleTube server.

Security

Built like a security product: escaped output, sanitized input, capability and nonce checks, XXE-hardened parsing, and namespaced classes. See the product page for details.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later. See LICENSE.