Jan Hoek

Vital Video is a WordPress block plugin designed to improve Core Web Vitals performance when displaying YouTube videos.
Instead of traditional embedding, it provides a lightweight, performance-optimized solution that first loads a clickable video thumbnail.
The Vital Video Block doesn’t play videos in the WordPress editor. It’s designed to prioritize performance and user experience on your frontend. To test video behavior, simply preview your post or page.
<h3>Features</h3>
<ul>
<li>Performance-first YouTube video display. </li>
<li>Automatic video thumbnail and title retrieval. </li>
<li>WebP image support for faster image loading. </li>
<li>Customizable aspect ratios (4:3 and 16:9). </li>
<li>Displays the video title in the image. </li>
<li>Multiple thumbnail quality options. </li>
<li>Minimal initial page load impact. </li>
<li>Option to disable WebP images if unavailable. </li>
<li>Advanced video playback controls. </li>
<li>Uses YouTube’s no-cookie thumbnail service. </li>
<li>Respects modern browser autoplay policies. </li>
<li>Alt text matches the video title.</li>
<li>Thumbnail dimensions set based on selected image size:
<ul>
<li>HQ (480×320): Default size </li>
<li>SD (640×480): Standard size </li>
<li>MAX (1280×720): Highest available resolution</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<h3>Vital Video Settings</h3>
<ul>
<li>Aspect Ratio: Choose between 16:9 and 4:3. </li>
<li>Mute Toggle: Control video playback behavior. </li>
<li>Thumbnail Quality: Select from High, Standard, or Maximum resolution. </li>
<li>Disable WebP: Turn off WebP usage if unavailable.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Mute Toggle</h3>
The Mute Toggle feature is designed primarily for mobile devices, adhering to browser autoplay policies.
Mute Toggle Off (Sound On):
Videos require two clicks to start playing:
<ol>
<li>The first click loads the video. </li>
<li>The second click begins playback. Ideal for maintaining user control and preventing unexpected audio.</li>
</ol>
Mute Toggle On (Sound Off):
<ul>
<li>Videos play with a single click. </li>
<li>Automatically starts muted. </li>
<li>Perfect for situations where immediate video playback is desired. </li>
<li>Complies with browser autoplay restrictions.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Disable WebP Images</h3>
<ul>
<li>WebP is enabled by default. Most thumbnails will use the WebP format. </li>
<li>However, if you encounter a dummy placeholder image, try selecting a different thumbnail size to see if another WebP version exists. </li>
<li>If no WebP images are available, you can enable the “Disable WebP Images” option as a last resort. This – will use fallback formats like JPG instead.</li>
</ul>
Only use “Disable WebP Images” when absolutely necessary!
<h3>External Services</h3>
This plugin connects to YouTube’s services to embed videos and retrieve video information:
YouTube Video Service:
<ul>
<li>The plugin connects to YouTube’s embed service (youtube-nocookie.com) to display videos</li>
<li>When a video is played, it loads the video player from YouTube’s servers</li>
<li>YouTube’s terms of service: https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms</li>
<li>YouTube’s privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy</li>
</ul>
YouTube oEmbed API:
<ul>
<li>Used to fetch video titles when adding videos to your content</li>
<li>Sends the YouTube video ID to retrieve the video title</li>
<li>API documentation: https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/videos</li>
</ul>
YouTube Thumbnail Service:
<ul>
<li>Retrieves video thumbnail images from i.ytimg.com</li>
<li>Only loads thumbnails for videos you’ve embedded</li>
<li>No personal data is sent to this service</li>
</ul>
Note: This plugin uses YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode by default, which helps protect your visitors’ privacy by not setting cookies until the video is played.
<h3>Contributing</h3>
Contributions are welcome! You can support Vital Video in various ways:
<ul>
<li>Write about the plugin on your blog or share it on social media. </li>
<li><a href="https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/vital-video-block/" rel="nofollow ugc">Translate the plugin into your language</a> using your WordPress.org account. </li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/vital-video-block/reviews/#new-post" rel="ugc">Review the plugin here on WordPress.org</a>.</li>
</ul>

Vital Video Block

A YouTube block optimized for performance, allowing you to embed YouTube videos without harming your Core Web Vitals.

Pierre Lannoy

Hosterra

Truthful user experience and browsing performances monitoring.
Vibes is a robust user experience and browsing performances monitoring solution that analyzes perceived performances from users’ viewpoint.
It is fully autonomous – does not rely on external services and does not require any API keys, works on any type of hosting and in any type of environment – including staging, intranets or password protected sites.
By continuously monitoring user experience, Vibes can report:
<ul>
<li>navigation performance KPIs per pages – like latency, redirections, browser caching hit rates, etc.;</li>
<li>network timelines as if you were in the dev tools of your users’ browsers;</li>
<li>resources details – like initiators, protocols, mime types, average sizes, etc.;</li>
<li>Web Vitals: LCP, FID, CLS, FCP and TTFB.</li>
</ul>
It can segment all this data per:
<ul>
<li>user type (anonymous vs. authenticated);</li>
<li>channel (frontend vs. backend);</li>
<li>country (requires the free <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/ip-locator/" rel="ugc">IP Locator</a> plugin);</li>
<li>device classes and types (requires the free <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/device-detector/" rel="ugc">Device Detector</a> plugin).</li>
</ul>
Vibes supports multisite report delegation (see FAQ).
Vibes supports WP-CLI commands to:
<ul>
<li>display (past or current) performances signals in console – see <code>wp help vibes tail</code> for details;</li>
<li>toggle on/off main settings – see <code>wp help vibes settings</code> for details.</li>
</ul>
For a full help on WP-CLI commands in Vibes, please <a href="https://perfops.one/vibes-wpcli" rel="nofollow ugc">read this guide</a>.
<blockquote>
Vibes is part of <a href="https://perfops.one/" rel="nofollow ugc">PerfOps One</a>, a suite of free and open source WordPress plugins dedicated to observability and operations performance.
</blockquote>
Vibes is a free and open source plugin for WordPress. It integrates many other free and open source works (as-is or modified). Please, see ‘about’ tab in the plugin settings to see the details.
<h4>Support</h4>
This plugin is free and provided without warranty of any kind. Use it at your own risk, I’m not responsible for any improper use of this plugin, nor for any damage it might cause to your site. Always backup all your data before installing a new plugin.
Anyway, I’ll be glad to help you if you encounter issues when using this plugin. Just use the support section of this plugin page.
<h4>Donation</h4>
If you like this plugin or find it useful and want to thank me for the work done, please consider making a donation to <a href="https://www.laquadrature.net/en" rel="nofollow ugc">La Quadrature Du Net</a> or the <a href="https://www.eff.org/" rel="nofollow ugc">Electronic Frontier Foundation</a> which are advocacy groups defending the rights and freedoms of citizens on the Internet. By supporting them, you help the daily actions they perform to defend our fundamental freedoms!

Vibes

Great plugin

Truthful user experience and browsing performances monitoring.

Vital Video Block vs Vibes