Joomla YouTube Importer Extension

This plugin periodically checks for the availability of new videos in the YouTube channel(s) and playlist(s) configured, and imports them as new content items in the associated category(es), adds the title and description, and publishes it according to your settings. The plugin action is triggered by front-end user activity. More visitors you have, more precise the timing is.

You can add up to 5 YouTube channels by adding the YouTube Channel id to the settings. For example for the official Joomla YouTube channel located at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ5e4pbTFTF_Rtin9fh3_Zw you should add the string UCZ5e4pbTFTF_Rtin9fh3_Zw. You can also associate a category to each channel. If you don't select a category, the videos will be imported to the category with ID=2 - the default Uncategorized category in a clean Joomla setup.

Similarly you can add 5 YouTube playlists too, by adding the playlist ID to the corresponding settings, like 'PLY0mYDUB1bpoWFkYwEy-M6A_W1X_2cus_' for 'https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLY0mYDUB1bpoWFkYwEy-M6A_W1X_2cus_' playlist.

You can set up how often the plugin will attempt the import of the new videos, and how many videos to import (maximum) in a batch. The plugin checks, if the videos found are already imported or not, and will skip the ones found in the database.

You can set, if the imported videos to be automatically imported or not, and also when they will be unpublished (not working yet)

The advanced settings will give you couple of extra options, like if the videos will be imported using a responsive embedding code or just as a link. In the second case you can use another plugin (like OSE YouTube for example) to render the embed code.

You can opt for importing the description or not in the newly created article, to insert or not an extra link to the video at the article end.

The plugin creates the new article having the following structure:

Title of article = title of video in YouTube

Alias is generated from the title, using the Joomla core engine.

The Intro Image is set from the YouTube default thumbnail

The Introtext is generated from the video embed code or the link to the video, based in above settings.

Planned feature: to generate an introtext from the description and to add it optionally after the video.

The main text of article is composed by the description in the YouTube and the link to the video - according to the above described selections.

The plugin has it's own Debug mode - when the debug mode is on, the plugin will record couple of key infos in the plg_system_youtubeimporter.php file located in Joomla's default log folder.

When new articles are generated during the import a notification email is sent to the site's Super Administrators - or the Super Administrator of your choice.

Changelog:

V 1.0.4 - added parameters for including videos from playlists too.

V 1.0.3 - added parameter for including or not the placeholder image as intro image in the generated article.