How To Add YouTube Subscribe Button To WordPress Website

How did I add a YouTube Subscribe button from my YouTube channel to my WordPress website, that was a question from a YouTube friend many weeks ago. This inspire me to post 🙂

Basically, this will enable your site’s visitors to click your YouTube Subscribe link directly from your website, without being on their YouTube account. Handy huh.

I find embedding this button manually is a lot faster than using a plugin. You don’t have to look for your Channel ID or using API key, just look at your Channel Name, copy and pasting the code and you are done.

Video Tutorial

Google Developer Offers YouTube Subscribe Button Code

1. Visit Google Developer web page.

2. Type in your YouTube info for the “Channel Name or ID:” option.

How do you find your Channel ID? Log in to your YouTube account, and visit this URL: http://www.youtube.com/account_advanced

In the video above, I used my Channel Name, and it worked, fast, easy and works.

3. Layout. Choose “Full” or “Default”.
Full = It will display your Channel profile account picture, Channel Name, and “Subscribe” button. It can also show your YouTube Subscribe count you have if you enable it later in the step (5) below.

Default = It will only show the red subscribe button.

4. Theme. “Default” or “Dark”. Default will have a white background, but if you choose “Dark” your button will have dark background with color code #555555

5. Subscriber count. It is a subscriber counter, that will show how many people have subscribed to your YT channel. Default (shown) or Hidden.

6. My application listens for button events. I left it as is, unchecked.

Previewing The Button

Right below the configuration option, you will be able to preview your button appearance.

Also when you change the settings, the changes on the preview will be updated “live”.

Adding Social Media Links to WordPress Menu With CSS Classes

If you’re happy with the button’s look, then you can directly copy the code right below the preview section.

Adding YouTube Subscribe Button To WordPress Website

1. Log in to your dashboard. yoursite.com/wp-admin

2. Navigate to Appearance → Widgets. (Alternatively, you can use your Customizer).

Appearance and then widget in your dashboard — Appearance – Widget

Add Text Widget to your sidebar or any location

3. Find “Text” widget. Copy and paste the code in there, and click “Save”. Reposition the widget to any positions you prefer.

There you go, you have now a YouTube Subscribe button on your website.

YouTube Subscribe Button Plugins

The method above is to add the code manually. Of course, you can use plugins to do this. I have tested a few of them before writing this post.

There are:

1. YouTube Subscriber by Web4Pro

YouTube Subscriber plugin has many options — The option

It enables you to add some text on your widget. Also it has many options where you can enter your Channel Name, ID, or NickName.

2. YouTube Subscribe Button by Arun/Skipser.

YouTube Subscriber Button Plugin has simple interface — Simple interface

Note: The plugin has not been updated for 2 years or more.
The reason why I list it in here is because it is the easiest and it worked. I have tested with WordPress 4.7.

Beware with these two YouTube Subscribe button plugins, there are “SM” and “TM”.

1. SM YouTube Subscribe by Mahabubur Rahman.
It requires you your Channel ID. So it has no option where you can enter your Channel Name.

In BlueHost, my admin area shows this error, “Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.”

SM YouTube Subscriber is quite simple plugin to use — Simple to use if it works

I disabled other plugins, and re-tried again, but had no luck.

In HostGator it works.

2. TM YouTube Subscribe by TemplateMonster
Note: I have blogs in BlueHost and HostGator, but weirdly, they work differently after I tried to install it.

The Page isn't working message — If you get this, delete the plugin’s folder

In BlueHost, my admin area shows something this error message on my browser:
“The website.com isn’t working. Website.com is currently unable to handle this request. HTTP ERROR 500”

I disabled other plugins to try, but no luck.

In HostGator, it works, but it prompts you to get YouTube API key, which is not really necessary if you can add it manually or using the two plugins above.

If your website shows the error above, log in to your cPanel or use your FTP client, and delete the plugin folder inside wp-content folder, it is called, “tm-youtube-subscribe”. Just delete that, and refresh your error page.

We are done, and hopefully you have successfully added this to your website, and let me know which method you used.