YouTube Video Import Automation
Automated daily publishing workflow
Challenge
The client published to YouTube frequently and wanted their full video library, plus every new upload, mirrored on their website. Doing this by hand meant copying titles, descriptions and embeds for every video, and remembering to remove videos that were deleted or made private. At their posting frequency, keeping up manually had stopped being realistic.
Solution
I built a custom plugin that imports videos from a chosen YouTube playlist on a schedule. It filters out deleted and private videos, and removes a video from the site as soon as it leaves the source playlist.
How it works
- A scheduled job calls the YouTube Data API and fetches the playlist.
- It diffs the playlist against what is published on the site.
- New videos are published automatically with title, description, thumbnail and embed.
- Removed, deleted or private videos are unpublished in the same pass.
- API quota is respected, and results are logged.
What I built
- ✓Scheduled automatic import from a specified YouTube playlist
- ✓Filters out deleted or private videos before they ever reach the site
- ✓Two-way sync — a video removed from the YouTube playlist is automatically removed from the site
- ✓No manual publishing step — new uploads appear on schedule with no client or developer involvement
Results
- ✓The site's video library now stays continuously in sync with YouTube
- ✓Zero manual publishing. The client doesn't touch WordPress to manage videos.
- ✓No more broken embeds from deleted or private videos
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