Sometimes the video should not be on anyone else’s platform — no branding, no suggestions, no third-party requests at all.
The Self Hosted source plays a file from your own Media Library in the browser’s own player.
For every Video setting in one place, see the Video block guide.
Before You Start
- Edition: Free — the Video block is in the free Nexter Blocks plugin.
- Block to enable: Video, switched on under Nexter > Blocks in your WordPress dashboard.
- An MP4 in your Media Library, compressed for the web.
Steps
- Add the Video block to your page and click Design from Scratch.
- Set Source to Self Hosted.
- Choose your MP4 from the Media Library.
- In Player Settings, decide on Controls, Autoplay, Mute and Loop.
- Publish and play it.
How It Behaves
- It is a real HTML5 player. Measured: the block rendered
<video controls><source src="…mp4">pointing at the uploaded file. - Nothing is requested from any third party — the file is served from your own site, so there are no external cookies and nothing to declare.
- Controls, Autoplay, Mute and Loop map onto the video element’s own attributes.
- A muted autoplaying loop with the controls hidden is how most background-style clips are set up.
Limitations
- Your server does the work. A large file means a slow page and real bandwidth every time somebody plays it — the main reason people use YouTube instead.
- There is no adaptive quality. Everyone gets the same file whatever their connection.
- Compress before uploading. A few megabytes is reasonable; tens are not.
- Browsers refuse autoplay with sound, so pair Autoplay with Mute.
- One video per block. For a row of videos, use several blocks or a carousel.
Troubleshooting
Nothing plays
Check the file is really an MP4 and that WordPress accepted the upload. Some hosts limit upload size.
It plays for me but not on a phone
The file is probably encoded in a way phones will not decode. Re-export as H.264 MP4.
The page is slow now
The video file is too large. Compress it, or use YouTube or Vimeo for anything long.
