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The YouTube integration automatically publishes videos from your YouTube channel as Ghost posts. You can import your 100 most recent videos and have new uploads automatically create posts, each with an embedded player. You control how metadata, descriptions, tags, and templates are applied.

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How it works

  1. You enter your YouTube Channel ID and configure import settings
  2. Outpost checks your channel for new videos about every 15 minutes
  3. Each video is created as a Ghost post with an embedded YouTube player
  4. Tags, author, description, and template are applied based on your settings
  5. Posts are created as drafts or published automatically, depending on your publish mode

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Settings

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Checking on the import

Below the settings are three controls:
  • Check for New Videos: click Check for New to run the regular check right away instead of waiting for the next one.
  • Full Refresh: click Full Refresh, then Refresh All Episodes to confirm. Outpost goes through your 100 most recent videos on YouTube, imports any it hasn’t imported yet, recreates posts that were deleted in Ghost, and rewrites the posts it already imported using your current settings (see the warning below). If a regular check finds an unusually large number of videos to import at once, Outpost pauses the automatic checks and alerts the Outpost team to look into it. Full Refresh isn’t stopped by that limit, so use it when you mean to import a large batch. While Mode is Add Only New Videos, older videos are skipped, even by Full Refresh.
  • Sync Status: Last checked shows how long ago Outpost last checked YouTube, and Last successful how long ago a check last finished without an error. After three or more failed checks in a row, it also shows how many have failed. A check fails when Outpost can’t connect to YouTube, or when your Channel ID no longer belongs to a channel.
Saving the YouTube settings, Check for New, and the automatic check only create posts for videos that don’t have one yet. They never change a post Outpost has already imported, so edits you make in Ghost, such as tags, the excerpt, the feature image, a transcript you added, or the post’s status, are kept. They also don’t bring back a post you deleted in Ghost. Only Full Refresh does that.
Full Refresh is the only action that changes posts Outpost has already imported. It rebuilds each post from YouTube using your current settings and replaces:
  • The status. Each post is set to your Publish Mode, so a published video post goes back to draft when Publish Mode is Draft, and a post you moved back to draft is published again when it’s Published.
  • The tags. Tags you added by hand in Ghost are removed.
  • The post body, including a transcript or notes you added by hand.
  • The title, publish date, author, and feature image.
  • The meta description, when Add YouTube Description to the Metadata field is Yes.
  • The post’s code injection footer, and its template when Post Template is set.
Full Refresh never changes the excerpt, and each post keeps its URL. A change you make to a video on YouTube after it’s imported only shows up on its post after a Full Refresh.

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Unlisted videos and account access

If you select Public and Unlisted or Unlisted visibility, Outpost needs access to your YouTube account to read unlisted videos:
  1. Click Connect API in the visibility section
  2. Sign in with Google to authorize Outpost to access your YouTube account
  3. Outpost can now import unlisted videos alongside public ones
Outpost then reads your 100 most recent uploads. Public and Unlisted imports the public and unlisted videos among them, and Unlisted imports only the unlisted ones. Older videos aren’t imported.
Public videos do not require API authorization. Only connect the API if you need to import unlisted videos.
To disconnect, click Disconnect API. This revokes Outpost’s access to your YouTube account.

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Post creation

When a video is imported, Outpost creates a Ghost post with:
  • Title: The video’s YouTube title
  • Content: An embedded YouTube player (based on your embed options), plus the video description if configured
  • Featured image: The video’s thumbnail. Hide the Featured Image on the Post hides it on the post page but leaves it set as the feature image.
  • Meta description: The start of the video description, if configured
  • Tags: Your configured default tags
  • Author: Your configured default author
  • Template: Your configured theme template
  • Status: Draft or published per your publish mode setting

Contextly

Drive content recommendations that include imported video posts.

Trending Posts

Track which imported videos are trending on your site.

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FAQ

Outpost checks your YouTube channel for new uploads about every 15 minutes and imports them automatically based on your configured settings.
Each YouTube integration connects to one channel. If you need to import from multiple channels, contact support.
New settings apply to videos imported from then on. Posts that are already imported keep their content, so edits you made in Ghost are kept. To apply new settings to those posts, click Full Refresh. It rewrites the posts for your 100 most recent videos with your current settings and replaces edits made in Ghost, so read the warning under Checking on the import first. Disconnecting and reconnecting doesn’t do this, because videos that already have a post are skipped.
Deferred loading uses a theme-side script to inject the embed at view time, which can improve page speed scores. Confirm with your theme developer that the deferred-loading helper is wired up; otherwise the player may not appear.