[Resolved] Youtube “Playlists” have gone blank on all my websites

[Bob]

Hello,

Out of the blue, without changing anything, all of my YouTube “Playlists” went blank on all my websites. I am using Generate Press Premium for every site. I am using the basic “YouTube” embed player for the playlists. Two sites in particular I heavily rely on embedding “lists of short videos” that are critical to the functionality of the sites.

(1) http://www.bobbyangel.org (see homepage and albums, also the studio page is affected). Note: Where I list the YouTube videos individually using YourChannel the videos still show, it’s only playlists that are affected, and which I was previously using WordPress “Youtube Embed” which was useful because it played the videos in consecutive order automatically.

(2) http://www.campfirepark.org (see homepage and https://campfirepark.org/campfire-talks). Again, the playlist is blank (but where I use YourChannel to list the videos individually they show up).

(3) To a lesser extent, the same problem occurred on http://www.naturefolk.net but it isn’t as big a deal there because I don’t rely on playlists as extensively.

Can you think of any reason why this happened? And also what I can do to correct it? It seemed to happen just this morning. All the playlists are still present on YouTube and play fine. They are just not appearing on my websites.

Thank you for any insight or help you can provide,

Bob

[David]

Hi there,

i checked a couple of the broken YT videos and i see this type of URL:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PLEPunqTE8LxZV87yGzyxMNgNShygHPDiy

all of which are a video series embed and none of those links work directly or if i convert them manually to an embed. So the URLs themselves are broken … can’t explain what would have caussed that. Do the videos display in the post editor ?

[Bob]

Thank you David for your insight. To answer your question: No, they do not display in the post editor. They are blank there too, and to my recollection I couldn’t even edit the url. I had to delete and make a new YouTube embed. That worked for one playlist but not for the next two or three so I gave up and headed to the forum for advice. I’m away from my computer so I haven’t been able to look at since. What’s weird to me is how systematically all the playlists went dead in all three websites. All the playlists are still on YT and work fine there, nor did I alter anything with the websites.

[Leo]

Hmm the theme itself is unlikely the cause here.

Are you able to start a staging site to go through some debugging tests like disable all plugins and switching to a Twenty series default theme?

[Bob]

Hi Leo, I’ve never set up a staging site. Not sure. I’m using bluehost.

I just went back into Campfire Park. When I open a post with a playlist, it doesn’t allow me to edit the URL. When I add new embed (https://wordpress.org/support/article/embeds/) using the YT playlist, it similarly shows up blank. Again, it is happening across 3 separate websites and has occurred systematically for all playlists (without me changing any of the playlists in YouTube or my websites). Going through my updates, the one common thing that changed across all three websites was Jetpack by WordPresss.com (version 9.5 to 9.6).

I downgraded Jetpack for http://www.CampfirePark.or back down to 9.5 but that didn’t seem to change anything.

Leo, I also opened up an draft website I’d started with called http://www.gonaturefolk.org that I haven’t changed for many months (probably a half year). It similarly uses a Generate Press Premium Theme and similarly has the same problem: An individual YT video works but a YT playlist comes up as blank.

Final note: I was notified today by email that my entire Bluehost portal of webpages (again, all with Bluehost using GP as my theme) was updated to WordPress 5.7.1 at 12:51 pm on 4/15/21, however that update seemed to come after, not before I noticed the issue with the playlists. Or could something in that update have tripped it up.

Leo, if you have any more ideas or recommended next steps, I would greatly appreciate it. I’m really at a loss.

Thank you,

Bob

[Leo]

Unfortunately I don’t have other ideas other than the debugging steps recommended in the last reply.

I’d assume Bluehost has staging site service but you will have check with their support team.

[Bob]

Thank Leo,

Just an update: I contacted Bluehost. I also tried using the Twenty Twenty theme and the same problem occurred: I could post YT videos, but YT playlists appear blank. Thus I’ve ruled out the theme. What bothers me is that both http://www.campfirepark.org and http://www.bobbyangel.org were structured and worked wonderfully using those playlists, and now for no apparent (or obvious) reason they no longer work, and just appear blank). It’s just a bit heartbreaking.

If you can think of any suggestions or idea, I would greatly appreciate it.

I just can’t figure out where the problem lies, or what caused it.

Thank you again for all your help,

Bob

[Bob]

Update:

The problems sees to be slowly autocorrecting.

What were blank playlists are repopulating to playlists.

It’s not 100 percent corrected (some are still blank) but it appears to be moving in that direction.

This leads me to believe the problem had something to do with the recent WordPress Update, or possibly something with YouTube or Bluehost. The WordPress update seems to be the likely culprit.

Any ideas would be great if you have any?

The more I learn about this the better.

Thanks again for all your help.

Bob

[Leo]

Sorry Bob but I really don’t have any other ideas.

You could try reporting to the WordPress support team and see if they’ve seen similar issues before.

[Bob]

Good news: It resolved itself. I didn’t have to do anything. Of course I spent a few hours futilely trying to figure out a fix. Thank you for all your help. I was able to learn a few trouble shooting tricks and ideas with the feedback you provided, and again – the issue is resolved – it fixed itself.

[Leo]

Glad to hear 🙂

[Author]

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