Let’s be honest: sometimes WordPress tries to be a little too helpful.
One of those features is oEmbed, which automatically converts plain URLs (like YouTube links, tweets, or even other WordPress posts) into rich previews or media blocks. While this can be handy at times, it often disrupts your writing flow or forces you to adjust your content just because WordPress decided that a link needs to become a visual block.
So what exactly is oEmbed?
What Are oEmbeds in WordPress?
oEmbed is a protocol that allows a website to display content from another URL simply by pasting the link. WordPress added native oEmbed support all the way back in version 2.9 (released in 2009), and expanded it further in version 4.4 by allowing any WordPress site to embed content from any other WordPress site, not just from platforms like YouTube, Twitter, and Vimeo.
While this sounds convenient on paper, it often causes frustration:
- You paste a link expecting a simple inline reference.
- WordPress replaces it with a giant block.
- You now have to rephrase your sentence to accommodate the preview.
- Or worse: the embed comes with an unwanted “preview” prompt that disrupts the content experience.
For a platform that encourages flexibility, this can feel like unnecessary hand-holding.
Why We Created a Plugin to Disable oEmbeds
We believe software should be lean, simple, and efficient.
WordPress is a fantastic platform — but it keeps growing and accumulating features. Not all of them are useful to everyone. In fact, most users only use a small fraction of WordPress’s built-in functionality. This results in a bloated interface and behavior that’s not always predictable or efficient.
That’s where plugins should step in: to let users tailor the experience to their needs, rather than forcing one-size-fits-all features on everyone.
So we created a plugin called Orbisius Disable Embeds.
Its purpose is simple: block WordPress from auto-expanding links into oEmbed blocks. You paste a link, and it stays a link — just like you intended. No block. No preview. No distractions. No prompt asking you to approve or reject the conversion.
YouTube Gets a Pass
Now, we’re not against all embeds. In fact, we’ve made a thoughtful exception: YouTube links still get expanded, because that’s the one place where the embed is usually intentional and helpful.
Whether you paste the YouTube URL as plain text or as a traditional <a href="..."> link, the plugin will detect it and gracefully expand it into a responsive video embed.
Everything else — Twitter, Facebook, WordPress posts, etc. — stays as a normal link.
Other Ways to Disable Embeds
We’re not the only ones thinking about this. There are several tutorials and plugins that help you disable oEmbeds in different ways. For example, this guide by Kinsta walks through using code snippets to disable oEmbed functionality without a plugin.
Still, we wanted something clean, minimal, and user-friendly — with just the right exception baked in (YouTube).
Djebel: A Leaner, Faster Open Source Platform
This plugin idea is part of a broader philosophy we’re embracing: software should stay minimal and efficient. You shouldn’t need to fight your tools just to keep things simple.
That’s why we’re also building an open-source project called Djebel.
Djebel is inspired by the good parts of WordPress — but it’s being built from scratch to be extremely fast, plugin-based, and lean by default. Everything is optional. Everything is modular. No unnecessary extras. Just the core and what you choose to install. Even the Djebel admin area is planned to be shipped as a plugin.
If you believe software should get out of your way and let you create, Djebel might be something worth watching.
