Posted by This past week, we’ve had the opportunity to test a ton of different plugins that allowed one to put an Instagram Widget onto a website. So, basically this: 
Those pictures on the right side of the screen are from the @imascottie instagram account. Lets say you want to display your instagram photos, your friend’s photos, or a hashtag. Well, if you’ve been running into problems trying to do the same thing, or don’t know where to begin, you’ve come to the right place.
First, we should discuss what we are doing. For those who don’t know what plugins are, they are just like apps on your phone. you download them from WordPress, and they do some sort of function for your website. Anything from being able to display images as ‘circle’ frames to being able to change the template of specific pages. So, what we are looking for that adds an instagram feed as a widget to your website. A widget is any of the dodads and whatsits you see on the sidebar and footer of your website. Some example widgets that WordPress automatically gives you are a search bar, Category list, Tag Cloud, Pages, ect. You can customize widgets and where they go by clicking the ‘Customize’ button on your website when logged in. You can’t download widgets, but you can download plugins that come with widgets, or that their sole purpose is to be a widget. This instagram feed is a widget that acts like a plugin.
Now, we should talk about ‘Access token’ and ‘User ID’. Now, because nothing can be easy, a lot of Instagram plugins will ask you to 1.sign into your instagram and 2.ask you to input the access token and User ID. These are just so they can confirm you are who you say you are and you have authorization to see this account. Now, the problem with this is that these plugins assume you want to only display your own Instagram account. What if you’re a Art History Major and want to display an account on your website that does a lot of archeological digs and display it on the instagram account. Or what if you are an engineer and want to display on your website a hashtag from Instagram?
We wanted something more simple. And we found it.
Introducing Instagram Slider Widget. Its simple, efficient, and you don’t have to worry about an Access Token or User ID. As long as the account you are trying to display is not private, (same with pictures form the hashtag), it should easily be placed in the sidebar of your website. For help on installation and screenshots of the plugin/widget at work, go to the plugin’s webpage.
Happy Instagramming!
