April 8, 2023

Free Instagram widget

So you want a clean, good looking, free Instagram widget on your website? I used to have the perfect solution for it. It was called Profile Page Images (PPI) and loaded your latest Instagram posts.

It was quite a success with LOTS of traffic and 200+ users. However, Facebook kept removing the app permissions. So I decided to look at the ‘competition’. They offered similar stuff, and also for free. I used the free Instagram widget from SnapWidget to create a good looking and very clean widget. The solution can be found on CodePen:

https://codepen.io/joosts/pen/VwEYKxv?editors=1100

A downside might be that the images still come from Instagram and have additional tracking from SnapWidget in them, which mean that they will be blocked by modern/privacy aware browsers and are not allowed without explicit approval (according to GDPR guidelines). The upside is: this is really easy to implement and free (for now).

If you have to obide to EU regulation, I suggest the following alternative: Simply host 5 well chosen images/Instagram posts on your own webserver (instead of on Instagram). That way you do not risk any fines, it always looks good and you do not get blocked, thus you get maximum exposure for your Instagram account. Make sure these images are a good representation of your business and optionally change them every few months (instead of automatically).

I hope these two solutions (or at least one of them) help you to publish Instagram pictures on your website.

Happy hacking!

()  Joost van der Schee