Instagram Feed Gallery

What a connected Instagram account gives you

Posts are copied into WordPress here, not embedded from Instagram. Once an account is connected, the plugin asks for the newest posts, creates one Social Item for each and downloads the photo or video into your Media Library. The gallery above then queries your own site. That is why it pages with a Load More button, and why a visitor sees the images even when Instagram is having a bad day.

The alternative inside the same block is a media gallery you fill by hand. That one is free, and it leaves the order and the captions under your control. Pick the Social source instead when the page has to keep up with what you post. Reels come across with everything else, and their video files are copied locally, so playback outlives the expiry of Instagram’s own links. The same import runs for the other networks the plugin connects to.

What Instagram sends, and what you set

Two panels are involved. The account is connected once on the Instagram settings tab, and the gallery block holds the rest.

• An Instagram Business or Creator account. Personal accounts cannot be connected, because Meta retired the Basic Display API on December 4, 2024.
• Max Medias on the settings tab, 1 to 200 of the newest posts, 30 by default.
• Photos, videos and Reels, with the caption imported as the description, plus the date and a link back to the post. A carousel arrives as its first image.
• Hashtags do not become categories, and neither likes nor comments are imported.
• Display Profile, Display Profile Photo and Display Profile Name in the block, all on by default, which is the profile header sitting above the gallery and linking to the account.
• Order by, also in the block, set to Date or Title, with Order Direction on DESC until you change it.
• An access token good for 60 days, renewed daily once fewer than 10 days are left on it.

Three steps from account to grid

1. Open Settings, Social Feeds, Instagram and click + Connect, then Get Access Token. A popup asks you to log in and allow the Visual Portfolio app, then comes back with the token filled in and saves the tab. The first import starts there.
2. Add the Gallery block to a page and set Content Source to Social. Pick Instagram as the Network, then your account in the field under it. Items Per Page defaults to 6, which is thin for a feed.
3. Under Layout choose Grid. Columns accepts 1 to 5 and sits at 3, the count the demo above uses. Put the Pagination element in the bottom row and set its Type to Load More.

Why the import needs a license

Everything the gallery does with these posts once they sit in WordPress comes from the free plugin. Reaching Instagram in the first place does not. Free vs Pro carries the full table, and pricing what a license costs.

• The Social Feeds settings tab, the connection itself, the Social Items and Social Profiles screens and the Social content source all need Pro.
• The grid layout, Load More and paged pagination, lazy loading and the popup lightbox are in the free plugin and work on any content source.
• Pro already contains the free plugin. There is nothing to install beside it and no second license to buy.

What people ask after the first sync

Can I show a hashtag feed?

No. An Instagram feed here means the posts of one connected Business or Creator account, and nothing beyond them. Facebook and Google Photos are not supported either. The docs answer it in one line under hashtag feeds.

How soon does a new post show up?

WP-Cron runs a full sync every two hours. A second job fires every five minutes and refreshes one account whose data has gone older than three hours. Saving the Social Feeds settings imports a new account straight away, and Sync All Accounts on the Social Items screen runs one on demand. On a quiet site WP-Cron waits for the next visitor, so a real server cron is what makes the update schedule predictable.

Can I fix a caption after it is imported?

Yes. Every post lands under Visual Portfolio, Social Items as an ordinary WordPress entry, and the title, the content, the featured image, the format and the links are all editable there. Your edits stay, because a sync adds posts it has not seen before and never rewrites an item that already exists. That screen is also where you edit an imported post whose video link has stopped working.