There was a time in the early days of social media that I signed up for every service that came out. The username @spigot is mine across most services you can find. By the time Instagram started, I’d started to grow weary and standoffish to new services. I’m sure you know what I mean. So I held out and planted my flag of never signing up for Instagram. For years I held out and was happy for it. Turns out Instagram is actually a pretty good service and I should have held out on Plurk. Or Ello. Heck both.

So then one day I did sign up for Instagram. Of course, my preferred username name was gone, but @spigotdesign was still available. Actually, I first signed up as @bry.hoff with the idea of making it more personal than tied to Spigot. I switched it a year or so later for unity sake. Or some other reason I don’t recall.

So now the only social services I use on a regular basis are Twitter and a little bit of Instagram.

ANYWAY, this weekend I added a fun bit Instagram to the website. In the name of the Indie Web, and owning the content you produce there is now an Instagram feed on the site. Not just any feed, however. Each image is pulled in as it’s own post and the images imported into the site. So if (when) Instagram goes away or changes their service in some nefarious way I’ll still have all the Instagrams forever and evermore. Moo ha ha.

Check it out here: https://spigotdesign.com/instagram

How to build an on-site Instagram archive

Thankfully there’s a plugin to do this. DsgnWrks Instagram Importer is a very easy to use and straightforward plugin for importing Instagram posts. It’s also developer friendly which gave me control over what is imported and how the content is displayed. Here’s a quick step by step:

• Create a custom post type (CPT). I chose ‘instagram’
• Create a custom taxonomy for Instagram hashtags
• Install the DsgnWrks Instagram Importer plugin
• Import a few posts into the new CPT.
• Check the CPT archive page and see how it looks.
• Tweak the CPT template until it’s set up how you like.
• Set the plugin to import on a scheduled basis. I chose once a week.
• That’s it!
• No it’s not. You’ll bang your head for a while to get it to work but stick with it.
• NOW, that’s it!

Leave a comment if you’d like some help doing this. I can also post the template I used and the settings I chose. If you’re interested.

[instagram url=”https://www.instagram.com/p/BhSkw60Aa6C/”]