How to: Add an Instagram feed to your blog

This post about how to add an Instagram feed to your main blog page is for my dear blogging friend Rae, because she asked nicely. And it’s for anyone else who wants to have a go at this. It’s funny, actually, how often people see my Instagram feed on my blog (somewhere over there —> or maybe down a little!) and ask me about it.

By the way, there are all kinds of different ways to do this (you know, like the whole skinning a cat thing, except without the animal cruelty) but this is the way I’ve done it. I use SnapWidget because someone recommended it ages ago and it has worked ever since. (I am big on the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” theory.) So, here goes Rae!

1. Go to SnapWidget and scroll down a bit until you can see the stuff about “Basic Widget”. I use the free version and it has been everything I need.
2. Choose the options you want in the “Customize your widget” section. You can put in your Instagram username (eg @amandakendle) or you can choose a hashtag instead. Most of the time you’ll probably just want to use your username, and that’s what I do on this blog. Sometimes you will want to use a hashtag instead – like I do on my travel blog where (at the moment) I’m displaying photos from my Penang trip using the #amandaspenangtrip hashtag I used. If you do use the hashtag version then remember that if someone else uses the same hashtag, their pictures will show up too.

3. You also need to choose the Widget Type; most of the names are self-explanatory really – if you want one to sit in your sidebar like mine then Slideshow works well. You might need to adjust the Widget Width (for example, mine is 300 pixels wide).
4. Click on “Get Widget” and you’ll get a fancy chunk of html code. Copy it.
5. Now you need to add it to your blog. If you’re using Blogger like Rae is, go to Layout, click on Add a Gadget in your sidebar, and choose HTML/JavaScript, and paste the code into it. The process is similar in WordPress.
6. Voila! You should now have your lovely Instagram feed flowing into your blog. Here’s mine at my travel blog.