Most people who want to add an Instagram gallery to WordPress already have an Instagram account with a regularly updated photo gallery.
The real challenge is getting these photos onto their website without having to manually recreate the gallery.
WordPress has a built-in gallery block that works well for photos you upload to the media library. However, it lacks a mechanism to connect directly to Instagram.
If you want to create a gallery from your Instagram photos, you’ll need a different solution.
The problem with building separate Instagram galleries
The most direct way to add an Instagram gallery to WordPress is to download your photos from Instagram, upload them to your WordPress media library, then arrange them in a gallery block and publish them.
This works in a strict technical sense, but quickly leads to a maintenance problem.
Once you add new photos to Instagram, your WordPress Instagram gallery will be out of date. To update it, you need to download the new photos, upload them to your website and reorganize the gallery block.
If you post several times a week, it quickly becomes a big, ongoing task. Most people either give up or end up with an Instagram gallery that looks old.
There is also a loss of quality. When you take photos from Instagram and upload them to WordPress, you lose the captions, timestamps, and feeling that the content is fresh and current. What you get is just a static grid, with no indication of how current it is.
The Better Approach: An Instagram Feed Plugin
An Instagram feed plugin creates a gallery using your live Instagram account instead of uploaded files.
It connects to your account, pushes your content into WordPress, and displays it in a layout that you can customize. The gallery also updates itself.
Increased Instagram feedFor example, supports grid and mosaic display options, which of course work as Instagram gallery layouts. A grid works well for product photos or any content where you want a consistent look. The mosaic layout works well for photos of different shapes and gives a magazine-like feel.
You can adjust the spacing, number of columns, and behavior of images so that the gallery looks like a natural part of your website and not just a social media import.
When someone clicks on a photo, it can open in a lightbox or be redirected to Instagram, depending on their selection.
Once you’ve set it up, you can place the gallery anywhere on your website using a shortcode. This can be on a portfolio page, a services page or a gallery page. The gallery updates itself as you add new content to Instagram.
Why this approach works better
By using a plugin, you can continue to manage your Instagram gallery in the usual way. You continue to post to your account as usual and your site gallery will automatically update with no additional steps required on your part.
For businesses where a visual archive is important for clients, such as photographers, interior designers, event planners, creative agencies, or product-based businesses, this approach will keep your website’s Instagram gallery up to date with your latest work. You won’t have to manage a separate gallery and your website won’t lag behind your Instagram account.
Bringing everything together
The built-in WordPress gallery block requires you to upload and manage photos manually. For people who post often on Instagram, this means doing the same work twice, which is hard to keep up with.
An Instagram gallery operated via a plugin receives its content directly from your account. This makes it self-updating and easy to maintain right from the start.
A plugin like Increased Instagram feed takes care of the connection and layout of your Instagram gallery and keeps your content up to date without you having to manage media files yourself.
For more plugins, check out Best Instagram Feed Plugins for WordPress.
