What is an Account?
The plugin has this concept of accounts. An account allows you to post images with a certain configuration to your site. Each Instagrate plugin account needs to be connected to an Instagram account. This does not mean you have to post the connected account’s images, you can use the connection to Instagram to get the media streams of your images, any users’ images, all images with a hashtag and location tagged images.
For example, you want to create new posts for all your Instagram images. You would add an Instagrate account and connect it with your Instagram account. The default settings will make it create new posts with your images. Then you decide you want run a hashtag competition on Instagram and you want to have a page of the image entries that is constantly updating. You would need another Instagrate account connect to an Instagram account (you can duplicate the other account you have). Then you would change the account settings to have the ‘Media Stream’ set to ‘All Hashtagged Media’, enter the hashtag and set the account to post to the same page each time.
The account screen has a lot going on in, but you might not use all of it. Here is a rundown of the sections and what each setting does.
Note: Post is referred to as a general term but the plugin can use a page or custom post type as defined in the Post Settings > Post Type
Instagram Settings
Here is where you connect your Instagram account. When connected you will be able to “Disconnect” your account and “Refresh” your account profile image.
Media Stream
This controls the type of images and videos (media) from Instagram that the account will post.
- My Recent Media This is the media of the connected account.
Hashtag Filter
You can filter by multiple hashtags using a comma to separate them. You do not need to use a #. e.g. fashion,style.
You can filter all image streams using this setting. You can also exlude hashtags using ‘-‘ as a prefix, eg. fashion,style,-newyork
Media Filter
You can filter the media for the account by Images and Video, Only Images and Only Videos.
Posting Settings
Frequency
Select how often the plugin is fired and the posting happens –
- Constant – The plugin will fire when the site is viewed.
- Scheduled – The plugin will fire on a schedule when the site is viewed
- Manual – The plugin will fire when the manual button is clicked.
- Cron – The plugin will fire when the URL (supplied in the settings) is called from an external Cron job. You can also use a per account URL to trigger that account only by a Cron job found in the ‘Useful Links’ box in the edit account screen. Read how to set up a cron job.
Schedule
This can be hourly, twice daily, daily, weekly and monthly when the frequency is selected as Scheduled
Day
This can be only be set to be the starting day when the Schedule is set as weekly or monthly.
Time
This is the starting time of the schedule.
Multiple Media
This is how the plugin deals with multiple media in the stream –
- Post Per Image A new post will be created for each image.
- Images Grouped Where the plugin finds multiple pending Instagram media to post they will be added to a new post.
- Same Post The plugin always add images to the same post.
Image Ordering
This applies to Images Grouped and Same Post posting. You can control how the images appear –
- Oldest at Top
- Newest at Top
Select Post
This applies only to Same Post posting. You can select the post to only create images in.
Images Location
This applies only to Same Post posting. You can control where new images are added in the post –
- Top
- Bottom
- Specific
If setting Specific you will need to combine this with using the [igp-image-position] shortcode in your post or page to specify where the images will get inserted. You can also set the position of the images above or below the shortcode, e.g. [igp-image-position position="above"]
Post Settings
Save Image to Media Library
This will take the Instagram image and save to the WordPress media libary.
Featured Image
This will set the featured image of the post with the image. This can only be set if you are saving the image to the media library. If you are posting multiple images in a post the last one will be set as featured.
Type
You can select the type of post that will be created –
- Post
- Page
- Custom Post Type – If you have a theme or plugin that has created new post types
Taxonomy
This is the way to classify posts. It is dependant on what you select as your Type. By default Posts should will Categories available. Supports custom post type taxonomies.
Term
When you have selected a Taxonomy you can select which term to post as. E.g. Your taxonomy is Category and you select to create your posts in the Instagram Images Category.
Convert Media Hashtags to
You can make the Instagram hashtags be converted to a taxonomy relevant to your post type. By default for Posts you can choose Tags. Supports custom post type taxonomies.
Author
Set who will be the author of the post created.
Status
Set the status of the new posts. Set to Draft if you wish to review posts before publishing.
Format
Set the post format of the post where your theme supports them.
Use Instagram Date
Check this if you want the post to be created with the date and time the image was taken. If not, the post will be created with the current time.
Map Settings
Google Maps will only be displayed in posts if you are using the %%map%% template tag and an image was geotagged in Instagram
Style
Select the style of Google Map –
- Road
- Hybrid
- Satellite
- Terrain
CSS Class
Apply a custom CSS class to you map.
Size
Set the size of the map. Default is 400px X 300px.
Zoom Level
Set the zoom of the map. Default is 15.
Post Custom Title
You can set the title using text and any template tags available for the title.
Post Custom Text
You can set the body text using any text and HTML as well as combining template tags. See these examples. The tags can be easily added using buttons in the editor bar.
Custom Fields
You can set custom post meta that will be added to the posts created using keys and template tags as values. Some template tags cannot be used in the custom fields.
Default Tags
You set tags that will be applied by default to a post that is created
Custom Featured Image
You can make an Instagram image the featured image by using the setting in the Post Settings box. Setting a featured image here will override that setting and always set the featured image as this image.