WordPress.com now supports Instagram embeds

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WordPress.com now lets you embed pictures from Instagram.

Simply paste an Instagram URL into your post and you get a picture that links directly to the source, just like this:

Southerndown

There’s also a shortcode that lets you customise the size of the embed, like this:

[instagram url=http://instagram.com/p/QSPA9PPCtI/ width=220]

WP.com have missed a few tricks here though. For starters, the width parameter doesn’t seem to be working for me (that image above should be 220px, but at present it’s 150px).

In addition, they could have given us the options to include the image caption (at least as alt text) and display the number of likes an image has received. This could have been handled via the shortcode too.

They are also not applying any special styling or giving us a unique class to help out those of use who are able to tweak the styles. As it stands, only users who pay for CSS access and have some fairly advanced a[href^="http://"] skills will be able to tweak the presentation.

Mainly though I feel there needs to be a widget, like the excellent Instapress plugin for WordPress.org users. I don’t often want to include Instagram pics in a blog post, but I would like to display a few of my most recent in the sidebar, like I do at geoff.at.

Anyway, as it stands WordPress.com users who want to post Instagram pictures on their blog may be better served by IFTTT, or simply by uploading the pictures as they normally would.

Bonus: Some of my recent Instagram photographs

Edited 2013.01.23 to dink with formatting.

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