Facebook & Instagram Drop Support For WordPress Embeds in Sweden
Facebook & Instagram Drop Support For WordPress Embeds in Sweden
A change which is set to turn out on October 24 will break embedded Facebook and Instagram content on WordPress sites.
To be explicit, an upcoming API update will remove support for unauthenticated Facebook and Instagram embeds.
That implies, after October 24, embedded content might be upheld for publishers with a Facebook developer account and a registered Facebook application.
The change is retroactive, so all Facebook and Instagram embed on the sites of unauthenticated publishers will soon become broken. This can possibly affect millions of sites.
Meeting Facebook’s new requirements for embedded content isn’t a possibility for all publishers. Making a Facebook developer account and enrolling a Facebook application is a long way from being a practical solution.
So what are publishers to do if they like to embed content from Facebook and Instagram on their website pages?
Here are additional details about what’s changing, why it’s changing, and what publishers can do to get ready for it.
Changes to Facebook oEmbed Endpoints
In developer terms – the current oEmbed endpoints for embeddable Facebook content will be deprecated on October 24, 2020.
oEmbed is an open format designed to allow embedding content from a site into another page.
Facebook oEmbed endpoints allow you to get embed HTML and fundamental metadata for pages, posts, and videos in order to show them in another site or application.
There’s right now an oEmbed endpoint built into Facebook’s API, which has allowed publishers to effectively embed content from Facebook and Instagram on their pages.
What does this all mean for publishers?
In plain language – the mix of these changes from Facebook, Instagram, and WordPress means a ton of content will be broken.
If you have ever embedded content from Facebook and Instagram on your WordPress site, then this change influences you.
Facebook just offers one solution, which is to meet its stringent set of new requirements.
New requirements include:
- A Facebook Developer account, which you can make at developers.facebook.com
- A registered Facebook application
- The oEmbed Product added to the application
- An Access Token
- The Facebook application must be in Live Mode
If that sounds at all like a sensible answer for you, then you can get more data on the Facebook developer blog.
Fortunately, there are more practical solutions available through the use of WordPress plugins.
Fix Facebook and Instagram Embeds With Plugins
While this change hasn’t turned out yet, plugin developers have been working hard to prepare simple solutions for site owners.
Here are a couple of alternatives available so far.
oEmbed Plus
A new plugin called oEmbed plus, by developer Ayesh Karunaratne, brings back help for Facebook and Instagram content embedding.
Even with this plugin installed, publishers will have to register a Facebook developer account and “create” an app.
Note that you won’t need to really make a genuine application; it will just exist on paper.
Check out the walkthrough here to see what’s included.
Although there are a couple of loops to hop through, this plugin makes the cycle simpler than doing everything all alone.
Smash Balloon Plugins
A development company called Smash Balloon, whose plugins are used on over 1.4 million websites, offers an even easier solution.
The company has updated its current plugins with fixes for broken Facebook and Instagram embeds.
With the plugins from Smash Balloon you won’t need to experience the process of registering a Facebook developer account and creating an app.
That is because Smash Balloon already has the API key required to make custom feeds for both Facebook and Instagram. There’s no extra authentication needed to restore embedded content.
Smash Balloon offers dedicated plugins Instagram and Facebook.
After installing the plugins go to the oEmbed navigation menu and then click on the Connect button.
All plugins mentioned in this article are free.
We at CodeLedge, are Sweden’s best Digital Marketing & WordPress Development Services provider. We are the experts at creating a successful Digital Marketing strategy. Feel free to talk with us at hi@codeledge.net or get a quote from here.
