Facebook And Instagram Drop Support For WordPress Embeds

Starting from October 24, Facebook and Instagram are dropping support for WordPress embedded content. This change is set to take effect on October 24th, 2020 and will break all embedded Instagram and Facebook content on WordPress sites.

It means, after October 24th, 2020, embedded content will only be supported for publishers with a Facebook developer account and a registered Facebook app.

This change is retroactive, meaning all Instagram and Facebook embeds on websites will soon become broken. This new roll-out has the potential to affect a lot of websites.

Now, it is not an option for publishers to new Facebook’s requirements for the embedded content. Creating a Facebook developer account and registering a Facebook app is far from being a practical solution. So what is the way out?

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Changes To Facebook oEmbed Endpoints

In developer terms, the current oEmbed endpoint for embeddable Facebook content will be reduced on October 24, 2020. oEmbed is a format designed to make embedding content from a website into another page effortless.

Facebook oEmbed endpoint gives you a chance to get embed HTML and basic metadata for posts, videos and pages in order to display them in another app or website. Currently, an oEmbed endpoint is built into Facebook’s API, which allows publishers to effortlessly embed content from Instagram and Facebook on their website pages.

Now, Facebook is saying it will drop support for that endpoint. also, in response to Facebook’s API change, WordPress itself is removing Instagram and Facebook as an oEmbed source.

What All These Mean For Publishers?

In a layman language, the combination of these changes from Instagram, Facebook and WordPress means a lot of content will be broken. If you have embedded any content from Instagram and Facebook on your WordPress site, this change affects you.

However, there is one solution that Facebook is offering you. You have to meet Facebook’s stringent set of new requirements which include:

• A registered Facebook app
• A Facebook Developer account, which can be created at developers.facebook.com
• The oEmbed Product added to the registered Facebook app
• An Access Token
• The Facebook app must be in Live mode

If you can fulfill all those, then you can check more information on the Facebook developer blog site. But there are more realistic ways of embedding Facebook and Instagram content on your WordPress site through the use of WordPress plugins.

How To Fix Facebook And Instagram Embeds With Plugins?

While we are still waiting for the changes to roll out, plugin developers have been working tirelessly to prepare a simple solution for website owners. Here are a few options that are available so far.

oEmbed Plus

There is already a new plugin called oEmbed Plus, developed by developer Ayesh Karunaratne to bring back support for Instagram and Facebook content embedding.

However, publishers still have to register a Facebook developer account and create an app to embed content through this plugin. But you will not need to create a real app, it’ll only exist on paper. Here is a tutorial on it.

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Smash Balloon Plugins

This developer company called Smash Balloon, whose plugins have been installed by more than 1.4 million websites, provides an even easier solution.

Smash Balloon has updated its existing plugins with a fix for broken Instagram and Facebook embeds. With the plugins, you don’t need to register a Facebook developer account or create an app. The Smash Balloon plugins already have the API key required to create custom feeds for Facebook and Instagram. With this plugin, you don’t need additional authentication to restore embedded content.

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You can use the company’s dedicated plugins Facebook and Instagram for free. After installing the plugins, navigate to the oEmbed menu and then click the “Connect” button.

With the two plugins above, you can easily fix Facebook and Instagram broken embedded content.