Impact of the 2024 API Update on Existing Personal Account Connections

As of December 4, 2024, Instagram discontinued its Basic Display API which was used for connecting personal Instagram accounts to Spotlight and other third-party apps. You can read more about Meta's decision here.

Going forward, all accounts connected to Spotlight must either be Creator or Business accounts, both of which are considered Professional accounts. As a result of this, if you have any existing personal Instagram accounts connected to Spotlight on your site, you will need to follow a few steps to reconnect your account.

Here's what you need to do:

1. Go to Instagram Feeds > Settings > Accounts in your WordPress dashboard. Here you'll notice a warning message and warning icon next to any connected personal accounts.

   
   

   

2. Click on the button to "Connect more Instagram accounts".

   
   

   

3. To continue connecting your Instagram account via Instagram login, click on the "Basic (Connect via Instagram)" option.

   
   

   

4. In the modal that opens up, enter your Instagram username and password.

   
   

   

5. You will then be prompted to "Change to professional account". Click on "Change".

   
   

   

6. Select "Creator" or "Business" as your new account type. Both are quite similar.

   
   

   

7. Next, select a category that most applies to your type of Instagram content.

8. Once your Instagram account is ready, proceed and click on the "Allow" button to provide Spotlight with access to fetch and import your Instagram account details and posts.

   
   

   

Once that's done and your Instagram account is connected using the new connection method, go to Instagram Feeds > Feeds. Here, you will want to switch the source of any feeds that are using the old "Personal" connection to use the "Basic (IG)" account instead.

When doing this, if you had any moderation or promotions applied to your feed, please re-apply the rules and links. Unfortunately, Spotlight is not able to retain these from your previous connection since the newly connected account is importing content from a new Instagram API and we are not able to retain all of the previous data.

That's it. You've now reconnected your Instagram account and it will continue to be updated automatically over time using the new connection method.