How to Embed an Instagram Reel in WordPress

July 25, 2024
Ben Russell
Founder

Over the past few years, the popularity of mobile-centric short-form videos has been steadily rising. Audiences are drawn to the experience, and websites are slowly starting to follow suit.

So you've decided you want to bring some of your Instagram reels or other short form video content onto your Wordpress site. The beauty of short video is it's snappy and to the point, so you can also put a bunch of different videos together.

Doing that with Instagram reels isn’t that simple though. There are a few problems:

  1. You’ll have Instagram logos and buttons all over your website, making it off brand
  2. The embeds will try to take people off your site onto instagram
  3. Playing a new video doesn’t stop the video that’s currently playing
  4. It can slow down your site
  5. There’s no autoplaying previews for engagement

You can solve all these issues by using a specialized video embedding software like Clipara.

Designed specifically for short-form content, Clipara allows you to create carousels, grids, or embed individual videos with custom styling, full-screen mobile experiences (just like using an app), smooth transitions between videos, and much more.

It’s incredibly user-friendly and covers all aspects of making videos responsive across devices, including autoplay and mute features. With Clipara, you can effortlessly create carousels that open to a full-screen player like this:


or experiences that play in line like this one:


All of this is completely customisable without any code and has lots of other layout and customisation options. The end result is something much more professional than embedding lots of Instagram Reels.

Create seamless video experiences without code with Clipara.

Start using Clipara for free and create video experiences that delight your customers.

Get started free

If you do just want to grab the embed code for Instagram reels and put it straight into your site and leave it as a instagram reel, you can do so with the quick steps below.

How to get the embed code for Instagram Reels

The embed code for a instagram is actually quite simple to find. Open Instagram on a desktop web browser, go to the the reel you want to embed and click on the three dots in the top right:

Select the 'Embed option'"

Either leave the caption on or toggle it off then Click Copy Embed Code.

How to add the Instagram reel embed code to Wordpress

  1. Copy the embed code from Instagram on your desktop/laptop
  2. Insert a block and select 'Custom HTML'
  3. Paste the code in and toggle to preview

Using this method allows you to use the Instagram embed optionality to not include the caption.

Let's run through those with screenshots below.

In your Wordpress editor, add a Custom HTML block:

Add the code you've copied from Instagram and click preview:

You'll now see the Instagram reel in place. You'll notice that if you add multiple reels, on mobile, they will stack on top of each other, making the page very long, like below:

You'll also notice once embedded, you'll have an Instagram style experience on your site like below with lots of links out to Instagram. But you probably don't want people leaving your site! It's also not really in the style of your own website.

If you'd prefer something more on brand to your site, with a better video experience, you can use Clipara. Clipara enables you to add multiple videos, and also gives you additional features on top of the customisations like proper sound controls, better mobile experience and more.

You can also create mobile optimised carousels for simple swiping between videos, more like a slick app experience.

You can give Clipara a try with a free account account here.

How to create your custom embed with Clipara

Follow the steps below to quickly create a custom video carousel for your website.

Click create campaign from the Clipara homepage:

Select the 'On-site' campaign type:

Choose the 'In-Line' player style. Full screen will open a full screen player on mobile and desktop rather than playing in-line in the page:

Click 'Add Video' to add new content:

Toggle to Instagram to add your Instagram content:

You can either connect an Instagram account to make it quick to pull multiple videos from your Instagram or simply paste in a link from Instagram.

Paste in your link then click upload:

Change the video name if you want to then click continue:

Select all of the videos you would like to include in your carousel. On the left, drag them to reorder them if you want to. Once selected, click 'Create Campaign' in the top left:

Select to create a new widget. Widgets are layouts that can be reused across multiple campaigns once you have designed them:

Select 'Carousel'. This is the only layout style for In-line campaigns, but for campaigns that open to full screen, you can use grids, carousels, stories, pop-ups and create your own custom embeds.

You can now edit your carousel to look exactly how you want using the design panel on the left hand side.

Once you've completed all of your customisations, click install in the top right:

You'll now have the code to install on your site. Simply copy that and paste it into your website builder.

You'll now have a slick video carousel on both desktop and mobile, just like this:

Sleek video carousel powered by Clipara

You can get started using Clipara for free here.

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