Link in Profile for Instagram without the subscription!

With a little time and effort, you can use your WordPress website and the plugin, Essential Grid, to create a link in profile page for Instagram without the subscription costs.

Note: This post contains affiliate links – see full policy here.

2020 FINAL Update

I now use Tailwind’s SmartBio or https://spotlightwp.com/ It is super easy to set up and free to use, even if you aren’t using Tailwind services!

Original Tutorial

I LOVE Linkinprofile for Instagram.  I truly do.  If you aren’t familiar with it, basically it creates a page that automatically pulls your Instagram pictures and links that are in the post into one central location.  You put a link in your profile to your Linkinprofile page (see where they get the name?) and voila! You have all your links there ready to go.  It is $9.99/month and if you can afford it, do it!  I paid for the service about 6 months for my primary music education account, and it was flawless.

However, I am not great at Instagram (#truthbomb).  I am good at purchasing too many courses and subscription services (#iwantitall).  This year at tax time, I looked at my business expenses and about had a heart attack.  So I sat down and wrote out every business subscription I had, and began looking for ways of either 1) manually doing the task or 2) making a techy workaround.

In this case, I was able to work out a techy workaround with the most amazing WordPress plugin, Essential Grid. 

Note: This post contains affiliate links.  You can read my full disclosure policy here.

Materials Needed

You need the following:

1. WordPress Website – this does NOT work on Blogger, Wix, etc.
2. Essential Grid Plugin – this plugin costs around $30.
3. Time – I estimate it takes about 1.5 hours.
4. Step by step instructions below (complete video at the bottom of the page!).

Process

This process is not hard but there are a ton of steps.  This is something you visually need to see.  Watch the video below and pause the video as you do each part.  I listed the overarching steps below (I cover them all in great detail in the video!!!).

1. Buy Essential grid plugin here.
2. Install plugin.
3. Activate with a license key.
4. Create a new Essential Grid.
5. Give the grid a title and alias.
6. Specific the source for your grid.  Usually, this is your Instagram user name.
7. Specify the image size, the count of images to pull from Instagram, and which images to pull (gallery, videos, etc).
8. Adjust the grid settings – make the pictures 1:1 (square). Specify the number of columns visible and any padding (space) between images.
9. Under Nav-Filter-Sort, make sure you add a pagination button.
10. Create a custom skin that pulls in your title and links.
11. Go back to the grid you created and apply your custom skin.
12. Preview your new grid and make adjustments as needed.
13. Create a new page for your site.
14. Copy and paste the shortcode for the Essential Grid.
15. Publish and take a look at your page.
16. Remove sidebar and header/footer if desired.
17. Add additional links if desired.
18. Copy the link to the page and put it in your Instagram profile.

A couple of tips

When you are writing your instagram captions now, the link MUST be within the word count you specified for displaying your caption.  This means if you said pull in 25 words and your link is word 30, the link WILL NOT APPEAR!  I know it feels weird to put your link higher in your caption, but do it anyway.

Feel free to change any settings you saw in the video!  The plugin is so versatile!

Also remember you can add additional information to your new Instagram page on your website.

VIDEO TUTORIAL

Questions?

Let me know if you get stuck or something doesn’t quite work as intended!  If you just don’t want to deal with this, I do offer this as a service.  Go here to read more about it.  Happy coding! Remember to pin for later!

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