Request: Instagram Media Embed or Retrieval Mod for vBulletin Forums Using Snapinstaink Approach

[limorentaluae]

I am running a vBulletin forum for a content creator community and wanted to raise a mod request around Instagram media integration. Currently when members want to share their own Instagram photos or videos on the forum they face a common problem where Instagram provides no built in way to retrieve previously published content in original resolution. Members end up posting low quality screenshots which look unprofessional in forum posts. I have been using snapinstaink as a manual workaround to retrieve original quality files from public Instagram post URLs before uploading them to the forum. However I wanted to ask whether a vBulletin mod could be developed that automates this retrieval process, similar to how the Auto-Embed Videos mod works, but specifically for Instagram post URLs so that members can paste a public Instagram URL and have the original quality media automatically embedded or attached to their forum post.

[glennrocksvb]

limorentaluae, thanks for your suggestion. I will add it to my todo list.

Note if the Instagram photos are uploaded to vBulletin, they will be subject to the upload settings in the forum. This means the images may be resized and lose the original image quality.

[glennrocksvb]

Thank you for the suggestion. I took some time to evaluate the request further and review Instagram's Terms of Use.

I understand the use case, especially for content creators who want to share their Instagram content on the forum without relying on screenshots.

However, what you're describing is quite different from embedding an Instagram post. My existing Instagram BBCode plugin embeds content directly from Instagram, meaning the media remains hosted by Instagram and is simply displayed within the forum as an embedded Instagram widget.

https://vbmods.rocks/forum/vbulletin-5-modifications/vbulletin-5-custom-bb-codes/6113-instagram-bbcode-updated

The feature you're requesting would require the plugin to automatically retrieve media files from Instagram and then upload or attach them to the forum. While this is technically possible, it raises concerns regarding Instagram's Terms of Use, which place restrictions on automated collection and extraction of content from the platform. In addition, automatically downloading and rehosting media can introduce copyright considerations since the forum would be creating and storing its own copy of the content.

While I appreciate that many users may be downloading media from their own Instagram accounts, the plugin itself would not be able to distinguish between content owned by the poster and content owned by others.

Because of these concerns, I am not currently planning to develop a plugin that automatically downloads and reuploads Instagram content to a forum.

If your members simply want to display Instagram photos and videos within their forum posts, I would recommend using the existing Instagram BBCode plugin, which provides a solution that does not require downloading or rehosting the media.