Changed
– Updated Analytics date handling to use WordPress date/time functions for improved timezone consistency.
– Improved null validation before calling version_compare() to prevent PHP 8.x deprecated warnings.
– Modernized internal function signatures for better PHP 8.3 compatibility.
Fixed
– Fixed long-standing PHP 8.x deprecated warning caused by version_compare() being called with a null value.
– Fixed multiple PHP 8.3 deprecated warnings and notices across Free and Premium versions.
Added
– Added a 4:5 image ratio option to the Grid layout.
– Added 3:4 and 4:5 image ratio options to the Highlight and Slider layouts.
Fixed
– Fixed misaligned arrows in Slider layouts.
Changed
– Spotlight now supports Meta’s oEmbed API v22.0.
– This ensures continued compatibility after Meta’s removal of certain oEmbed fields and the deprecation of the Facebook Page Post oEmbed endpoint (effective October 1, 2025).
Added
– Added a Tall Grid template with a 3:4 ratio and a new Ratio option in Appearance Settings.
Changed
– Removed local error log and redirected errors to the WordPress debug log.
Changed
– Updated PHP deprecations related to filtering.
– Updated Freemius SDK to the latest version.
Added
– Implemented Instagram Business Basic API to replace the deprecated Personal API for enhanced functionality and compliance with platform requirements.
Fixed
– Release issues.
Added
– Notices for changes to Meta API for personal and business accounts.
Changed
– Renamed the “All Access” plan to “Agency”.
– Updated the pricing page to use the new beta Freemius pricing app.
Changed
– Changed upgrade button text.
Fixed
– CSRF vulnerability when connecting accounts.
– The plugin now allows either the imagick or gd extension to be used for image processing, not just the gd extension.
Fixed
– Fixed the heading for the “Performance” settings section.
Changed
– Replaced all mentions of the “Performance” plan with “All access”.
Changed
– The photo/video URLs for imported posts are now forcefully updated on every fetch.
Fixed
– A common conflict with other plugins that use a newer version of the psr/simple-cache package.
Added
– Links for the Black Friday 2023 offer.
– A new filter that disables searching for feed instances.
Changed
– Optimized the queries that search for feed instances.
Fixed
– Removed use of deprecated onkeypress DOM event.
Changed
– The feed now prioritizes thumbnails that are locally downloaded.
Changed
– Updated Freemius SDK to v2.5.12.
Fixed
– The error log contents were overflowing and not staying within the screen.
– Some links in the feed did not have the necessary SEO rel attributes.
– Removed a deprecated field from some Instagram API requests.
Fixed
– IG posts with emojis or certain characters could not be imported.
Changed
– Improved logging when importing posts from Instagram.
– Improved logging when downloading remote files.
Fixed
– String interpolation is now compatible with PHP 8 without warnings.
Changed
– Updated Freemius SDK to the latest version
Fixed
– Fixed a missing import for RuntimeException that triggered an error during a feed update.
Added
– Reels playback is now enabled in the popup box, if the API provides the video URL.
Changed
– Optimized some JavaScript code to be slightly smaller.
Fixed
– Like and comment counts were not imported for Business accounts after the v1.5.2 update.
Changed
– The use cases and templates in the feed creation wizard can now be double-clicked for faster wizard completion.
– Improved styling in news notifications.
Fixed
– Personal accounts could not fetch posts after a recent unannounced change to Instagram’s APIs.
– News notifications were not being displayed in the admin UI.
Changed
– The cron job that updates feeds is now compatible with Action Scheduler.
Fixed
– Temporary file deletion fails safely without triggering warnings.
– The “Dev Tools” are no longer unnecessarily shown in the menu.
Added
– An error log that records any errors that occur during background tasks.
Changed
– Updated the admin UI to support WordPress 6.2 and React 18
– Improved page routing in the admin UI
– Updated the Freemius SDK to v2.5.5
Fixed
– An error when a gallery post has an image with no permalink
– Non-square profile images did not maintain a 1:1 aspect ratio
Changed
– The feed now uses a smoother fade-in animation when loading Instagram posts
– Replaced the review banner with a feature survey prompt
Fixed
– Feeds no longer appear to be stuck in a loading state when the feed cannot be loaded
Changed
– The “Upgrade” buttons in the UI have been replaced with “Free trial” buttons
– Thumbnails use the file path returned by WordPress, potentially fixing conflicts with image optimization plugins
Fixed
– The “Additional CSS class(es)” field for the block was susceptible to an XSS exploit
– The incompatibility with “Say What? Pro” plugin was not entirely fixed in the previous version
Fixed
– Incompatibility with “Say What? Pro” plugin
– The auto-integration with WP Rocket now excludes non-minified WordPress assets from optimizations
Added
– Black Friday and Cyber Monday discount offers
Added
– New “Custom CSS” option for feeds
– New “Wave” template
– New “Squircle Grid” template
Changed
– The images and icons in the feed creation wizard are now more distinct from each other
Added
– Added support for Instagram embeds to WordPress
Changed
– Using SVGs for better quality media type icons in feeds
– Reels now show a link to Instagram when they are opened in the popup box
Fixed
– The admin UI would not show up when the URL of the page was incorrect
– No longer using the Instagram shorthand URL for thumbnails due to CORS errors
Fixed
– An error during import caused by null video URLs
Changed
– The Settings page has peen redesigned
– You can navigate away from the feed creation wizard using the browser’s “Back” function.
– Informational notifications now auto-hide faster
– The sections in the feed editor sidebar now have headers that stick to the top when scrolling
– Feed buttons no longer have hover styles and will inherit their normal colors (only affects newly created feeds)
– Downloading and updating thumbnails is now faster
Fixed
– The “Load more” button was scrolling the page to the top
– A double scroll-bar issue in the feed editor page
– Some responsive feed options did not properly default to their “Desktop” value
Added
– Added HTTPS and OpenSSL recommendations in the account info modal
Fixed
– Video thumbnails remain in their loading state even after the thumbnail is loaded
– The HTTPS and OpenSSL messages were being shown when they shouldn’t, and not shown when they should have been
Added
– A feed creation wizard with use-case selection to cater the feed editing experience
– A “Guides” page with links to useful articles and tutorials
– New option to align the “Load more” and “Follow” buttons on the same row beneath the feed
– Pages and posts with an embedded feed can be created directly from the “Embed” tab in the editor
– A warning when the update schedule used to update the feeds does not exist
– Feeds can now be exported to, and imported from, a file
Changed
– Various visual improvements and fixes for the admin interface
– Reduced the size and loading time for embedded feeds
– Reduced the loading time for the admin app
– Improved the feed editor’s styles on mobile devices
– Improved accessibility in the feed
– Any “@” and “#” symbols in image alt texts are removed to aid those with screen readers
– Focus styles in the feed only appear when focusing with a keyboard
Fixed
– Video posts did not load their thumbnail on iOS
– The album navigation arrows in the popup box were not focusable with keyboard navigation
– All of the text on the page in the feed editor gets selected when using a color picker
– The “Follow” button’s text was not the same size in the header and footer of the feed
– The padding for the “Follow” and “Load more” buttons did not adjust with text size
Fixed
– An InvalidArgumentException error after reconnecting a personal account as a business account
– Posts could no longer be imported if an error occurs during importing
– Connected accounts were not being automatically selected in the feed editor
Fixed
– Security fix
Fixed
– The feed’s styles were not being loaded for feeds embedded on the site
Added
– A new option to set the maximum number of imported Instagram posts per account
– Images in the feed now use the caption as “alt” text
Changed
– Videos in galleries are now paused when you navigate within the gallery
– The feed now supports better keyboard navigation
– Improved accessibility in the popup box – the focus is trapped and all controls can be selected with the keyboard
– Reordered the sections in the Embed tab
– Filters can now use the spotlight/instagram/… prefix
Fixed
– Images that fail to load could cause an infinite request loop for the same image
Removed
– The layouts.js and layouts.css files are no longer needed
Fixed
– Saved thumbnails are lost when the plugin updates Instagram posts
Changed
– Now requiring a minimum WordPress version of 5.7
Fixed
– “Thumbnail not available” issue for wide feeds on larger screens
– On some sites, the plugin’s cron jobs were not being properly registered
Changed
– The WordPress widget has been renamed to make it clearer in Elementor which widget is which
– Captions are now synced when posts are updated
Fixed
– Posts without thumbnails caused the feed to crash when those posts are clicked or the feed is very wide
– Some posts would wrongly use the original Instagram CDN image, even if Spotlight had generated optimized thumbnails
– The feed would wrongly show “Thumbnail not available” for posts that had thumbnails available
– Some sites that had HTTPS correctly configured were still seeing the notice that recommends enabling HTTPS
Changed
– Account access tokens are now encrypted in the database
– Viewing an account’s access token now requires entering your password
– Videos in the popup box now sit on top of a black background
– Now recommending HTTPS and the “openssl” PHP extension
Fixed
– Videos in the popup box were invisible when using certain themes
– The popup box now shows an error if a video cannot load
– Videos in albums did not have their URLs updated
– Album posts would sometimes show “Thumbnail not available” even when a thumbnail is available.
Fixed
– Videos in gallery posts had broken URLs and could not be played from the popup box
– Feeds only imported posts automatically from the first source
Fixed
– A feed can no longer have the same account selected multiple times (how did you guys even manage that?)
– An infinite request loop if a thumbnail fails to load in the feed
– A previous solution for the “Image not available” error in the popup box was not working correctly
– JSON data in HTML attributes is now encased in single quotes to prevent escaping problems
Changed
– The minimum WordPress version requirement is now version 5.3
– The popup box no longer shows images from Instagram’s CDN by default
– Photos in album posts now have their thumbnails downloaded and generated
– Optimized some database queries for better performance
– Avoiding an unnecessary image redirect when showing images in the popup box
– Thumbnails in the feed now have explicit “width” and “height” attributes
Fixed
– Fixed a JS error that caused the feed editor page to go blank
– The “Feeds” column in the “Settings > Accounts” page did not show any feeds
– The import completion notification was wrongly saying that more batches were being imported
– The styling of the navbar in the admin app was broken on Chrome
– Fixed an error that prevented the cache from being cleared
Added
– Added a filter to transform Instagram post responses from the REST API
Changed
– More user-friendly error message when connecting with an invalid access token
Fixed
– Duplicate posts were being imported, causing memory exhaustion errors
– Fixed a database insertion error
– Fixed a fatal error when a response status code is invalid
– Fixed an argument type error that is triggered during the clean up cron job
– Fixed blank admin UI for mobile devices on WordPress 5.8
Fixed
– Fixed an error on the “Widgets” page for WordPress version 5.8
– Fixed a PHP notice when clearing the cache if the thumbnails folder does not exist
– The original image would not be deleted after optimization if an error occurs
Added
– Accessibility and SEO attributes to buttons and links in the feed
Changed
– Replaced the built-in import engine with an upgraded version
– Posts that have not changed on Instagram will not be updated unnecessarily
– Large numbers of Instagram posts are now imported in batches
– Minor database query optimizations
Fixed
– Timeout errors when importing large numbers of Instagram posts
– Timeout errors when clearing the cache for large numbers of Instagram posts
– A PHP notice about an undefined ‘shortcode’ index
– A conflict with pages that have the word “spotlight” in their permalink
– Expired images in the popup now fallback to a local image
– A styling incompatibility with LearnDash Advanced Quizzes
– Vertical center alignment for album images and videos
– The feeds shows the wrong number of posts when tablets and phones show more than on desktop
Changed
– Replaced Guzzle with an in-house solution, resolving many plugin conflicts
– The feed is now centered in its container or block when its width is not set to “Auto”
Fixed
– The header “Account to show” option did not work
– A conflict with BuddyBoss caused a fatal error due to a typed shortcode parameter
Fixed
– The Guzzle conflict detection has been disabled due to false-positives
Added
– New feed templates to get started with a preset design
– Feeds can now be exported and imported
– Integration with WP Rocket and Litespeed Cache plugins
– You can now start designing feeds before connecting an account
– The REST API now includes an “Expires” header for proper browser caching
– A link to customer support in the navigation bar when on the Feeds page
– New dev tools page to help diagnose problems (currently hidden)
Changed
– Reduced total size of JS and CSS loaded on the site by 28%
– Removed use of dashicons in the feed
– Moved the preview device selector into the preview viewport
– Icons have been added to the action menus for feeds and accounts for better clarity
– Delete options in the action menus for feeds and accounts are now red to indicate danger
Fixed
– Fixed a conflict with the WooCommerce Paypal Payments extension
– Album images of posts not owned by your account no longer request the thumbnail, which caused an API error
– Various usability and accessibility fixes in the feed editor
Added
– Support for IGTV videos
– New link to the “Feeds” page in the Plugins page
– New link to documentation and FAQs in the Plugins page
– New options for hover colors and border radius for the “Follow” and “Load more” buttons
– New option to toggle whether the “Load more” button causes the page to scroll down
– Optimization can now be run manually from the “Configuration” settings page
– URLs in captions are now turned into links
Changed
– Reduced the total size of JS and CSS loaded on the site by 70%
– Improved updating of data during imports
– Removing use of PATCH and DELETE HTTP methods
Fixed
– Feeds had no header if another feed on the same page showed a header for the same account
– Some tagged posts could not be imported due to use of invalid request fields
Changed
– Now compatible with PHP8
Fixed
– An error, caused by curly braces offset access syntax, which is not supported in PHP8.
Added
– New option to duplicate feeds
Fixed
– The feed did not load on sites that send CORS preflight requests
– Fixed hashtags without spaces between them becoming a single link
– Undefined index errors during an import or update
Changed
– Now detecting a conflict with the official “Facebook for WordPress” plugin
Fixed
– Fixed “Argument 1 passed” error when viewing/previewing a feed
Added
– Added the ability to clear cache for a single feed only
– Added more tooltips in the editor and improved the wording of existing tooltips
– Added a notification if an error occurs while saving the settings
Changed
– The actions in the feeds list are now in a menu
– The feed usages in the feeds list now link to the post on the site, not the edit page
– The sources in the feeds list now link to the account info or hashtag page on Instagram
– The default click behavior on mobile devices is now set to open the popup box
– The admin interface uses the WP Admin color scheme as much as possible
– Better error messages when account connection fails
– The copied info from our access token generator can now be directly pasted into the access token field
– Unavailable images and videos now show a message in the popup box, instead of broken content
– The popup box’s size in the preview now matches the device being previewed
Fixed
– Image and video URLs were not being renewed, causing broken content when they expire
– Thumbnails are now served using HTTPS is the site is using SSL
– The popup box is no longer too large for mobile devices
– Text in the popup box was too large
– The popup box now prevents the page from scrolling, which used to result in 2 scrollbars
– Extending the execution time during imports to prevent long imports from terminating early
– Fixed incompatibility with plugins that introduced circular references in post type objects
– Fixed an SQL error that occurs when using MySQL version 8.0 or later
– All connected accounts were being included in a feed’s context, even if unused in that feed
– Scrollbars would show up in the editor preview, even when there was nothing to scroll
Added
– The plugin now checks for required PHP extensions and will show a message if one is missing
Changed
– The “Cookie nonce is invalid” error has been changed to highlight that you are not logged in
– Tweaked the scaling of the hover date so that it doesn’t overlap with the Instagram icon
Fixed
– Fixed an “Invalid argument type” error that occurs during import
– When the feed loads a post with a video in an album, the feed app would crash
– On 32-bit systems, feeds would only show 1 post
– The logo in the block editor is too large when using certain themes
– The onboarding process triggered a feed load twice after connecting the account, resulting in an error
– When navigating away from the editor, the “unsaved changes” prompt did not show up
Changed
– Optimized the rendering for the grid layout, resulting in smoother loading animations
Fixed
– All posts in the feed would flash when more posts are loaded using the “Load more” button
– When PHP strict_types is enabled, a type error occurred while fetching posts from Instagram
Added
– New option in the feeds list to update the Instagram posts for a feed
– The “Show/hide PRO Features” selection is remembered in the browser
Changed
– Video thumbnails are generated for non-tagged and non-hashtag posts
– Added a notification when connecting an account using an access token fails
– Duplicate posts, even if fetched for different sources, will no longer be shown in feeds
Fixed
– Incompatibility with Kadence plugins caused modal popups to not appear
– Incompatibility with LiteSpeed cache when loading JS when DOM is ready
– Corrupted feed options would cause an error that prevented editing and saving feeds
– Modals no longer cover up toast notifications in the admin app
– Warnings would show up when activating the plugin on a new site
– Cron jobs would not be recreated after their schedule is changed in the settings
– Feed usage in the block editor was not detected and shown in the feeds list
– Duplicate crons would be created when run manually using WP Crontrol
Changed
– Various tiny performance optimizations
– The default optimization age limit is now 7 days, down from 30 days
– Increased the quality of generated thumbnails with minimal disk space impact
Fixed
– Downloading thumbnails for videos would occasionally cause a fatal error
– Custom post types used by the plugin were not properly registered
Changed
– Now using a beacon in the bottom-right of the screen for important plugin-related alerts
– Using paused videos as thumbnails, until a better solution can be found for video thumbnails
Fixed
– Thumbnails are now saved locally, after Instagram made an unannounced change to their API
– Thumbnails are resized and automatically and optimally scaled for the screen
Changed
– Greatly improved the loading time for feeds on the site
– All pages are now much more responsive and usable on mobile devices
– Filtering fields will auto-add their typed value when they lose focus
– Improved the message shown in the shortcode when a feed does not exist
– Added redundant WordPress styles to ensure a consistent look and feel
Fixed
– Addressed the “Cache key is invalid” entries in the debug log
– Fixed thumbnails not loading due to Instagram deprecating their thumbnails API
– Fixed an error that sometimes prevented feeds from being saved
Changed
– The plugin now clarifies whether errors come from Instagram’s API or the plugin itself
– Overall performance of the editor has been greatly improved
Fixed
– The text size option was showing wrong values for tablets and phones
– Videos did not load and would remain as grey tiles
– The preview did not always reflect changes made to the feed’s options
Fixed
– The page would not load or crash if an account has no access token expiry date
– The top navigation bar would did not update to indicate the current tab.
Added
– Added a block for the WordPress Gutenberg block editor
– Account information is now updated during media imports
Changed
– Now using the WordPress-bundled React, reducing JS file sizes
– Improved the responsiveness of the navbar
Fixed
– Fixed an error that caused feeds to break when not logged in
Fixed
– Some fields in the Design tab would incorrectly remain disabled
– The app no longer gets stuck on the flashing logo during loading
– Feeds did not work when other plugins encounter errors or raise warnings
Changed
– Videos use an Instagram-style video player
– The popup box is now responsive
– Now showing smaller thumbnails in smaller feeds
Fixed
– Front-end CSS is now correctly minimized for increased page load speeds
– Fixed app not loading correctly after an update, due to browser caching
Added
– Hover info now scales with the size of the media tiles in the layout
Changed
– Added reset styles to media in the popup box to improve compatibility with themes
– Improved how media in the popup box gets scaled to better match Instagram’s own scaling
Fixed
– Media in the popup box would incorrectly have black bars
– Cancelling after clicking the Cancel button disabled the Cancel and Save buttons
Fixed
– “Too many IDs” error when a Business account has more than 50 posts
Added
– Freemius integration
– Admin notifications
– New “Tools” section in the settings and an option to clear the API cache
– The live preview shows a message when user options result in no posts being shown in a feed
Initial version of Spotlight Instagram Feeds.
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