How to Add Instagram like Photo Filters in WordPress with Pressgram

Recently, we wrote about using WordPress app on iOS devices and many users liked how easy it was to take photos and publish them to their WordPress site. If you like to take photos using your iPhone and iPad, then you would love Pressgram. It is a new image sharing app for iPhone that allows you to quickly capture an image, add a filter, and publish it directly to your WordPress site. Think of it as Instagram, but a whole lot better.

Why You Should Use Pressgram?

The benefits using Pressgram are quite numerous, especially when it comes to content ownership and page views! Just think about it for a moment – all those pageviews and site visits that are going to your “other” social networks (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, and others) are now going directly to your own WordPress site.

We know that some users use Instagram mainly for the filters that it offers, and how easy it is to make your photos look good. Well, now you can have that without being restricted to the terms of service of Instagram.

Overall it’s a definite win for your site, your brand and your business because the more direct attention you can bring to your own property the better.

Setting Up Pressgram

First thing you need to do is download and install the Pressgram application on your iPhone or iPad. You can click on the iTuenes store link or go directly to the App Store and install the app as you would normally install any other app.

Next you need to create your Pressgram account. Pressgram allows you to choose a number of ways to register and login (facebook, twitter, and email).

When you’re done choosing the registration option, you’ll get your new username and password sent directly to your email. Note: You will be able to change the password later in the app.

Once you’re inside the app, you should setup your profile by adding an avatar, some bio information, and a link to your blog.

Connecting Pressgram to Your WordPress Site

Now that you have installed and setup your Pressgram account, let’s go ahead and connect it with your WordPress site. This will allow you to capture images, add a filter, and publish it to your WordPress site directly from your phone like you do with Instagram.

You need to go to Settings » Blog Options where you can choose to connect to a self-hosted WordPress.org site or a WordPress.com blog.

On the next screen, you would need to enter your WordPress username and password for your blog, and you’re done. Now, you’ll see your blog listed as a place to directly publish your images to. You can add as many blogs or WordPress sites as you like and be able to publish to all of them at the same time.

To add more sites, simply repeat the above steps for each site.

Capture and Publish

Now that everything is setup, you’re ready to start taking photos. Start by taking your first photo and then adding a filter to it. Walk through the editing steps and then you’ll get to the META information part where you can add your title of the post (i.e photo title), some content that describes the photo, select categories and tags for better sorting.

Next, you just need to choose which blog(s) you’d like to publish the photos to and whether you want to share it on Facebook and Twitter. That’s it.

Bonus Material and Troubleshooting

As with anything you may have a few small issues publishing. Thankfully the team over at Pressgram has created some helpful documentation that may give you some tips on how to publish if you get stuck.

For example, there are certain server configurations that may stop you from publishing as well as some hosts that may not allow certain communication protocols (XML-RPC) – if you’re having an issue go here to read some of Pressgram’s knowledge base.

There is also a WordPress plugin that you may want to use to de-clutter the homepage. It allows you to hide your Pressgram photos from your home page and simply add them to a specific category on your site.

Conclusion

Pressgram is a very neat solution for adding filtered photos to your WordPress site rather than posting to a third-party service like Instagram. Currently, it is only available for iOS devices, but we hear that Android version is being developed as well.

Photo filters are being adapted by many social services such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc. We wonder if WordPress.com will follow their footsteps like it did for WordPress.com connect and offer photo filters from within the official WordPress app.

What do you think about photo filters? Would you use Pressgram on your site? Let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment below.