Social feeds: connect and display

The Social widget puts your own posts on your own page. Connect one account or several (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, Bluesky), pick a layout, and Amabrik shows your latest posts in its own templates and keeps them current as you publish. It is not a platform embed: every post is rendered in Amabrik’s styling, so it matches your site instead of dropping in a foreign iframe.

One thing to know before you start: a live feed needs at least one connected channel. With no source connected, the widget shows nothing on a visitor’s page. The sample posts you see while editing exist only for the dashboard preview. They never appear on your live site.

Turn it on

1. In your dashboard, open Widgets and click the Social card.
2. If this is your first social feed, you go straight into layout selection. Pick a template, then Continue with this layout opens the editor. If you already have a social feed, you land on your list, where New starts the same flow.
3. Connect at least one account in the Content tab (see below). Until you do, the live feed stays empty.
4. Click Install to copy your snippet. For an inline feed, paste the snippet plus the anchor (<div data-amabrik-social="YOUR_ID"></div>) where you want the feed to appear. For a floating corner feed, just paste the snippet.

Your changes save on their own as you edit (you’ll see a “Saved” mark near the top), and each save refreshes the published version your visitors see.

Connect a channel

Open the Content tab, then the Sources section, and click Add source. Pick a platform. Each platform connects one of two ways.

Connect with one click (OAuth)

These platforms connect through their official secure login, in a popup. You sign in once, approve read-only access, and Amabrik stores an encrypted token server-side. The token is never sent to the browser and never put in your public snippet.

• Instagram. Needs a free Instagram Business or Creator account. You can switch yours in the Instagram app under Settings, then Account type. Personal accounts cannot be connected. Amabrik reads your account’s media (photos, videos and carousel albums).
• Facebook. Facebook Pages only. Personal profiles cannot be shown. When you connect, Amabrik picks up every Page you manage, including Pages owned by your Business, and merges their posts into the feed.
• TikTok. Connect the TikTok account you want to display. Amabrik reads your videos with their cover image and links each one back to TikTok.
• Pinterest. Connect the Pinterest account and Amabrik reads your latest pins as image cards.

After a successful connect, the source shows Connected as [your account name] with a green check. A Disconnect button is right there if you ever want to remove it.

Connect by handle

These two platforms do not need a login. You just paste a public handle.

• YouTube. Paste your channel @handle or your channel ID. The channel must be public.
• Bluesky. Paste your handle, like name.bsky.social. The account must be public.

A handle source starts pulling posts as soon as you type a valid handle. You’ll see “Loading live feed” in the preview, then your real posts replace the sample.

Nothing shows? You need a connected source

If a visitor sees an empty space where the feed should be, it is almost always because no source is connected (or a handle is blank or wrong). The widget only renders when at least one enabled source has produced posts. This is by design: it will never show sample content on your live site.

Pick a template

When you create the widget you choose a layout, and you can change it any time in the Display tab under Layout. Each template is a real, scaled preview of your own feed, so what you pick is what you get. The nine templates:

• Grid. Even rows of square cards. The classic, clean feed. Set the number of columns.
• Masonry. A Pinterest-style staggered wall where each card keeps its natural height. Good for mixed portrait and landscape posts.
• Carousel. A horizontal slider with arrows and dots. Fits near a hero or footer where vertical space is tight. Optionally autoplay it.
• Social Wall. A mosaic where the first card and every sixth card span a larger 2x2 tile, for a magazine feel.
• Stories. A self-sliding strip of vertical story-style cards, like the stories row people already know.
• Spotlight. One large featured post beside a small grid of recent ones.
• Marquee. Rows of cards that scroll sideways on their own and pause on hover. A lively ticker of recent posts.
• Shop my feed. Tall cards with the caption over the image and a “View post” button on hover, for a shoppable look.
• Photo grid. Bare image tiles with the like and comment counts overlaid on hover, the tight image-only look.

Set it up, tab by tab

The editor uses the same tabs as every Amabrik widget, so nothing is in a surprising place. A live desktop and mobile preview sits beside the settings, and the Save state stays visible while you scroll.

Content

• Sources. Add, connect and remove the accounts to display (covered above).
• Header. Turn the header on or off. With it on, you can toggle the heading text and the Follow button, and choose the heading tag (H1 through H6, or a paragraph) for SEO. The Follow button links straight to your profile when one platform is present, or opens a small chooser when several are. Translate the heading and button text in the Languages section.

Style

• Accent color. A swatch palette plus a custom color picker. The accent is used on the Follow button, the active carousel dot and hover accents.
• Background, Text, Borders. Each is a full-width row. Background opens the color, gradient or image editor. Borders can be left subtle or set to a color.
• Heading and Text typography. Font, weight, size, line height, letter spacing and transform. The heading control appears when the header and its text are on.
• Corner radius. How rounded the cards are, with separate desktop and mobile values.

Display

• Layout. Pick the template (above). Depending on the template you also get Columns (grid, masonry, carousel, wall, shop, photo grid), Slide speed (marquee and stories) and Autoplay (carousel).
• Pagination. For grid, masonry, shop and photo grid, choose Load more or Show all, and set Posts per page.
• Post card. Toggle the caption, the author, the likes and comments, and the platform badge. Shorten captions to clamps long captions to a set number of lines (0 keeps the full text).
• Spacing. Space below the header and below the heading, with desktop and mobile values.

Advanced

• Filters and sorting. Sort by Recent (which interleaves platforms so one busy account doesn’t crowd out the rest), Popular (most likes first) or Random. Optionally cap the total posts shown.
• Languages. Default language, auto-detect, and per-language labels (covered below).

Which stats show, per platform

Amabrik only shows a like or comment count when the platform’s own API returns it. Where a number is not available, the widget hides it rather than guessing. This is what each platform exposes through its API:

• Instagram. Likes and comments both show.
• Facebook. Reactions (shown as the like count) and comments both show, when the Page token has permission to read them.
• TikTok. Likes and comments both show.
• YouTube. Stats are shown where the channel API returns them.
• Pinterest. No like or comment counts. Pinterest does not provide them, so those are always hidden on pins.
• Bluesky. Stats are shown where available.

Captions, the author name and avatar, video play overlays and carousel-album badges work the same across platforms. Turn any of them on or off in Display, then Post card.

Translations and languages

Every label in the widget can be translated, and Amabrik serves each visitor the right language automatically. Open the Advanced tab, then Languages.

• Default language is shown by default and whenever auto-detect finds no match.
• Auto-detect the visitor’s language matches the visitor’s browser language to one of your translations.
• Add a language from the dropdown, then click Translate on it to fill in that language’s Heading, Follow button, View post and Load more labels.

Your posts always appear exactly as you published them. Only the widget’s own labels are translated, so the feed reads naturally in every market. The default language’s labels are edited in the Content tab header.

Tips

• Mix platforms on purpose. Connect several accounts and the Recent sort interleaves them, so a daily YouTube channel won’t bury your weekly Instagram posts.
• Match the template to the space. Carousel and Marquee suit a slim strip near a hero or footer. Grid, Masonry and Social Wall suit a dedicated section or a full feed page.
• Keep cards readable. If captions vary a lot in length, set Shorten captions to a few lines so cards line up.
• Pick your heading tag. If the feed is the main content of a page, an H1 or H2 helps search engines. If it is a side section, use H3 or lower so it does not compete with the page’s real heading.
• Disconnect cleanly. Removing a source or disconnecting an account stops its posts from showing on the next save. Tokens are deleted server-side on disconnect.

FAQ

Why is my feed empty on my site?

A live feed needs at least one connected channel with posts. The most common cause is no source connected, or a YouTube or Bluesky handle that is blank or mistyped. Open the Content tab and confirm a source shows “Connected” (for the one-click platforms) or has a valid handle. The sample posts in the editor preview never appear on your live site, so an empty live feed always points to a source issue.

How often does the feed refresh?

Each save refreshes your feed right away, so a new post you publish then save shows quickly. After that, Amabrik refreshes connected feeds on a schedule (the cached posts are considered fresh for about three hours, and a background job checks for stale feeds regularly), so your site keeps picking up new posts without you touching it.

Does the widget slow my page down?

No. Visitors are never made to wait on a social platform. The posts are baked into your published config and served from the edge cache, so a visitor’s page view never calls Instagram, TikTok or any other API. Images are lazy-loaded, and the widget renders in a Shadow DOM so it cannot clash with your site’s styles.

Can I show posts from a personal account?

Instagram needs a Business or Creator account (free to switch to), and Facebook works with Pages, not personal profiles. TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube and Bluesky work with the public account you connect or name.

Is my account safe? Will it post for me?

The connection is read-only. Amabrik shows your posts and never posts, likes or messages on your behalf. Your access token is AES-256 encrypted, stored only on the server, and never sent to the browser or included in your public snippet.

Can I show several platforms in one feed?

Yes. Connect as many sources as you like and they appear together in one feed. The Recent sort balances them so no single account dominates, and the Follow button lets a visitor pick which profile to follow.

Can I connect X (Twitter) or LinkedIn?

Not at the moment. The supported platforms are Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest and Bluesky.

Which platforms show likes and comments?

Instagram, Facebook and TikTok return both. YouTube and Bluesky show counts where their API provides them. Pinterest does not expose like or comment counts, so those are hidden on pins. The widget never invents a number it was not given.