I used to use a DailyBooth widget to feed fresh pictures to the sidebar on my website, but I was sending in raw photos via email since I didn’t like their iPhone app.  Then I discovered Instagram.  I loved that I could add some really cool filters and effects to the photos after they’re shot and I love that it uploads to multiple social networks.  Also, since Instagram produces square photos, I don’t have to worry about horizonal vs. vertical composition.  To get the pictures to my website’s sidebar, I used a plugin call Instapress. Instapress resets my picture cache every five minutes for when I take new shots (you can set it for longer at five minute intervals) and gives me lots of control over their presentation on the site:

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When I decided I wanted to upload photos to the sidebar on a second website as well, I wanted to stick to the Instagram format, but I also wanted the choice whether or not to upload to the second website, since it was subject-specific and not all my Instagram shots are appropriate to the site.  Since the Instapress widget is an add on feature that takes advantage of Instagram’s API, there’s no provision for that in the Instagram app. I didn’t want to have to use a second app, and I didn’t want to have to carry two devices around for Instagram or to go into the settings every time I wanted to change sites… yuck!

Instagram, as I mentioned, has provisions to upload to other social networks, as I mentioned earlier, and one of those social networks is Flickr.  So I hunted a bit and found a great sidebar widget for Flickr called Simple Flickr Photostream.  I had to monkey with it a bit to get the photos the size I wanted (notice in the photo I added width=”200″ to the code in the tag box).

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So from there all I did was set up a Flickr account specifically for my second blog and set the user ID in the widget and Instagram to that Flickr account. When I want the shots to go to the second site, I use the slider switch that shows up in the iPhone app before sending the shot to select sending it to Flickr and it goes to both sites. If I don’t select Flickr, it goes only to my personal website. It’s almost perfect ’cause I can upload my shots to my personal site or to both my personal site and the second site with one app in one set of actions!

Almost perfect: The only “one step further” thing I’d like to figure out is how to make an option to select one site or the other vs. just one site or both. I currently don’t have a need to send Instagram shots to the second site only, but it would be nice. My only way of doing that now is to upload to both sites and then delete the shot from Instagram, leaving it on the Flickr account alone, which works, I guess, but it’s kinda clunky that way.