Of everything you put into social networks, photos are one of the easiest and most rewarding parts to reclaim for your own site. Because we shipped Sunlit 2.2 this week, I want to share a guide for starting a new photo blog that you will actually consistently post to.
The first step isn’t technical. It’s a commitment to posting regularly on your own blog instead of first reaching for Instagram or Snapchat. A commitment to posting to a place you control, to a place you can look back to years from now as an archive of your best photos at your own domain name, regardless of what social networks come and go over the years.
If you already have a hosted blog on Micro.blog or WordPress, you can use that. If you want to start with a new space just for photos, use Micro.blog and click Plans → New Microblog. In the Micro.blog settings, you can map a custom domain to your new photo blog such as photos.yourdomain.com.
Instagram will let you download an archive of all your Instagram photos. If you use macOS, install Micro.blog for Mac. Choose File → “Import from Instagram”. Select the media.json file in the archive you received from Instagram, and Micro.blog will let you select some or all of your photos to import, preserving the dates and captions on your new photo blog. See this help page for more details on importing from Instagram.
To post a new photo, use the official Micro.blog iOS app or our new companion app Sunlit. There are also great third-party apps such as Icro for iPhone and MarsEdit for macOS.
When you post a photo with some text but no title, that photo will show up directly in the Micro.blog timeline.
Another option is to connect OwnYourGram with Micro.blog. OwnYourGram can watch your Instagram account for new photos, then copy them automatically to Micro.blog. Before setting up OwnYouGram, make sure to add your Instagram username in Micro.blog under Account → “Edit Apps”.
For an overview video of the new version of Sunlit, see my post from yesterday. Happy photo blogging!
Sean Harding My cat thanks you for the feature in your post 😂
Ron Chester How does one do this with a hosted website and no Apple devices?
Manton Reece @Ron Everything works the same except for using Sunlit. We are about to roll out some web improvements for photos, but in the meantime I recommend using Quill to upload multiple photos in a post.
Greg McVerry @Ron A hosted website and no Apple devices. I think the only answer is, "The correct way."
Christopher Wilson great advice, I stopped with instagram a while back but I ought to move things across.
Christopher Wilson @GR36 what’s a Mac 😜 seriously though I’ll jump on that.
Ron Chester @jgmac1106 Sorry, I don't understand. I'm not a web developer. It was a sincere question, as I described my own situation.
Rob Bazinet just wanted to point out something to you. I came across this blog post today - www.daniellemorrill.com/2018/09/c... Micro.blog is mentioned in the comments. I thought you might be interested.
Manton Reece @rbazinet Thanks for the link! Looks like a good discussion.
💬 John Philpin @rbazinet comment from Micro blog member @sharding ... rapping with Brad Feld no less .... who often has interesting insights of his own ... And I BET if he tried out MB he would be all over it ... There is a lot more to be said in short form that gets forgotten if stillShort form is technically as hard as long form ....I'm looking at you as well short form podcasts ...
As a VC it's a concept that Brad would get ...
Different VCs / Investors have minimum thresholds of what they invest because at some point it is just as easy to invest 10 million as 1 million .. so with a 100 million portfolio .. 10 10 million investments are easier than 100 1 million investments ...
Now think blogs ... If it takes 30 minutes to write a long form blog and another 15 to publish it, format it, promote it, share it .. then I would understand that writing a 3 minute post and spending an extra 15 doing 'the rest' is not good ROI ... So 'i only do long form' becomes your position ... But if it takes 3 minutes to write and the rest is just managed automatically for you ... Well now ... That is a game changer .... Kind of like using AI to filter investment proposals, to allow you to do more .... Incrementally .... I will dig that link out.
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Khaled Abou Alfa A photos page hopefully that will allow me to see just my photos...in a grid? That's really is the last major item that would kill it for me online. After that it's just polishing what's there :).
Manton Reece @kaa Agreed, something like that would be great. (I'm going to add something to the API so that apps can better show just your photos, too.)
💬 John Philpin 
Mango Umbrella Hey Manton, for some reason my micro blog stopped syncing from my own json feed (https://doleearts.com/blog:json), but I couldn't find out why. Any help?
Manton Reece @doleearts It looks like your account is using /posts:json, which redirects using a relative path. If you can change that redirect to a full URL it should start working again.