The Social Feed widget pulls posts from Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), YouTube, Vimeo and any RSS feed, and lays them out on your page as a grid, a masonry wall or a carousel.
This page walks through every section of the widget, in panel order, and says what each setting actually does.
Requirement – This widget is a part of The Plus Addons for Elementor Pro, make sure it’s installed & activated to enjoy all its powers.
Before You Start
- Edition: Pro — Social Feed ships only in The Plus Addons for Elementor Pro. With Pro deactivated the widget does not render at all, and there is no free version of it.
- Prerequisite: Elementor (free) installed and active.
- Widget to enable: go to The Plus Addons > Widgets, search for Social Feed and turn its toggle on.
- Prerequisite: your server must be able to make outbound HTTPS requests. The feed is fetched server-side while the page renders, not by the visitor’s browser.
- No account needed: WP RSS Feed is the one source that needs no token, key or login. All it needs is a feed URL.
Turn the widget on
- Go to The Plus Addons > Widgets.
- Search for Social Feed and turn its toggle on, then save.
Learn via video tutorial
Content Feed: layout, style and the feed items
Everything starts in Content > Content Feed.
- Layout — a row of pictures rather than words. The three choices are Grid (the default), Masonry and Carousel.
- Style — four preset card designs, Style 1 to Style 4, also shown as pictures. Style 1 is the default.
- Social Feeds — a repeater. Each item is one feed. Open the item to choose its Source; click Add Item to mix several feeds in one widget.
Inside a Social Feeds item, Source offers six options: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Vimeo and WP RSS Feed. The default is Facebook. The rest of the item changes to match the source you pick.
The five social sources need a credential. WP RSS Feed does not — it just needs a feed address, which is why it is the source used for the screenshots on this page.
Social Feed Options
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum Posts | A ceiling on how many items the whole widget shows, across all feed items. | 1000 |
| Description Bottom | Moves the post text below the media instead of above it. | Off |
| Media Filter | Default shows everything, Only Media Posts keeps only posts with an image or video, Hide Media Posts drops them. | Default |
| Show Title | Shows the post title. It applies to YouTube, Vimeo and Instagram mentions. | Off |
| Display Id & Exclude | Prints each post’s id in the Elementor editor so you can copy it. | Off |
| Exclude Post Ids | Ids to leave out, separated by commas. | empty |
| Emotions Titles | Shows the reaction labels in the card footer. | Off |
Columns Manage
Grid and Masonry only — the section disappears in the Carousel layout. The dropdown shows a column count, so Column 4 means four cards to a row.
| Device | Default | Cards per row |
|---|---|---|
| Desktop | Column 4 | 4 |
| Tablet | Column 3 | 3 |
| Mobile | Column 2 | 2 |
Columns Gap/Space Between sets the space between cards and has its own value per device.
Filter Option
Grid and Masonry only. Turn Category Wise Filter on and the widget prints a row of filter buttons above the feed, built from the Category (For Filter) value you typed into each feed item. All Filter Category Text (default All) names the button that shows everything, and Category Filter Style, Filter Hover Style and Filter Alignment control how the row looks. The panel carries its own warning here: the filter is not compatible with the RSS source.
Load More / Lazy Load Option
More Post Loading Options is off by default. Set it to Load More for a button, or Lazy Load to keep loading as the visitor scrolls.
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum Posts Display | How many cards are on the page to begin with. | 8 |
| More Posts On Click/Scroll | How many more arrive each time. | 4 |
| Button Text | The button’s label. | Load More |
| Loading Text | What it says while it fetches. | Loading… |
| All Posts Loaded Text | What it says when there is nothing left. | All done! |
Extra Options
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Refresh Time | How often the widget asks the platform for new posts. 1 hour, 2 hour, 6 hour, 1 day or 1 Week. | 1 day |
| Text Limit / Limit On / Limit Count | Trims long post text by characters or words. | On / char / 100 |
| More Text / Less Text | The labels on the expand and collapse links. | Show More / Show Less |
| Display Dots | Adds an ellipsis at the cut. | On |
| Content Scrolling Bar + Height | Gives a long card its own scrollbar at a fixed height. | Off |
| Fancybox Scrolling Bar + Height | The same, inside the lightbox. | Off |
| On Post Click | Do Nothing, Go To Website (open the post on the platform) or Open Fancy Box (open it in a lightbox). | Open Fancy Box |
Performance
Turning Performance on stores the fetched feed in your database, so most visitors get the cached copy instead of triggering a fresh API call. The panel’s own note: “Enable this option to optimize feed loading speed and improve overall performance.” The stored copy is refreshed on the schedule set by Refresh Time in Extra Options.
- Delete — clears the stored copies. Use it after you change a feed’s settings, then switch Performance off and on again so the new settings are stored.
- Save Data — Enable or Disable (the default). The panel describes it as a fallback: “Enable this to store feed data locally. If the API fails, the saved data will be used as a fallback to keep your feed visible.”
Styling
The Style tab has a shared group and one tab per network, so you can set a house style once and then override a single platform:
- Universal — typography and colour for the description, name, time, footer, links, hashtags and icons, applied to every feed.
- FancyBox, Show More Text, Scroll Bar, Load More Style, Filter Category — the shared components.
- Facebook, Vimeo, Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, RSS Feed — per-network overrides.
- Carousel — only when Layout is Carousel.
The Carousel layout
Choose Carousel under Layout and the feed becomes a slider. Columns Manage and Filter Option disappear; the slider’s own settings live in Style > Carousel, behind Desktop / Tablet / Mobile tabs, with Slide Direction and Unique Carousel ID above them.
Unique Carousel ID is the string the Carousel Remote widget matches, so the arrows and dots can sit anywhere on the page.
How It Behaves
- All three layouts render the same feed. The same RSS source produced an eight-card grid, an eight-card masonry wall and an eight-slide carousel; only the arrangement changed.
- Load More adds the number you set. With Maximum Posts Display at 4 and More Posts On Click/Scroll at 4, the page opened with four cards and a Load More button, and one click took it to eight.
- Several feed items merge into one stream. Two sources in one widget came out interleaved in date order, not stacked one after the other.
- The default grid is four across. On a 390px phone the same cards render at the mobile column setting instead.
- The fetch happens on your server. The posts are already in the HTML when the page arrives.
Limitations
- When the connection fails you get a pink card and an HTTP code, not an explanation. With a token that is missing, expired, of the wrong type or simply wrong, the widget renders a card reading Somthing Wrong (that spelling is the plugin’s) followed by 400 and the network name. It does not say which of those things went wrong. The two cases you can tell apart are an entirely empty Access Token, which says Empty Access Token, and X (Twitter), which returns Invalid or expired token. with Error Code : 89.
- The Maximum Posts and Offset Post fields inside a feed item only affect WP RSS Feed. They are shown whatever Source you pick, but the widget reads them only on the RSS path. For every other source the count control is Max Results (default 6), further down the same item.
- Category Wise Filter does not work with WP RSS Feed. The panel says so itself, in a note under Filter Option. Category (For Filter) is also hidden inside an RSS feed item.
- Filter Option and Columns Manage disappear in the Carousel layout. Both sections are hidden when Layout is Carousel; the carousel has its own column settings under Style > Carousel.
- The feed is fetched on your server, and cached. Nothing is requested from the visitor’s browser, so a feed that works on one host can fail on another that blocks outbound requests. Refresh Time (default 1 day) decides how often the request is repeated.
- Items with no image in the feed show a grey placeholder. Many feeds put no picture in the item body at all. Set a Fallback Image if you would rather show something of your own, or switch Image From to Enclosure if the feed uses enclosure tags.
Not verified
So you know exactly what has and has not been checked:
- A feed of real posts from a connected Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube or Vimeo account. This page was checked without ever entering a real access token, API key or password, so what the finished Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube or Vimeo feed looks like once connected was not observed for this revision.
- Lazy Load. Only Load More was exercised; the Lazy Load branch of More Post Loading Options was not.
- What the button says once everything is loaded. After the last click it still read Loading… rather than the configured All Posts Loaded Text. That was one observation on one feed, so treat it as unconfirmed.
- Styles 2, 3 and 4, and the Style tab as a whole. Only Style 1 and Style 2 were rendered, and no styling control other than Unique Carousel ID was exercised.
- Performance, Save Data, Delete and Refresh Time. The cached-feed path was never exercised — what is written here about it comes from the panel’s own notes and defaults.
- On Post Click, FancyBox, the two scrolling bars and Text Limit. Labels and defaults only; no click-through was measured.
- Category Wise Filter. It cannot be used with the RSS source, which was the only source available without an account, so it was never switched on.
- Media Filter, Display Id & Exclude, Exclude Post Ids, Emotions Titles, Description Bottom and Show Title. Labels and defaults only.
- Responsive behaviour. Only one 390px load of the grid was checked; the tablet and mobile column and gap settings were not exercised one by one.
Troubleshooting
The widget is not in the Elementor panel
Either Pro is not active, or the widget is switched off. Check The Plus Addons > Widgets and turn Social Feed on.
I get a pink card reading "Somthing Wrong"
The platform rejected the request. Check the Access Token first — that it is present, that it has not expired, and that it was generated for the right kind of account. If the card says Empty Access Token the field is simply blank.
Nothing loads, and there is no error either
The feed is fetched by your server. If the host blocks outbound requests the widget has nothing to show. Ask your host whether outgoing HTTPS is allowed.
I changed a feed setting and the old posts are still there
The old copy is cached. Open Performance, click Delete, then switch the Performance toggle off and on again.
Columns Manage and Filter Option have vanished
Layout is set to Carousel. Both sections only exist for Grid and Masonry.
