How To Publish Instant Articles

Instant Articles was designed to create a faster and more engaging reading experience for Facebook users while also giving publishers an additional source of advertising revenue. The plugin launch was announced by both the WordPress VIP team and Facebook’s media relations team. Despite the “WordPress VIP” branding, the tool supports all self-hosted WordPress websites, not only VIP accounts.

At the same time, Google introduced AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), an open-source project focused on speeding up the mobile web and improving page formatting for smartphones and tablets. Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, noted that traditional news websites are becoming less central as distributed content — content published directly on external platforms — continues to grow.

Automattic also planned to release the plugin as a free solution for all WordPress users ahead of the broader rollout of Instant Articles. A dedicated WordPress plugin was introduced to help millions of publishers integrate their content directly with Facebook.

Although the plugin was not initially available through the official WordPress repository, publishers could still access it through GitHub. Meanwhile, Apple entered the digital publishing space by replacing Newsstand with the Apple News app, further increasing competition in mobile content distribution.

At first, Instant Articles only supported major publishers such as NBC, BuzzFeed, and MTV. Facebook later encouraged all interested WordPress publishers to review the plugin documentation and FAQs before joining the platform. By publishing content directly on Facebook, however, news organizations also gave up part of their control over content distribution and audience relationships.