Publishing VR to the web has a lot of advantages. We covered that in detail in our last blog article, “Why We Made WebVR Available to Our Free Users…” Today, we’ll cover how to publish VR to the Web using InstaVR and how to easily share it via Facebook.

It’s a simple 4 step process!

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1. Author Your VR Application in the InstaVR Console

One of the great features of the InstaVR platform is the “write once, publish to many” approach. That same VR experience you’ve created for Google Cardboard or Gear VR or HTC Vive can easily be turned into WebVR, with a single click.

We’ve covered how to author a VR app in a number of different posts. But perhaps the best one for beginners can be found here: “How to Make a VR App Using the Ricoh Theta & InstaVR“.

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2. Package to Web

After Authoring, you’ll proceed to the Packaging section of the Console.

Prior to Packaging, you’ll need to make some decisions. For instance, if you’re a Pro user you can add a Splash Logo that flashes before your VR experience loads, or you can change up the banner on the bottom of your VR experience. (For Free users, both of those default to InstaVR branded logo/banner).

If you plan on sharing your WebVR over Facebook, you can in the Advanced section change the Title & Description of the Facebook preview of your VR experience. You can also change the image preview that appears in your Facebook feedback, which otherwise defaults to your first 360 pano image.

Once you’ve made your choices, click “Make Package for Web”.

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3. Publish Your WebVR

Your WebVR will be packaged very quickly by InstaVR and be available for use almost immediately.

There’s a few ways to publish your WebVR:

1. If you select “Open Hosted Page”, you’ll be taken to a full screen version of your WebVR hosted on our CDN. The benefit of this method of publishing is that it’s simple (you can just email out the URL!) and can be easily switched into Dual View/Headset mode by the end user (if applicable).
2. If you select “QR Code”,  you can have users access the web page by scanning a QR code generated by our system. This is a great distribution model if you’re, for example, at a tradeshow or a conference and want to have many users access the WebVR easily on their own phones.
3. If you select “Web Embed Codes”, and you’re a Pro user, you can host the VR on your own web site. For an example, see the Renwick 360 Gallery web page. Hosting on your own site has a number of benefits, giving you more flexibility in how your present the VR to your audience.

You’ll want to select the publish model that’s most appropriate to your audience and your skill set.

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4. Promote your WebVR

This is probably the most underappreciated step in creating and distributing WebVR. You’ve spent all this time authoring a very cool VR experience, you might as well get as many eyeballs as possible on your project, right? Because you can embed VR directly into web sites and promote easily on platforms like Facebook & LinkedIn, there’s really no excuse for not promoting your project to the appropriate audience.

We’ve recently made the sharing process for Facebook even easier. As seen above in the Packaging section, you can specify exactly for the Facebook feed the: VR experience Title, Description, and Preview image. Using these should improve your click-through rate.

Since most modern browsers, including Safari, support the 360 media generated by InstaVR, you don’t have to worry about end users not being able to view your hard work.

That’s it! As you can see, Authoring + Publishing + Promoting WebVR is easy with InstaVR. Even if you’re using us to publish specifically for another platform, you should definitely consider one-click publishing to Web for an additional distribution model.

And don’t forget to sign up for our August Facebook Sharing Contest here: http://instavr.co/contest