In June 2012, Facebook announced its tighter integration with the WordPress content management system (self-hosted) by releasing its free “Facebook” plugin available through the WordPress plugin directory.
The plugin allows users of both platforms to automatically publish their WordPress posts to their personal profiles and Pages they manage, as well as “tag” (add the names of) Pages or friends in posts.
What the Facebook plugin actually does
The Facebook plugin for WordPress also creates these widgets that you can add to your sidebars:
- Activity feed: shows friends’ activity, including likes and comments;
- Recommendations: Give readers personalized suggestions for pages.
- Like, subscribe and send boxes – customizable with fonts, sizes, options to show faces.
- Through the plugin settings, you can configure the following options:
- Customizable Like, Subscribe, Submit – can be added at the top, bottom of the post, or both.
- Comment Box – Allows readers to leave comments that will be posted on your timeline, also includes moderation tools for blog admins.
- Recommendations Bar – Adds a popup in a corner at the bottom, displaying personalized recommendations for other posts your readers might be interested in. The reader can “like” posts and add them to their timeline.
- Social Publisher – The key functionality that helps you publish your new posts as updates to your profile or to your Pages. You can also include mentions of other people or Pages, and you can configure where these mentions will be displayed.
On paper (or rather on screen) it all sounds pretty exciting. So we couldn’t wait to test it all out on our sites and see how it really works!
Plugin Installation
The installation process is quite simple. Simply download the plugin from the WordPress directory or install it directly through WordPress. However, you need to make sure that you are running WordPress v.3+.
You will then need to go into the plugin settings to configure it. It has helpful screenshots to show you how to do it. You will need to create your own Facebook app (probably a first for many Facebook users!) to get the app keys that the plugin will use. And to create an app, you’ll need to verify your Facebook account by adding a mobile phone number or your credit card (if you haven’t already).
You will also need to authorize the plugin with your Facebook account login to enable posting to your profile/pages.
I’m not going to rewrite the steps here as I believe the plugin itself and the Facebook Developer Help contain enough information to create a basic app for the plugin to work with.
Plugin Settings
The “Main Configuration” information will be obtained by completing the configuration steps and instructions provided by the plugin.
Next, you’ll want to configure your post and page settings.
I personally would prefer to be able to choose by Post, by Page, or both. However, in this first option, you will use the social sharing options in both or neither. I’ve shown you some of the options below of what the plugin does and how they can be customized to fit your website.
Benefits of using the plugin
- Easily add social sharing buttons (like, send, share, subscribe) to your posts and pages. You can also add these options to the sidebar. HOWEVER: You can set these options in advance using other sharing plugins like AddThis, ShareThis or DiggDigg. These plugins also give you more flexibility on where to place your social share buttons and customization of styles.
- You can offer personalized recommendations to your blog visitors based on the activity of other visitors. This is a very useful option for a blog, as it could keep your visitors there longer, getting them to read one post after another. The recommendation bar at the bottom also makes it easy to share posts via Facebook, so you could potentially get more visibility for your content through readers and visitors. You could get around not using the plugin and offer similar functionality using most popular posts, most commented posts, another social sharing plugin, etc., but I’d say it’s not the same or as interactive.
- You can integrate Facebook comments into your posts, these posts will be visible on the readers profile and thus promote your content to their friends. HOWEVER: If you previously used the WordPress default comments option (and had comments on your blog), enabling this option will override the WordPress comments template. If you used another plugin to manage your discussions (such as DISQUS), you now have 2 options for feedback: through DISQUS and through the Facebook plugin. Personally, I think it’s confusing for your readers. In addition, DISQUS already offers Facebook login/integration, as well as many other options for those who don’t want to use their Facebook account to comment.
- You can automatically publish posts and pages to your profiles and pages that you manage. You can also mention other people and Pages in your posts, which will increase your visibility on Facebook as these updates will be posted to the profiles and Pages you mention. HOWEVER: I have tested this functionality with 2 different Facebook profiles on 2 different websites. Obviously, I followed the instructions several times, but it just wouldn’t post on my profile! Page publishing worked fine (twice in my case, since I use Networked Blogs to syndicate my blogs). But the only way I was able to link my profile was by mentioning myself in the post. So at the moment it seems that this feature is not quite correct.
- If you have Networked Blogs or a similar app that already publishes your posts to your profile and page, you’ll need to decide which option you prefer to use: Facebook plugin or a third-party Facebook app. The benefit of the plugin would be that you can mention other people and pages, not just you and your page. And you can add a custom message when publishing a post to both mention pages and people. A bit like making an update message with a link attached, but through WordPress and this can be scheduled!
The Negatives of Using Facebook Plugin for WordPress
- Slows down your website – Like any other add-on that has to check another website before yours is fully loaded, this plugin will affect your loading speed. In our test, the same blog post dropped from 85 to 81 simply by activating the Facebook plugin.
- Override WordPress Comments – If you previously used WordPress comments, instead of a third-party plugin, your old comment list and form will disappear if you turn on the Facebook Comments option (not if you just use other parts of the plugin). We tested it with Genesis and Themeforest themes, other premium themes may behave differently.
- The options are somewhat conflicting with each other: if you enable Like and then check Submit, you don’t need to enable Submit as the feature will be replicated.
- Activation of Open Graph did not work in the test: it did not allow the publication of posts on my personal profile. If you managed to fix this or know why it happened, please share your feedback! However, Page’s post worked. Also, now I don’t know what will happen to my apps. Was I able to “submit” my post action as per the instructions? I’ll keep trying and update this post if I have more information…
In summary
I will be using the Facebook plugin for WordPress on the TJConsulting blog. I will not post on my page or profile yet until I figure out the integration part of the app. Networked Blogs reliably publishes all my posts to my profile and pages and also creates a tab with a feed of recent posts. On the occasion that I need to share a post with another Facebook user, I’ll do it manually using the regular Facebook share button under each update. I’ll stick with my current commenting arrangements which also allow integration with MailChimp for my newsletter subscription.
However, you may see new boxes added to the Blog sidebar: Personalized Recommendations, Share This on Facebook. Also below the posts and pages you will find the Like, Send and Subscribe options.
Now it’s your turn. Have you tried the new Facebook plugin? Like? How will you use it? Have you managed to integrate it with your App? We look forward to your thoughts!
