In June 2012 Facebook announced its tighter integration with the
WordPress (self-hosted) Content Management system by releasing its free
plugin “Facebook” available through the WordPress plugins directory.
The plugin allows users of both platforms to automatically post their
WordPress posts to their personal profiles and pages they manage, as
well as to “tag” (add the names of) pages or friends in the posts.
What the Facebook Plugin Actually Does
The Facebook for WordPress plugin also creates these Widgets that you can add to your sidebars:
* Activity Feed – displays friends’ activity, including likes and comments;
* Recommendations – offers readers personalized suggestions for pages.
* Like, subscribe, and send boxes – customizable with fonts, sizes, options to show Faces.
* Via Plugin settings you can configure the following options:
– Customizable Like, Subscribe, Send – can be added to the top, bottom of the post or both.
– Comments box – allows readers to leave comments that will be
published on their Timeline. Also includes moderation tools for blog
administrators.
– Recommendations Bar – adds a pop up in a corner at the bottom,
showing personalized recommendations for other posts that might interest
your readers. Readers 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 get it all tested on our sites and see how it really
works!
Plugin Installation
The installation process is quite straightforward. Just download the
plugin from the WordPress directory or install directly via WordPress.
You do need to make sure you are running WordPress v.3+ though.
You will then need to go into plugin settings to set it up. It’s got
helpful screenshots to show you how to get it done. You will need to
create your own Facebook App (probably a first one for many Facebook
users!) in order to get App keys that the plugin will use. And, in order
to create an App, you will need to verify your Facebook account by
either adding a mobile number or your credit card (if you’ve not done so
already).
You will also need to authorize the plugin with your Facebook account
login in order to enable post publishing to your profile/pages.
I’m not going to re-write the steps here as I think the plugin itself
and Facebook Developers Help contain enough information to create a
basic App for the plugin to work.
Plugin Settings
“Main Settings” information will be obtained from completing your Setup stages and instructions provided by the plugin.
Next you would want to configure your Post and Page settings.
Personally I would prefer to be able to choose by Post, by Page or
both. However, in this first option, you will either use social sharing
options on both or none. I’ve shown you some of the options below of
what the plugin does and how these can be customized to suit your
website.
Benefits of Using the Plugin
1. It easily adds social sharing buttons (like, send, share,
subscribe) to your posts and pages. You can also add these options to
the sidebar. HOWEVER: you could set up these options previously using
various other sharing plugins like AddThis, ShareThis or DiggDigg. These
plugins also give you more flexibility on where to place social sharing
buttons and customization of styles.
2. You can offer customized recommendations to visitors of your blog
based on the activity of other visitors. This is a very useful option
for a blog because it could keep your visitors there longer, getting
them to read one post after another. The Recommendations bar at the
bottom also makes sharing posts easier via Facebook so potentially you
could get a greater visibility of your content via readers and visitors.
You could get round not using the Plugin and offer similar
functionality using Most Popular posts, Most Commented posts, other
social sharing plugin and so on, but I would say it’s not quite the same
and as interactive.
3. You can integrate Facebook Comments into your posts. These posts
will then be visible on readers’ profiles, therefore promoting your
content to their friends. HOWEVER: if you previously used the WordPress
default comments option (and you had comments on your blog), enabling
this option will override the WordPress comments template so your old
comments, made without the Facebook option will no longer be visible! If
you used another plugin to manage your discussions (like DISQUS), then
you will now have 2 comments options: via DISQUS and via the Facebook
Plugin. Personally, I think it’s confusing for your readers. Besides,
DISQUS already offers Facebook login/integration as well as many other
options for those who don’t want to use their Facebook account when
commenting.
4. You can automatically publish posts and pages to your profiles and
the pages you manage. You can also mention other people and pages in
your posts, which will increase your visibility on Facebook – since
these updates will get published to profiles and pages that you mention.
HOWEVER: I’ve tested this functionality with 2 different Facebook
profiles on 2 different websites and although I followed the
instructions several times, it just wouldn’t publish posts to my
profile! Page publishing worked well (twice in my case as I use
Networked Blogs to syndicate my blogs), but the only way I could get my
profile linked was by mentioning myself in the post. So at the moment,
it looks like this feature isn’t quite right.
5. If you have Networked Blogs or a similar app already publishing
your posts to your profile and Page, you would need to decide which
option you prefer to use: Facebook Plugin or a Facebook 3rd party App.
The benefit of the Plugin would be that you can mention other people and
pages, not just yourself and your page. And, you can add a custom
message when publishing a post for both mentioning of pages and
mentioning of people. A bit like doing an update message with a link
attached, but through WordPress and this can be scheduled!
The Negative Aspects of Using Facebook Plugin for WordPress
1. It slows down your website – Like any other extra
plugin that has to query another website before yours is fully loaded
this plugin will affect your loading speed.
2. It overrides WordPress comments – If you previously used
WordPress comments, rather than a 3rd party plugin, your old comments
list and form will disappear if you activate the Facebook Comments
option (not if you just use other parts of the Plugin). We tested it
with Genesis and Themeforest themes. It might be that other premium
themes will behave differently.
3. The options can conflict with each other – If you activate Like, then tick Send, you don’t need to activate Send because the feature will be replicated.
4. Open Graph activation didn’t work in the test –
It didn’t allow publishing of posts on my personal profile. If you
managed to get this fixed, or know why it happened – please share your
comments! However, Page publishing worked. Also, I’m left in the dark
now as to what will happen to my Apps. I’ll keep trying and will update
this post if I have any more information…
In summary
I will use the Facebook Plugin for WordPress on TJConsulting blog. I
won’t be publishing posts to my Page or Profile with it yet until I
figure out the App integration part. Networked Blogs publishes all my
posts reliably on my profile and pages and also creates a Tab with a
feed of recent posts. On the occasion I need to share a post with
another Facebook user – I’ll do it manually, using the usual Facebook’s
share button under each update. I’ll stay with my current comments’
arrangements that also allow integration with MailChimp for my
newsletter subscription.
You can, however, see new boxes added to the Blog sidebar:
personalized recommendations, Share this on Facebook. Also, below posts
and pages you’ll find Like, Send and Subscribe options.
Now, it’s over to you. Have you tried the new Facebook plugin? Do you
like it? How will you use it? Have you managed to integrate it with
your App? Look forward to your thoughts!
