In June 2012, Facebook announced its tightest integration with WordPress’ (self-hosted) content management system by releasing its free “Facebook” plugin available through the WordPress Plugin 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 “tag” (add the names of) pages or friends to 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 activity from friends, including likes and comments;
• Recommendations: Give readers personalized suggestions for pages.
• Like, subscribe and send boxes – customizable with fonts, sizes, options to display faces.
• Through the plugin settings, you can configure the following options:
• Customizable Like, Subscribe, Send – Can be added to the top, bottom of the post, or both.
• Comment Box – Allows readers to leave comments that will be posted to your timeline, also includes moderation tools for blog administrators.
• Recommendations Bar – Adds a corner popup at the bottom, displaying personalized recommendations for other posts your readers might be interested in. The reader can like the 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 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 try 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’ll 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 publishing of posts 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 application for the plugin to work.

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 would personally prefer to be able to choose by Post, by Page, or both. However, in this first option, you will use the social sharing options on both or neither. I have shown you some of the options below of what the plugin does and how they can be customized to suit your website.

Benefits of using the plugin

1. 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 social sharing buttons and styling customization.
2. 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 post after post. The recommendation bar at the bottom also makes it easy to share posts through Facebook, so you could potentially get more visibility for your content through readers and visitors. You can avoid using the plugin and offer similar functionality by using the most popular posts, most commented posts, other social sharing plugins, etc., but I would say it’s not the same or as interactive.
3. You can integrate Facebook comments into your posts, these posts will be visible on the readers’ profile and thus promote your content among 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 will now have 2 comment options: through DISQUS and through the Facebook plugin. Personally, I think it’s confusing to your readers. Additionally, DISQUS already offers Facebook login/integration, as well as many other options for those who don’t want to use their Facebook account for commenting.
4. 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 multiple times, but it just wouldn’t post to my profile! Page publishing worked fine (twice in my case, as 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.
5. 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 for both mentioning pages and mentioning 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. Slows down your website – Like any other add-on plugin that has to query 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 just by activating the Facebook plugin.
2. Overrides WordPress Comments – If you previously used WordPress comments, rather than a third-party plugin, your old comment list and form will be gone 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.
3. The options are somewhat conflicting with each other: if you activate Like and then check Send, you don’t need to activate Send, since the function will be replicated.
4. Activating Open Graph didn’t work in the test: it didn’t allow posting to my personal profile. If you managed to fix this or know why it happened, please share your feedback! However, the Page post worked. Also, now I don’t know what will happen to my apps. Was I able to “submit” my post action as instructed? 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 to 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 will do so manually using the usual Facebook share button below each update. I’ll stick with my current comment arrangements that 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 under 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? You like? How will you use it? Have you managed to integrate it with your App? We look forward to your thoughts!