Integrate Facebook into WordPress Seamlessly & Effortlessly
We’ve been working on some things under the radar over here at UpThemes and have been planning some big announcements. One of those announcements is finally here, and the big news is that we’ve been working on a new Facebook plugin for WordPress (and BuddyPress) that is now available as a BETA release absolutely free of charge!
So what makes this plugin different than the rest? Here are the features of WP Facebook (with more to come soon!):
Social Plugin Widgets
Integrate Facebook’s Social Plugins into your WordPress blog using WP Facebook’s built-in, customizable widgets.
Facebook Open Graph Integration
With Facebook’s recent release of the new Open Graph, you can now update your fans on Facebook when something on a page they’ve liked has changed! WP Facebook puts your posts, pages, and other types of content on Facebooks Open Graph where they belong!
WordPress Account Creation/Login via Facebook
Allow users to register on your site by having them log in through Facebook! Make it easy for users to connect to your WordPress blog and allow them to use advanced Facebook-exclusive features like attaching comments when using the “Like” button, showing which of your user’s friends are connected to your website, and allowing them to comment on posts on Facebook!
Replace WordPress Comments with Facebook Comments
If users are logged in via Facebook, you can choose to replace WordPress comments with Facebook’s Comment System, bringing the discussion to the place where people are actually talking – Facebook! Spark some conversation by taking the convo to your users’ friends and families.
Allow Users to Post Comments Directly to Facebook!
Using the Like Button widget or Facebook comments widget, users can post comments on your articles and content directly to their stream!
Use Shortcodes to Embed Facebook Widgets
Want to place a Like button directly in an article? Simply use a shortcode to quickly place the button exactly where you want it! All social plugins have shortcode support enabled.
For Developers – Custom Open Graph Hooks
Got a custom post type that needs to be registered differently on Facebook’s Open Graph? Simply use a hook for “type” to modify how your post is identified by Facebook’s new API.
Plugin Support Now Available with EVERY Theme Purchase and Club Subscription
Do you have questions about integrating WP Facebook into your website? Purchase any theme or club membership to receive forum support for WP Facebook, as well as the theme or membership package you’ve purchased.
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I love the facebook comments idea! I look forward to seeing this catch on. Well done, guys!
This looks wonderful. Can’t wait to try it!
Awesome plugin!
There’s one thing missing though.. inserting links in your facebook comments, good for including youtube videos and having the ability to view it on the same page. That is a world class feature, can’t find this option anywhere except echo comments but they charge monthly fees.
Wow,good news.I love free…
Very exciting! I love connecting sites and APIs. Seems like you’ve thought of most everything we’d want to do with facebook.
Is there any hesitation to giving away portions of your site to facebook. Also giving your and your users data to facebook to use how where when and how they choose? With all the privacy concerns going on could this facebook plugin seem like an intrusion to some? It’s like people are lining up to do facebooks market research for them – the open graph seems like a way for them to extend their dominion online.
Evan, good questions all around.
The biggest thing to remember is that most of this plugin’s job is to allow users already on Facebook to sign in to your site and easily share your content with friends and family.
The only data being shared with Facebook is content from your page and identifying information that allows people to find your content and receive updates on it once they’ve Liked it (via Facebook’s Like button).
The big thing about the Open Graph API is being able to tell people what kind of content you have, whether it’s a product, blog post, sports team, etc., Facebook wants to be able to extend its own functionality to make it easier on website owners to construct websites and share their content.
Now, to be fair, if you replace your blog’s comment system with Facebook, then yes, you’re giving away that data because at the moment, we are not storing all comments from Facebook to the WordPress comment system, but that will soon change with an update.
That was pretty long-winded but I hope you see that the plugin mainly connects with those already on Facebook who have agreed to give their private info to Facebook, which they can now use to connect to your website, instead of registering separately.
Totally understand. I wan’t trying to critique this plug-in really cause It looks awesome, just just raising the general f-book flak. Thanks for the clarity.
Adding the comments through facebook to the wordpress database would be an interesting improvement. I’d see that as a win-win. Then there wouldn’t be different content for those logged in and those not. And non fb users could converse/discuss with facebookers?
Awesome! Thanks for the plugin. This is exactly what I was hoping someone would develop.
Awesome!!
Thank you Chris!! I`m already using your “Gallery” Theme. All your stuff is amazing =) Thank you so much!!
Yes, that’s all good, but seriously, how long would it take to implement this? Do you have to be a professional webmaster or can I just do it as a newbie and actually succeed? How should I get started?
It takes about 10 minutes to download/install the plugin, register a Facebook application and copy/paste the app ID and secret key into the plugin settings page. That’s it.
I have a WP website where I let other users participate; normally, they’ll open an account.
If I install the plugin and allow them to login with FB credentials, will they be registered as users in my WP database?
(will I be able to send them announcements via email like I do with my WP users?)
It will register an account for them with WordPress.
Superb!!!
Excelent plugin, and has the most features!
For next releases, maybe a way to list the events a user is creating, or a page? 🙂
Couldn’t install it 🙁 it throws this error every time – Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘{‘ in /nfs/c01/h09/mnt/1051/domains/webmakaleleri.com/html/wp-content/plugins/wp-facebook/wp-facebook.php on line 213 –
Are you seeing this error with the latest version of the plugin? IT could be a problem with an older version of the plugin
Hello, just tried out the plugin, so far so good. I would love though if when you login first time with the Facebook connect that the user account is created and a welcome email is sent to the user.
Also, on new registrations, the site can get their real email adresse, as well as their avatar.
Hi Chris! Tryed to install this on my Wp, and I get this error:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function has_post_thumbnail() in /home/a3281366/public_html/web/wp-content/plugins/wp-facebook/wp-facebook.php on line 349
I don`t have any programming knowledge, so I have no idea what that means. Just thought I should let you know in case is a bug 😉
Do you have the latest version of the plugin installed?
I donloaded the plugin from this page a week ago. I think is the last version.
I`ll keep trying 😉
PS: I love Gallery. Thank you so much!!
I am getting an error on line 213 (Parse error: syntax error, unexpected). I have deleted and re-downloaded from the website to make sure I have the latest version. Still no luck.
Same here.
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I like this plugin a lot!
Thanks for making it free 🙂
Plugin was working on the website as described, but when attempting to login under the user with admin privileges, was taken to a greatly reduced subscriber level dashboard. I tried simply removing the plugin through ftp in hopes that would break it and cause it to be deactivated. No such luck.
Looking into that users usermeta table through phpmyadmin, it now showed the privilege level of the admin user as subscriber – a:1:{s:10:”subscriber”;s:1:”1″;}. Does your plugin rewrite the privileges section of users?
I changed the admin user usermeta to a:1:{s:13:\”administrator\”;b:1;}, which logs me in, but now shows me as not having ‘sufficient permissions to access’ the dashboard.
I’m about to remove all plugins and see how that goes. Thankfully this is a test site and not our live version. Any suggestions?
Todd, yes, we found a bug that occurs when the plugin attempts to create a new user that is authenticating through Facebook. The plugin tries to update the user meta data but if there is no user ID it sets the ID to 1, which is always the primary admin user. We will be releasing an update for this today.
Chris, can you let us know when you release the next version of the plugin please?
The latest version has been released.
Thank you for this wonderful plugin, but there seems to be no documentation on how to create the FB App? Is that something that is available in the support forum, or am i missing something?
Creating the Facebook app is actually very easy. Visit the WP Facebook page in your WordPress admin and there will be instructions within that page.
I installed the WP Facebook from the plugin manager within wordpress. I drag and drop the widgets, but they do not appear on my site. Is there a preferred installation procedure or is the plugin possibly conflicting with my theme?
Are the widget zones visible on your website?
Interesting plugin. Just trying. Keep up the good work.
sorry I don’t get this: I click the free download button and I get a form saying: “You are purchasing: WP Facebook” ???
WTF!
I filled in the form and it seems its jsut registration, you really should remove the “You are purchasing: WP Facebook” text!
Apologies for that, the plugin is still free, just an error in our checkout process.
WoW…!!! So many fiture in one plugin… Graet Work..!! Dam.. I can’t belive it… I will test it now
Just downloaded the plugin and can’t wait to see what it does. Looking forward to more cool themes.
I like the idea, except that I don’t like to mix my facebook comments with my blog comments, because it gets too confusing. Is there a way just to implement the login/register account functions of facebook but not replace the comments system?
What I don’t like, is people going to facebook to read my blog posts and comment, instead of my website! thats the part I don’t like about that idea. I actually like the idea of registering for my site with their existing facebook accounts, but if blog content and comments are on facebook, then users will no longer wish to visit my blog, and that will bring my visitor count WAYY down, and thats what I’m afraid of.. otherwise I love this idea
what i would rather have, is when I make a blog post, have a comment sent to my facebook account saying something like
[blogname] posted to his blog [blogtitle]
then after that have a short URL to the blog entry so people could read the entry from my blog. I don’t want people to be able to read the blog post on facebook, or make comments to it on facebook, I would rather have them actually goto my site to read it and make comments. Its one thing to have comments read on facebook, thats fine, but they should have to goto my site to reply, otherwise they won’t ever go to my site, ya know?
This plugin would be awesome for my site if I could get it to work! It’s described as exactly what I would like. It uploaded and activated without a problem. I filled in the activation keys etc and it all seemed to be saved successfully. But there is nothing on the site. I’ve written some test posts to try see how it works, but there is nothing coming up. help??
I can’t get it to work. If I try to active the plugin it gives me a fatal error and the following message:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function add_theme_support() in /customers/atlanticsentinel.com/atlanticsentinel.com/httpd.www/wp-content/plugins/wp-facebook/wp-facebook.php on line 25
On line 25 in wp-facebook.php is this:
add_theme_support(‘post-thumbnails’);
I’ve tried tinkering with it, replacing “post-thumbnails” with “post-thumbnail” or just “thumbs” which is what my theme uses, but to no avail. If I simply remove the line and active the plugin, the whole website turns blank.
Love the plugin, but can’t get WordPress and Facebook comments together. Would love to have both. Selecting this option though does not display the Facebook comments, only the WordPress comments.
It work fine when replacing WordPress comments though.
Any ideas what the problem may be?
Same problem as iaan. Any solutions?
Otherwise, great plugin.
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