Socialize This: Simple Facebook Connect, WordPress Plugin

In the last article for the blog building series, we looked at auto-syndication of content to 3 main services namely OnlyWire, Ping.fm and Twitterfeed. Inevitably within the mix, Facebook is one of the targeted social network. Be it you decide to use all 3 syndicators or just one, you should be able to target Facebook with no issues. Of course, Facebook remains one of the most popular social network (if not the most popular). The number of developed APIs connecting other social networks to Facebook is a testament to that fact. Examples include:

• Twitter to Facebook
• Brightkite to Facebook
• WordPress to Facebook
• Foursquares to Facebook
• YouTube to Facebook
• Blip.fm to Facebook
• and the list goes on.

What if you do not wish to use any syndicators? You can still target Facebook with plugins. There are a number of plugins to select from depending on what you wish to do. For pushing my latest blog entry from my self-hosted WordPress platform to Facebook, I prefer Wordbook among many other options. Reason? well, mainly for the thumbnails that is auto-generated on my Facebook wall.

nimopress.com to Facebook via Wordbook

Needless to say, Facebook with all its users, with be a good place to start if you are thinking about increasing your readership through the use of social media. If your site is based on the most popular blog publishing platform i.e. WordPress, you are in luck. There are plugins built for other blog platforms and CMS but you will be spoilt for choice with the options for WordPress.

The bottom line is Facebook Connect plugins is one way to go and perhaps the best start point on socializing your site. Instead of having readers / users register as a user for your site (another one out of the millions), Facebook Connect allows them to login to your site with their Facebook account. The key advantage for them is one less ‘registration’. For you, apart from socializing your site and increasing reader engagement, you could reduce the chances of SPAM on your site.

Simple Facebook Connect for WordPress is one of the many options available today. We will look at other options in future articles but I do like Simple Facebook Connect for various reasons. Although Simple Facebook Connect is perhaps the newest and youngest plugin (expect bugs) developed for Facebook Connect, it brings a modular setup to the plugin. This way, you can choose which options you want to integrate on your site and ignore those that you do not. Good for clutter control and those who are concern with plugins slowing down their site.

Simple Facebook Connect - Modular options

All options are widgetize and require minimal coding so the Simple Facebook Connect plugin should be idiot-proof. To get Simple Facebook Connect working on your site, you need WordPress 2.9+ installed. The plugin is not guaranteed to work on older installations of WordPress so do upgrade before you install this.

Features:

• Easy to install and use.
• Modular. Only use the pieces you want to use.
• Integrates easily into any theme.
• Simple control panel, only has the options you need for the pieces you activate.
• Secure. Uses the latest WordPress coding techniques to eliminate tricky security problems.

Current sub-modules:

• Comment using Facebook Identity (with FB avatar support)
• Automatically Publish new posts to Facebook Profile
• Manually Publish posts to FB Profile or Application/Fan Page
• Login with your Facebook credentials
• New user registration with Facebook credentials
• Share button and Shortcode
• Connect Button Widget and Shortcode
• User Status Widget and Shortcode
• Live Stream Widget and Shortcode
• Bookmark Widget and Shortcode
• Find us on Facebook button Widget and Shortcode
• Fan Box Widget
• Fan Count Chicklet and Widget

Publishing to Facebook and commenting on restricted sites using Facebook login credentials is sweet. The ability to pull comments back from your published post on Facebook back into your site will be even better. The author of the plugin has promised this in the near future.

Future sub-modules:

• Pull comments back from Facebook published posts into your site

Below are some screenshots of the widgetized sub-modules in action. You can download Simple Facebook Connect on the WordPress Plugin Repository.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 12:00 and is filed under pressed and tagged with blip, bottom line, cms, facebook, foursquares, latest blog entry, readership, social networks, syndicators, youtube. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.