FB Social Plugins for WP 1.1 and Wow!

First of all, I must say a big WOW! When I started writing my Facebook Social Plugins WordPress plugin, it was simply a first attempt at a WordPress plugin and was only for my own usage. Still, I made it available to everyone who could be interested. I didn’t expect that much interest! There have been many hundreds downloads so far and I have received a good amount of positive comments. I am glad that the plugin proves useful to all of you!

The biggest surprise I had was yesterday when Christina Warren from Mashable wrote a nice article about how to add the Like button to a WordPress blog. Among other plugins, she mentioned mine and even says she likes it! :) Sorry, I’m kind of excited! I really like Mashable but never expected to ever be mentioned in one of the posts of such a huge website. Anyways, thanks a lot to Christina!

All of this has given me quite some pressure to integrate the requests I have received. The most requested feature was to be able to display the Like button also on the main page. Well, I am pleased to announce version 1.1, which can do just that… and much more! You can now choose exactly where and how the Like button appears. You can now also put it at the top of the article instead of the bottom or both if you’d like. The settings page has completely changed. There is now a section to choose how the button should appear when it’s at the top and when it’s at the bottom. Then, you get a list of pretty much every kind of page you can get on your blog and, for each, you can choose whether to hide the like button or to show it at the top, bottom or both.

I also added a field for the content “pages” so you can enter a comma-separated list of IDs or slugs of pages you don’t want the button to appear on. This can be useful if you have multiple pages and generally want the button to appear on them except for one or a few ones.

Also, I had neglected one of the Like button settings: the layout. There are both the “standard” and the “button & count” layouts. The first one is the most common one, with the button and the “X people like this…” message. The “button & count” layout is a smaller one, with only the button and the number next to it. So, I added this setting.

Another detail: the Like button is now included within a <p> tag with the class “FacebookLikeButton”, no matter if it’s an iframe or an XFMBL tag. Using the class name you can edit your CSS and improve the way it appears on the page.

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Posted in WordPress by Olivier at May 8th, 2010.
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  • http://topsy.com/trackback?utm_source=pingback&utm_campaign=L1&url=http://olussier.net/2010/05/08/fb-social-plugins-for-wp-1-1-and-wow/ Tweets that mention New post: FB Social Plugins for WP 1.1 and Wow! — Topsy.com

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  • http://wearemetro.com/volkswagen Suzanne

    Olivier, thanks so much for this plug-in! I found it from the Mashable article. Spent a loooong time trying to find my App ID so I could enable comments, but gave up. Did get some kind of error messaging on install; then I panicked; then I deactivated; then I looked for other options. Tried to (re)activate yours and voila — seems to be working. I just “liked” myself. Thanks again!

  • http://olussier.net/ Olivier

    Sorry about those errors you got. I omitted a validation and the result was that there would be a bunch of warning messages displayed when first activating the plugin. It still installed fine and there would be no more of these warnings afterward though. I fixed this so new installs won't do that anymore.

  • http://olussier.net/ Olivier

    By the way, to get your app ID, go to http://developers.facebook.com/setup/ and enter your blog's name and URL. Then hit “Create application” and on the next page you will find your App ID.

    If you have already created the application but missed the ID, go to the Developers Dashboard at http://www.facebook.com/developers/apps.php and select your blog on the left. Then look for “Application ID”.

  • http://www.christinawarren.com Christina Warren

    The updates are AWESOME! When writing the post for Mashable, I seriously installed and tried about 12 or 13 different solutions, all with varying degrees of success or lack of success as it were, and I really like that yours was easy to install and that it had support for the other social plugins features as widgets. Thanks for your hard work and keep it up!

  • FL4PJ4CK

    This update just makes the plugin even better. Especially the ability to hide the button on certain pages is pretty useful.

    Thanks!

  • http://marienblogg.no Eivind M.

    Hi! Thanks for a great plugin!

    Have you seen the statistics part of the facebook share (new)-plugin? http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/facebook-sh…

    I really miss that view of what activity my facebook-shares have generated, but unfortunately that plugin isn't compatible with yours. Is it possible to fix that, or alternatively to make a similar stats view in your plugin?

    Thanks again! :)

  • http://twitter.com/KFMicah Micah Silverman

    I have installed the plugin, but I only see the like button even though I supplied a facebook application id. What does the URL need to be in the facebook application definition?

    Thanks for the plugin!

  • http://olussier.net/ Olivier

    The other plugins are available as widget for your sidebar. Go to the widgets page (under Appearance) and you'll see them all there.

  • http://www.alllykatdesign.com Sasha

    Hi Olivier.

    Awesome plugin! Worked fine as soon as I activated it. The only thing is that I just wanted to give it a bit of padding at the top of the like button, but I'm not sure of what the class name is?

    Thank you :)

  • http://olussier.net/ Olivier

    The Like button added to articles is wrapped into a p tag with class name “FacebookLikeButton”, so you can style it as you wish with CSS.

  • Viki

    Hello Olivier. I love this plugin for its simplicity and also for the fact that its full of useful features.

    I had a simple query. Is there a way to embed the plugin a a post or page on WordPress, by way of shortcode, not via a php hook? This would be immensely useful because it needs to be used on only one page and not all.

    Please let me know if there is a way to do that. Thanks.

  • http://olussier.net/ Olivier

    Simple answer is no, there is no shortcode. I did think about adding that feature but then thought it wouldn't really be useful. However, if there is need for it, I'll add it in the next release, though I can't tell when that's gonna be. I've been quite busy with other stuff lately!

  • http://kafepauza.mk Igor

    Hi Oliver.

    I appreciate your work so much and I’m using your Facebook Social Plugins, but it’s not working in IE. In every other browser is working like it should, but in IE it tries to download the script for Facebook. If you have time, please look at it at http://kafepauza.mk

    Thank you very much.

  • http://www.simplewpthemes.com SIN

    Hi Olivier, first – great plugin!
    Tell me please, is there any way to style widget – fb like box, I suppose it cant be done through css since its iframe, what should I do?

  • http://olussier.net/ Olivier

    It is indeed an iframe that loads a page from Facebook, so you can’t style the box itself. All you can do is add a border and change margins around.

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