I just discovered a Facebook plugin for WordPress and it’s exactly what I’ve been after for ages.

You’ll have noticed a lot of marketers now adding these rather nice Facebook comments streams above the regular blog comments area.

These comments not only display neatly on your page, they also virally feed your blog posts through Facebook so that even more people will see your latest post, comment on it and pass it around.

Here’s how the Facebook plugin looks on a page … you can scroll down to the bottom of this page to see it in action for real:

Now anything that uses Facebook usually gets a little bit complicated, in that you often have to create a Facebook application to get started with pulling in your personal information from the social networking site.

That would make most people run a mile … but you really don’t need to!

All you are in fact doing is creating a password … a connection … between Facebook and the plugin so that they can interact, it’s no worse than that however techie it looks!

The Facebook plugin that I’m using is called Facebook Comments and the good news is that it won’t cost you anything.

I did actually leave a donation for the developer because it’s exactly what I’ve been after and it was so easy to install that he just saved me a load of wasted time

Also, the instructions on his own Facebook plugins page are extremely good, as are the FAQ.

I have created a short video below showing you exactly how to install the Facebook plugin and how it works:

Facebook plugin number 2

I’ve called this a Facebook plugin, but it’s actually more a bit of coding.

It’s the nice Facebook fan page widget that I have on the left hand side of this blog showing who follows my business page on the social networking site:

Once again, this stuff look frightening if you don’t know how to do it, but it really is quite simple when someone shows you what to do.

Never be put off by the techie stuff, it’s usually more straightforward than it looks.

You first need to head for the Facebook Developers Social Plugins page.

This is where you can get your hands on lots of nice social networking goodies such as ‘Like’ buttons and activity feeds.

As I’ve found to my cost however (usually in wasted time!) these plugins work very well with static websites, but you can get some clashes if you start to mix and match plugins within the same blog.

I’ll quote Graham Swan here, as he explains the reasons for the clashes very clearly:
…this plugin loads Facebook’s new JavaScript library while other plugins load the old library. On pages where both libraries are loaded, only the first plugin will work properly. (The authors of the aforementioned plugins need to update their code.)

We’re going to use the Like Box social plugin to create the widget I have used on my blog … I like to see the faces, I think it makes the site look busy and well used

All this Facebook social plugin needs to get started is an idea of how many connections (ie faces) you want to display and what width (in pixels) you want your table to be.

This will largely be a process of trial and error to get the widget to fit nicely on your blog, so don’t be afraid to mess around at this stage … you can’t break anything!

Once you’ve added your dimensions, decide if you want to show your stream of comments or not, whether you want dark or light styling and if you want to display the Facebook header.

When you click on ‘Get Code’ you’ll be offered some code which looks like this:

<iframe src=”http://www.facebook.com/plugins/likebox.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fplatform&amp;width=292&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;connections=10&amp;stream=true&amp;header=true&amp;height=587″ scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ style=”border:none; overflow:hidden; width:292px; height:587px;” allowTransparency=”true”></iframe>

You are also offered an alternative code option using XFBML, which is basically Facebook’s adapted version of HTML.

Opt for the iframe version for the reasons you’ll see in the video below.

In the video, I’ll show you exactly how to create your own customized Facebook social plugin, what to do if it doesn’t fit your blog template and how to install it simply without needing any technical knowledge … just follow the simple step-by-step process on the screen.

I’m always on the lookout for new social networking plugins, so if you know of any, please leave a comment below.

Another viral Facebook tool that I’m using to build followers on my Facebook page is Traffic Zombie which you can see in use here … it’s an interesting technique and one which I’m trailing in Giveaways as an alternative to having to opt in.

I’d be really grateful if you made a comment on this post so that more people can find out how easy it is to use these great Facebook plugins.

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