There’s many reasons you’d want to set up Facebook Comments on your WordPress site. Here’s some…
- Traffic generation. When people leave a Facebook comment on your WordPress site, by default they also share that comment on their Facebook profile. This means that all their friends see the comment, and the link to your site! This can make your site go viral.
- More interaction. I believe that website visitors are more likely to leave a Facebook comment rather than fill in the traditional WordPress comments section.
- SEO. When ranking websites, Google is placing a greater emphasis on social networking activity. If your site is getting lots of links from different Facebook users, it will rank higher in the search engines.
There’s two steps to setting up Facebook Comments on WordPress. First you need to install the plugin and then you need to configure all the settings.
(Note: This WordPress plugin was closed down on October 19, 2018 due to Guideline Violations and is no longer available for download)
Installing the Facebook Comments for WordPress plugin
- Login to your WordPress Dashboard
- Select ‘Add new‘ under the Plugins section
- In the Search field, type in ‘Facebook Comments for WordPress‘ and click on the ‘Search Plugins‘ button
- In the list of results, find the ‘Facebook Comments for WordPress‘ plugin and click on ‘Install Now‘
- After the plugin has installed, click on ‘Activate Plugin‘
Configuring the Facebook Comments for WordPress plugin
- After the plugin has activated, you should see a message (in red) saying that you need to “set a valid application ID and application secret”. Click on the link provided within the message to go to the plugin’s Options page
- Once in the Options page of Facebook Comments for WordPress, look for the link that reads “Create a Facebook app“. Here’s the url: https://www.facebook.com/developers/createapp.php
- Once at Facebook’s ‘Create Application’ page, give your application a name (in the field provided). Any name will do; I like to name it after my blog.
- Select ‘Agree‘ to Facebook’s terms and conditions (unless you don’t!) and then click on ‘Create Application‘
- You’ll then see a Basic Information page about your new app. Fill in all the necessary fields and click ‘Save Changes‘
- A page should appear with all the IDs, keys and secrets for your newly created app. Copy the Application ID. Go back to the Options page of Facebook Comments for WordPress on your blog and paste in the Application ID into the appropriate field
- Next, copy the App Secret and paste it into the appropriate field in the Options page on your blog
- Check the rest of the settings to see if you’re happy with them and when you’re ready, click on the ‘Update Options‘ button
Congratulations! Facebook Comments are now active on your WordPress site!
If you’ve found this tutorial helpful or would like to leave some feedback, please leave a comment below. Thanks 🙂
John, an excellent how to article is very detailed and clearly written, a special thank you for the video
Thanks Namco!
A good article. Is it possible to do the same thing with a Facebook Fan Page, or company page. I don’t know how to distinguish the difference in the settings.
Hi Daniel, thanks for the question! I must admit though, I’m not sure if I understand what you are asking.
I could be misunderstanding the setup, but what I thought was that when I implement these steps, my website will have a facebook “Comments” setup that will insert the comments straight to my facebook page, so that other facebook users can see them.
What I wanted, is to have it go to a business FB page instead of my personal FB page.
Or am I mistaken and it doesn’t work that way at all.
Appreciating your help.
Daniel.
Hi Daniel, yeah, it doesn’t work that way 🙂
Any Facebook comments made on your WordPress page, stay only on that page they were made on, and are not seen on your Facebook page or profile.