Integrating Facebook with My WordPress Blog

I set out today to try to get facebook connect working on my blog. My intention was, simply, to allow you to comment on my blog with your facebook credentials. This turned out to be a rabbit hole as my assumption was that the most popular and well rated plugins would be trivial to install and setup. I was wrong.

I started by trying to get WP-FaceBookConnect to work. After a couple of hours of trying several different permutations, I gave up. I could not get the connect url for facebook to populate correctly based on the plugin. Then, I ran across this article at Building Camelot. I had run across Disqus in the past and like it. It syncs with wordpress. So, I didn’t see a disadvantage. Additionally, it gave me Facebook and Twitter integration. Their plugin setup was a breeze. As opposed to all of the others that I tried, it actually worked. So, for anyone that wants to get facebook integration off of the comment feed for their blog. I highly recommend it.

After I got Disqus up, I decided to update my avatar and profile picture. In the process, I upgraded my wordpress to 2.8. It needed to be done and I had been procrastinating doing it. That led me back to Wordbook. I have tried to get Wordbook to work several times with no success. I decided that since I had upgraded, it was worth another try. This time, I was able to get it to save settings and work. Only, the result was disappointing. It posted some little blurbs on my profile page, but it didn’t hit the news feed. Since my goal was to drive more traffic to my site, I needed something better. That is when I found FullCircle. The setup was smooth and simple and it actually worked! That was a surprise on this day. FullCircle actually posts the title, a link, and the first x characters of your blog post in the news feed. Obviously, I recommend it highly.

I hope this helps some other folks find the right plugins for the job. It was pretty discouraging until I ran across the right tools.