Facebook Recommendations Bar for WordPress!

FB Recommendations bar creates an extra force on readers to read other posts that are being shared, liked or recommended on facebook.The plugin is created and developed by facebook developers with a view to helping website owners to integrate their content a bit more with people on social media thus increasing more conversions, page rank on search engines and directories. Both the blogger and wordpress users are using this plugin hence it creates an extra byte across a single post and tempts users to move on the next post that is shared by other people. It's too easy to create a recommendation bar with Facebook Developer for any regular html website and you have full control to develop the plugin using advanced snippet (HMT5, XFBML).

There are some certain actions used in this plugin to make it more flexible, optimized and user friendly. The Bar uses two actions Like and Recommend to let people share a content, also other options (max-age, num-recommendations, read-time, side, trigger) allows you to create a dynamic recommendations Bar. Once you install JavaScript SDK on your site you can freely go through HTML5 attributes to control the plugin as you see we've used both JavaScript SDK and HTML5 attributes to make this plugin workable on Blogger. Anyway today we'd show you all how you can install FB Recommendations bar on your self hosted WordPress blog. It's too easy and more simpler than the process for Blogger.

Blogger Users Read Following Tutorial »

• Read: Install FB Recommendations Bar on Blogger

Live Demo

Step #1: Create a Facebook Application

1. Login to your Facebook Developers Account
2. Choose path Apps → Create a New App

3. Now provide a Display Name, Namespace, Category and hit Create App

4. Now enter Captcha > Submit
5. You'd see your App Dashboard → Copy App ID → Save on a .txt file

6. Now click on Add Platform (right below your app name)

7. Choose Website
8. Now provide your Site URL, also Mobile Site URL(if you have mobile url) and hit Save Changes

9. You're almost done to create App for running FB Recommendations Bar

Step #2: Install FB Recommendations Bar Plugin, Activate and Run on WordPress

1. Go to this page and download FB Recommendations Bar Plugin(ver 1.0) → Save on your Desktop
2. Now login Your WordPress Account
3. From dashboard navigate to Plugins → Add New → Upload → Browse → Install The Plugin

4. Now click on Activate Plugin(on that redirected page)

5.a Again navigate to Settings → Facebook Recommendations Bar

• Under Main Settings » Provide Your Facebook App ID

5.b Under Display Settings you can set following

• Posts » Checked by default(which allows to show individual post that is liked on facebook)
• Pages » Keep it default also
• Language » English is automatically enabled(but can choose other languages)
• Verb » Set the action either Like or Recommend
• Read Time » The targeted times after FB Recommendations Bar will active and expand on each page
• Number of Recommendations » Allows to set maximum stories to show (up to 5 stories allowed to show each page)
• Which Side to Appear » Set it either right side(by default) of your page or left side

6. Finally hit save changes and the plugin is activated successfully

NB: It doesn't allow any post to show with FB Recommendations bar until or unless they are being liked on Facebook, once your pages already have a number of likes then they will be automatically visible with the Bar.

Explanation of Actions used in Recommendation Bar

• read-time: It decides the timer of the bar to expand after loading the page. As soon as the reader reaches the location the bar will be expanded and it takes a duration to expand. I have kept it 10 which is the minimum value according to the App. you may set it 30, 50 etc.

• side: You can set the location of the plugin to place either on right side or left. By default it remains on right bottom corner of your page but you can migrate it on left side.

• action: You can let people recommend an article or like. By default here is give like but you can change the value to recommend

• num-recommendations: You can set how many articles to show with the bar. We kept it on 3 but you can increase the value upto 5

• trigger: Normally the plugin remains collapsed during page loading but it will be expanded once the trigger parameter requirements are met, and the user has been on the page at least the duration, specified in the data-read-time parameter. There are three options to set data-trigger such as

Need More Support?

FB Recommendations Bar is the Facebook Developers Application originally created to help website owners and bloggers to integrate their site conversions more affirmed on social media and search engines. This plugin engages users to read more in other posts that are liked or recommended on facebook. We installed this plugin on our blog and normally we get a few more conversions throughout this plugin although i use other actions to promote my posts. I recommend  bloggers to use this plugin since it's an active way to publicize content more rapidly. 

If you find the installation procedure helpful for your blog hosted on WordPress then kindly share this post on social media using your preferred social buttons. If you find any problem then don't forget to ask me, your feedback is always appreciated...!

Wish you all new blogging journey with New Year 2014..:)