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Remote publishing to WordPress from Facebook via RSS

Chris Gilligan — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 03:51:39 +0000

Most WordPress developers know you can use one of several plugins to publish from WordPress to a Facebook wall, app or fan page. Did you know you can also do the opposite? You can publish from Facebook to WordPress by using the FeedWordPress plugin and the RSS feed from your fan page. This can be handy for clients who want to keep their site updated with blog posts, or share links and information, but don’t necessarily want to spend the time to post with WordPress.

Let’s face it, Facebook is convenient to use to share a link, upload small photos and video, or write a brief update.

Your Blog is Hungry

FeedWordPress is a plugin that pulls content from an RSS feed and publishes articles as WordPress posts. It is somewhat complex to set up properly, so I won’t go into that here. It’s up to you to figure it out, but it is very useful for adding non-copyright or permitted content to your site or a client’s site. For instance, I use it to publish bicycle manufacturer’s RSS feeds to a local bike shop’s WordPress site. You can also use it to create a scraper site, but you wouldn’t do that, would you?

Connect WordPress to Facebook

Using the plugin Simple Facebook Connect, your client can publish WordPress posts to a Facebook fan page. I suggest you install Simple Facebook Connect and learn how to set up a simple Facebook App using the plugin’s easy instructions. This will allow your website to use Facebook authentication to Publish to Facebook, allow comments by logged in Facebook users, etc.

Creating an App instead of a Fan Page or Business page may suit your needs. Give it a try if you have not already set up a Facebook Page. If you use SFC, don’t set it to automatically publish to Facebook, or you may create a publishing loop. Leave it set to manual publishing and you’ll have an extra Publish button in the post editor for that purpose.

Setting up the Facebook RSS Feed

If your client would like to use Facebook’s simple, highly available, multi-device platform to publish content to a WordPress website, you will need a Facebook page or app’s RSS feed.

Facebook Fan Pages or Business Pages are for groups or businesses. If you build websites, you have probably set these up for several clients already. But to make the RSS feed from the page available to RSS readers and aggregators, you must change a few settings:

Edit Page > Manage Permissions
Uncheck Only Admins can See Page
Age Restrictions: None
Country Restrictions: None

Uncheck All:

Users can write or post content on the wall
Users can add photos
Users can add tags to photos
Users can add videos

This will make your wall posts available to the general public, because users with restricted privacy settings cannot post to your wall (they can still comment on your posts).

Now you can click the Subscribe by RSS link on your page, and the RSS feed will not display the dreaded “Facebook Syndication Error”:

You probably reached this page by entering the guide of a syndicated error message into the location bar of your browser. This probably means that you can’t see the feed that you were trying to access. This is probably because the owner of the feed changed his or her privacy settings or deleted content on the feed. You may be able to get access to the feed by contacting the owner of the content being syndicated in that feed.

You will get a RSS URL: http://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?id=195534004499&format=rss20

If your feed’s language needs to be adjusted, for instance if your site is hosted in Netherlands but your audience is in U.S., you will need to add a locale parameter to the feed URL: http://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?id=195534004499&format=rss20&locale-en_US

Try it in Firefox or NetNewsWire or any RSS Reader to see if you get a valid feed. If you see Facebook Syndication Error, then go back and edit your page’s permissions (see above).

If your site is hosted in a locale different from the locale of your Facebook page (e.g. your host is located in Europe, but your Facebook page is for North America), then you should use the resolved IP address for Facebook for your locale. You can find this IP address from a terminal window with the ping command. Otherwise, Facebook.com will resolve to the IP address and language for your host server. This causes synchronization issues and may cause a sync timeout which can block your pages from loading.

FeedWordPress Syndication

OK, now you have a valid feed. Add it to FeedWordPress. The settings you may wish to change:

Posts & Links >

Permalinks point to: The local copy on this website
Relative URIs: leave relative URIs unresolved
Formatting filters: Expose syndicated posts to formatting filters

Now, you should have a valid RSS feed and a properly configured Syndication system.Log in to Facebook and go to the app or page (easy way is to type the name into Facebook search bar at top).Share a Link, paste the URL of the page you want to feature, e.g. http://www.extremevisionhomes.com/

Edit the fields in the Link content by clicking on them. Or, you can upload a photo or video. But be sure to add a tagline to “Say something about this…” This line becomes your Title in the RSS feed or WordPress post. Otherwise you will see a generic “Your Client’s Facebook Wall 07/12/2011 15:35:43″ as the title.

And on the client’s site, you will see this:

You may want to set up a WordPress Category for these posts. FeedWordPress can be configured to post to a specific Category, add Tags, etc. You might even separate these posts from the main blog page, or style them in your WordPress theme via CSS or a Category Template.

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Office Furniture Retail Showcase

Chris Gilligan — Tue, 17 May 2011 15:21:01 +0000

Office Coordinators Inc. website

I worked with Office Coordinators Inc’s talented in-house designers to update the OCI website. OCI chose an e-commerce theme, and we completely reworked the CSS and layout to match their colors and logo treatment. After a previous failed attempt with another developer, they were surprised at how quickly the site came together, and how easy it is to manage with WordPress!

“Inquiry mode” e-commerce: customers can select items, add to shopping cart, then email for more information or price quote
Search Engine Optimization: Google Analytics and Sitemaps
WordPress Content Management
Social Networking with Facebook “score card”

Thank you for your persistence. You’re our favorite website/technically savvy guy ever.
— Emily Vaughn, OCI

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Bike Shop Website with Facebook Features

Chris Gilligan — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 21:51:43 +0000

Suck Creek Cycle website

I’ve been hosting and helping with Suck Creek Cycle’s website since they opened in 1998. The site was long overdue for an upgrade, so I took an existing template design and tweaked it a bit to look like the bike shop, then integrated social media and syndicated content from their vendors.

Facebook local business page integration — publish from WordPress directly to Facebook
Facebook Friends and Wall displayed on the website
RSS Syndication for news from cycling sites and bike vendors

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Landscape Architect Website with Slideshows & Social Media Integration

Chris Gilligan — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:32:48 +0000

Craig Design Group Website

This is a simple website for a Chattanooga based landscape architect that focuses on beautiful portfolio slideshows. We’ve also added Twitter and Facebook integration to keep fans and customers updated on the latest projects.

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Social Media — Facebook, Twitter, Blogging and Sharing

Chris Gilligan — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:19:42 +0000

Social media, including sites like Facebook and MySpace, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, and sharing/bookmarking tools like Digg, Del.icio.us and Stumble Upon are all very important to your outreach to customers, not to mention the incoming links they provide, and the potential of exponential viral traffic.

Add to this the need for regular blogging (on your site and other platforms) and email updates, and the management of all this online communication becomes daunting. What if there were a way to integrate all of your modes of online presence, so you’d only have to post once to update all of the different platforms? Well, the short answer is: there is.

I’ve been working with a local organic farm to update their online presence, and we’ve come up with a very simple implementation of WordPress that cross-posts to Facebook Pages and Twitter. Every blog post automatically creates an entry with linkback on Facebook Pages, and an accompanying Tweet with linkback. It has been a great way to keep the farm’s audience informed and engaged.

Additionally, we’ve added bookmarking links for all of the major social media platforms and favorites keepers, thus adding to the potential for viral sharing.

I’m also working on a mailing list that further integrates with WordPress, and it’s looking very promising. There is a new WordPress mailing list plugin that allows opt-in or manually entered mailing list clients to manage automated subscriptions to blog and page updates, and allows administrators to manage multiple mailing lists, and send newsletters and alerts. It integrates with the website seamlessly and also has WYSIWYG editing.

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Organic Farm Website with Slideshows and Content Management

Chris Gilligan — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:09:28 +0000

Sequatchie Cove Farm website

This site was produced in tandem with Widgets & Stone, a Chattanooga design firm. We’re members of Sequatchie Cove Farm’s Community Shared Agriculture program, so we are very familiar with the quality of the eggs, dairy, meat and produce coming out of the clean and fertile Sequatchie Valley.

(Will Work for Food!)

WordPress Content Management System allows the farmers to easily add their opinions, information and images
Automated updates to Facebook Pages, with linkback
Automatic Twitter tweets for new posts, with linkback
Social Media bookmarking
SlideShowPro gives the site a slick Flash-based Image Management System so the site can feature seasonal images.
MailMan manages a plethora of mailing lists for the weekly emails that keep the farmers connected to the communities and individuals they serve

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