Best practices to add Facebook comments to wordpress blog?

[NoahsDad]

Our website (noahsdad.com) has a very large and active Facebook group (http://facebook.com/noahsdadcom). Often there are more comments on the Facebook posting of a link, than on the blog post itself. I try to get people go and leave comments on the blog, but they don't get it. So I'd like to try to find a way to get Facebook comments to transfer to our site. I"m not sure the best way to do this....either via a plug in, or via these instructions https://developers.facebook.com/attachment/Comments_Best_Practices_FINAL.pdf/ I'd just like to get it going..and not mess up the comment's I have now. (Also not everyone has Facebook, so I'd like them to still be able to comment the 'old' way (name/email). Hoping someone can help point me in the right direction with this. Thanks.

[jennita]

Both Aran and Keri have given great responses! One thing I want to add about using FB comments, is that I believe that you lose all your previous comments once the FB comments are implemented. But perhaps Aran can verify that. One post I always refer to on the subject is this one from Jon Henshaw over at Raven: http://raventools.com/blog/facebook-comments/. Not only is the post helpful, but the discussion in the comments is valuable as well. I'd definitely give it a read.

I agree with Keri that while it can be frustrating to see more comments on FB than on the blog. But at the same time remember, you're not just building a blog, you're creating a community. Some members of the community are simply more comfortable using FB than they are commenting on the site. Since your site has such a wide reach, I could see my mom wanting to comment but only understanding how to do that on FB, so that's where she'd do it. It takes more work to moderate comments on both the blog and on FB and perhaps Twitter and anywhere else for that matter. But people are actively talking about your "brand" and getting your name out there.

Please let me know if you have more questions!

Jen

[KeriMorgret]

Hi Noah's Dad,

I'm going to ask Jen Lopez to make a better comment on this, as she's the one who manages the SEOmoz Facebook page and has more experience than I do. I did have one thought though that by having users engage in your Facebook page you're increasing your EdgeRank on Facebook and increasing the chances that fans of your page will see your updates.

FB doesn't show an individual user updates in their feed from every person and page they follow. They've got an algorithm in there to rival the search engines that helps determine what a user sees. If there's a FB page in there where the owner is just putting announcements and no one is interacting, those announcements really aren't going to be shown to the rest of the fans of that page.

With you, you've got so many people interacting with you and posting stuff I see Noah's face every time I check my FB feed. It prompts me to click over to your FB page and see the updates from everyone else.

Just an alternate way of thinking about this, though I understand your frustration at the same time. I"m the one who manages YouMoz, and it's frustrating to see people thumb and discuss the post on FB yet not going over to our site and doing the same.

[Aran_Smithson]

Hi Noah's Dad!,

I've been following your blog!

Whilst I'm not 100% sure how to output Facebook comments to your pages. I have just installed Facebook commenting on my website (a very easy job of just pasting in some HTML with a dash of php to retrieve the current URL). Its great as people instantly recognise the comments box and seem happy, almost eager to leave a comment. Plus its not restricted to just facebook users, people can join in the fun with hotmail, yahoo, or AOL user IDs. Plus I believe more ways of authenticating are being added.

There is a plug in for word press (of course, cos theres a plug in for everything) http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/facebook-comments-for-wordpress/

Trouble is that the comments are out put into a iframe, thus Google doesn't pay any attention to them (incas eyour doing this for SEO benefit, which I assume you are). But there is a work around to out put the comments outside of the facebook iframe, though I'm still debating whether to do it as it involves hiding the content (otherwise it would appear twice, once in the Iframe and once outside of the iframe, making for a bad user experience), but since Google may frown upon hiding content on my page, I've stayed away for the time being. (unless someone else has a better idea).

Hope that helps in some way.

Regards

Aran