One of the things my wife and I enjoy about Facebook is the interactions with all of our friends and family who are using the service. So, when I finally got around to redoing our personal site – Kris and Cindy – I wanted to find away to integrate with Facebook for comments and other features.
Enter Simple Facebook Connect
Two years ago, for something like this, I would have dove head first into the Facebook API and tried to build it myself. Nowadays, however, now that I’m very limited on time and totally drinking the WordPress kool-aid, it was just a matter of finding someone else who’s already done this.
After a few quick searches, I found the Simple Facebook Connect series of plug-ins that seemed up to the task. Sure enough, it delivered. It was a little cumbersome at the very beginning, but only temporarily until I played around with things. That was due, in part, because the entire series consists of 15-16 separate plugins, which you don’t typically see in 3rd party plugins.
The reasoning behind it, however, is pretty clever because features are then modularized so you only end up switching on the ones you want. To start, I activated the following plugins:
- SFC – Like Button
- SFC – Comments
- SFC – Login
- SFC – Register
- Simple Facebook Connect – Base (Required)
I’ve played around with a few others, but they don’t currently fit the needs for this site at the moment. However, once I work on updates to Maui by Photo, there are certainly other aspects I will be using.
For Now…
The “For Now” portion of the post title is in reference to the announcement that Facebook Connect is going away now that the new Open Graph API is taking over. The good news is that Otto, the author of the Simple Facebook Connect, will be working towards a 1.0 release of the plugin that will support the new API. Sweet!
Check it Out
If you want to see it in action, go ahead and visit Kris and Cindy and see how it looks. If you don’t see something worth commenting on but still want to test it, try it with this post.
If you want to see more from Otto, head over to his website or visit his Facebook page, of course.
Be sure to check back again when I have updates to Maui by Photo for more samples of this awesome plugin suite.
– Kris.
