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WordPress is among the worlds best blogging tools, allowing users with a fully customizable environment and an easeful backend interface for content administration and management.

While building a blog or a website on WordPress the user has many options to integrate social features into one’s site which might include leading platforms like Google +, Facebook, Twitter and so on.

We discuss integration of Facebook Social Plugins, which will allow the site to indulge more with its users allowing them to comment, discuss and share what they like in a user-friendly manner. One can come across various plugins available across wordpress.org plugin directory or one can even directly integrate the WordPress Theme as well. Depending on what you find easy you can implement the same.

Facebook Social Plugins

Social Plugins can allow your site users to comment on posts, like and share them on Facebook. The ones that are majorly used include:

Comments
Like Box
Like Button

Facebook Application Creation

To use these plugins we will first require the creating of a Facebook application that would allow cross platform communication between Facebook and our website. To create an application we go to: https://developers.facebook.com/apps. Choose the option on right corner “Create New App”, upon pressing the button a pop-up window appears that allows the creating on a new application.

As shown in the image above we choose a Display Name for the application this can be your Website Name. App Namespace defines how the application would be known internally within Facebook, once done with the creation of the application you will have to adjust some application settings. The user is automatically directed to a summary page for the application. The summary page has various sections out on which will be currently just two of them.

Under basic info section change we change the App Domain value to www.Your-Website.com, going further we tell Facebook as how our application works with Facebook. We do so by highlighting the Option Website and then again entering our website address, once all done we press save changes.

Social Plugin Implementation

From the above plugins lets consider the Comments Plugin to be integrated as a part of your themes code. Go to: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/comments/

When the page opens you will see a box which would be identical to the image above, fill in the required fields include your website address, posts to display and color type you would like and click on Get Code. This generates a code that can be implemented within various pages of your site.

Now we are close to the implementation of the plugin, to finalize the implementation we need to follow a two-step process and we are done.

First we need to implement JavaScript SDK into the theme body tags, body tags can be found both in header.php and footer.php file of your WordPress Themes. The ideal placement area lies just after opening body tag. The JavaScript SDK Code is as below:

window.fbAsyncInit = function() {

FB.init({

appId : ‘YOUR_APP_ID’, // App ID

channelURL : ‘//WWW.YOUR_DOMAIN.COM/channel.html’, // Channel File

status : true, // check login status

cookie : true, // enable cookies to allow the server to access the session

oauth : true, // enable OAuth 2.0

xfbml : true // parse XFBML

});

// Additional initialization code here

};

// Load the SDK Asynchronously

(function(d){

var js, id = ‘facebook-jssdk’; if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;}

js = d.createElement(‘script’); js.id = id; js.async = true;

js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js”;

d.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)[0].appendChild(js);

}(document));

</script>

In the above-mentioned code we will replace YOUR_APP_ID with the App ID generated in the comments code, for those of you who not aware of what App ID, check the highlighted part in the code below.

var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];

if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;}

js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;

js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1&appId=119352884837162“;

fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);

}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));</script>

The second element to be changed from the JavaScript SDK is WWW.YOUR_DOMAIN.COM/channel.html, here we create an html file named as channel.html, and the purpose of creation of this file is to resolve cross-domain communication issue with certain browsers. The code that goes into the file is just one single line, which is described below.

One the file is created upload to the root directory of your webhosting and change the value in the JavaScript SDK.

The Last step to complete the implementation is to edit the comments.php file of your WordPress theme and paste the code mentioned below.

Just replace “YOUR-WEBSITE.COM” by your Website URL and you are done.

Alternatively if you are a newbie and don’t want to code or get confused with the same you can try popular WordPress Plugins Like DISQUS, Intense Debate Etc.

Content Aggregation Applications are the most trending applications on Internet today. Content Aggregation Applications are applications which allow Users to read about Latest Topics and most Popular Posts of their choice on the Net without searching for the same across multiple sites.

Content Aggregation Applications/ Apps aggregate Topics of Social Interaction display the same on using Social Readers on Social Media Networks like Facebook, Google+, Orkut, Four Square, Twitter, etc. .

Some of the most used News and Business News related Social Reading Applications are The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Washington Post Reader.

How Social Reading Apps revolutionizing the trend in Media? How Users consume Content through various Media?

The answer is via Content Aggregation, its Syndication and Delivery through Social Readers/ Social Reading Apps.

Content posted on Social Readers/ Social Reading Apps are visible to Users as Feeds, Timelines, Activity, etc. This allows Users to view Content on the basis of their Personal Interests and similarity of Topics.

The Users actively engage themselves while reading the Posts on Social Reading Apps and make them more meaningful by liking and commenting upon the Posts. This feature makes the Posts more desirable for other Users to read and engage with.

From the perspective of Social Reading Application Developers, the more tie-ups they have with Content Aggregators, the better it is for their Application(s). Multiple tie-ups with Content Aggregators extend the reach of their Applications to a much larger Target Audience and across multiple Social Media Networks. This gives them the opportunity of being more Profitable with more Advertising Revenue coming to them.

Social Content Aggregation is available outside the Facebook platform as well. The Apple iPad favors this the most and has a host of applications like Flip Board, Pulse, Zite, Livestand to name just a few.

All over the World, every day, a wide range of New, more Powerful and more Affordable Media Consumption Devices are reaching Consumers in the Form of Tablets, Large Display Phones, EBook Readers, etc.

This has created an opportunity for Application Developers for developing Social Reading Apps and Content Aggregation Apps based upon the Free, Free-to-Try and Subscription based Models in the nearest future.