Feed Facebook, Leave Facebook is a plugin for WordPress to generate a separate partial feed for use on Facebook. Use it to direct Facebook visitors to your blog while leaving your main full-text feed intact.
If you’re a (reluctant) Facebook user and you’re unhappy with the way it handles your feed, use this plugin to generate a special excerpts only version for Facebook. It will also add a link to your blog post beneath the excerpt in case visitors miss the ‘View original post’ link Facebook provides.
Download — Latest Version
- Version 1.0 (zip file)
- View code at the WP Plugin Repository
Installation (for WordPress 2.8+)
The easiest way to install the plugin is to use the plugin installer in WordPress.
If you want to do it manually:
- Upload the feed-facebook-leave-facebook directory to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
- Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
Once activated, access your feed with the querystring feedfacebook appended to the end. This is usually
http://[your blog address]?feed=rss2&feedfacebook — if you use pretty permalinks, it could also look like this: http://[your blog address]/feed/?feedfacebook
You can register the new feed URL with Facebook on its Import a Blog page.
Customise
To customise the message, add it to the querystring:
?feedfacebook=Read the rest at my site
If you want to explain to your readers why you’re asking them to leave Facebook to read your post, you can add that with the following:
?feedfacebook&why=URL of explanation
This will appear as a link with the text ‘(why?)’. To change the wording:
?feedfacebook&why=URL of explanation&whytext=Facebook is evil!
Screenshot
Examples of Feed Output
Questions?
- Leave a comment or email: keyvan (at) keyvan.net
Donate
If you find this piece of code useful, please consider donating. I’m a student working on these projects in my spare time. My sites carry no advertising and I release most of the code I work on under a free software license so anyone can benefit from it. I don’t receive any payment for this work so I have to rely on donations if I want to put off becoming a wage slave. Your contribution (whatever the amount) would be greatly appreciated.
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Paid Support
If you run a commercial site and you need help with feeds. Feel free to get in touch: keyvan (at) keyvan.net
79 Comments
My problem with this and every plugin or service I’ve tried is that the links on Facebook don’t have the option for users to share or add to their profile. Can this be added to your plugin, or is Facebook blocking that feature for things automatically posted?
Justin, I’m not quite sure what you mean – I think there is a ’share’ option when Facebook displays feed items. But whether it appears or not, it’s determined by Facebook and not the plugin.
Hi, I installed this on a friend’s website (www.chivalrytoday.com) and it seemed to be working fine, but now suddenly isn’t. It hasn’t updated the last several articles he has posted to Facebook. The Facebook Import a Blog setting still shows that it’s supposed to be importing.
The facebook page is http://facebook.com/ChivalryToday. You can see several posts were made, but he’s done several since that last one that’s shown there (Podcast 35) that aren’t showing up.
Any idea what might be causing this?
Digigirl: I would check the feed URL – if it shows the posts correctly in your browser then it’s a Facebook problem. If it’s not showing the recent posts in the feed when you load it directly, then maybe it’s a problem with the plugin that I can look into.
Hey, thanks! It was neither Facebook NOR the plugin but you telling me to check the URL helped me figure it out. All fixed now. Thanks again!
No problem.
have been testing your plugin but seem to be having issue on the return link, after it post to facebook in a shorten url it links back to the site but in the url it adds a ) after the url and thest inturn cause a 404 error message. what id the solution on this
Bobby: can you provide a URL to your feed?
I am a little confused about all this:
so far I created a facebook page for an organization.
I have a plug in that sends post updates to twitter.
before I installed your (great) plug in I tried to get twitter updates
to go to the facebook page. however in order for facebook to install this application it had to be claimed by a person, which it was.
But nothing ever got updated on the facebook page.
when I installed this plug I followed the link to add the feed to facebook and it took me to the organization facebook page but updated the persons profile who owns it instead.
so the facebook page for the organization stays blank:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Northampton-MA/SPIFFY/145967943424
Do you understand what is going on here and what I should do next?
MWDESIGN: I have no experience of Facebook’s different account types. The plugin here simply produces an RSS feed – it doesn’t contact Facebook in any way. So if there’s a way for Facebook to pull in feeds for different account types, you should be able to use it. Perhaps the link I’ve provided for registering the feed is only for individual accounts.
Hello, Your plugin is exactly what I’ve been looking for. I do have a problem, but it may be a result of my misunderstanding.
The plugin installed fine, and I can see my blog posts on my FB notes page. But nobody else can see them. Anyone looking at my FB notes page gets the error: John hasn’t written any notes… yet. I’ve tried this logging on from several accounts and they all produce the same result.
I thought that maybe this might have to do with FB’s servers updating, but it has been over 8 hours since I installed the plugin. I also checked my security settings, and even when Notes is set so that “everybody” can read it the problem persists. Also, I tried “sharing” the blog entries by publishing them to my wall, with no success.
Am I missing something?
Many thanks!
John
John: I have no idea why they appear for you and not for others. It does sound like an issue with Facebook. I suggest you try registering a regular feed (not one produced by this plugin) or creating notes yourself through Facebook and see if friends can see those.
Feed is great but I’m confused about two things. First, the feed importer on Facebook will post the feeds without this plugin. There is a link (albeit hidden with a couple others at the bottom) to the feed’s origin site. Also, you don’t have as much customization with it. I tested their feed importer without the plugin and it worked fine. So what exactly does the plugin add (this may be related to my second question).
Second, when I tried the URL
http://www.jrothraministries.com/feed/?feedfacebook=Read the full post at my site
for the feed (to have the easily found link taking people to my site), FB would only post the word “Read.” It ignored everything after the space.
1. Meant the plugin is great (gives customization abilities)
2. Just noticed that the URL link that I said I use also stops at the space just like FB does.
John: Facebook does already give you the option of importing feeds. The problem is if your feed contains the full contents of each post, Facebook will import it all – so users have little reason to leave Facebook to read your content. This plugin simply gives you another option: give Facebook a feed containing only excerpts of your posts with a link to the full content on your own site. But if you’re happy giving Facebook everything, then there’s no need for the plugin – as you point out you can register your main feed URL.
Regarding the second question, if you’re using spaces you should encode them. The simplest way is to replace the spaces with the plus symbol: Read+the+full+post+at+my+site.
Hope that’s some help.
I tried this URL and it gave me an error:
http://www.jrothraministries.com/feed/?feedfacebook=Read+the+full+post+at+my+siteThe FB error:
But this URL works fine:
http://www.jrothraministries.com/feed/?feedfacebook=MoreIt doesn’t seem to like anything past the first word.
BTW… thank you for giving the explanation on the benefit of the plugin
Answered a question I had. Since it uses the except, that’s awesome!
John, I don’t know why it’s giving you the error. It’s encoded properly now and if you access the URL directly yourself you’ll see it works fine and shows the correct message as the link. If Facebook can’t access it that’s a problem at their end.
This sounds like the perfect plugin to remedy my beef with Facebook. Trouble is, it’s not compatible with the FD FeedBurner Plugin. Maybe you can apply a similar trick to what you did to make it compatible with the other FeedBurner plugin I saw mentioned in the changelog?
Voyagerfan5761: Thanks. If I get more requests I might consider it. Can I ask why you don’t use the Feedsmith plugin?
I attempted to install the FeedSmith plugin before commenting here. WordPress said the plugin had an invalid header. But I just tried again and it’s installed, so I don’t know what went wrong before.
I do notice that there are no configuration options for FeedSmith other than the post and comment feed URLs. FD FeedBurner has options for not redirecting category/tag and search result feeds. But I can probably live with the lack of support for that. Maybe I’ll send a feature request to FeedBurner. Or if I have the time, hack it in myself.
Voyagerfan5761: Thanks for the update. Glad it’s working now and it’s good to know the difference between the plugins too.
Finally stumbled upon something I’ve wanted for donkey’s years, thanks to a kind tip off from one of your commenters. This does the job nicely, will definitely be back to see what other gems you create. Many thanks.
Thanks Andrew.
This plugin rocks so hard, it hurts. Thank you.
I have a quick question. The feed is being produced correctly, and FB reads it fine. My question is more of semantics regarding how FB processes (or I’m just not doing something right). The feed comes in as a Note, which gets posted to the Wall. So on the Wall, which is structured: Note link, blog excerpt, comment/like/share. So a reader has to click on the Note link, and THEN the “Leave Facebook to read the rest on my blog” link.
Is this right? Is there a way to make a link directly to the post without having to go to the Note first?
Sorry…addendum. When the Note gets published to the Wall, it seems to strip any hyperlinks.
Why would FB do that?
Viscouse: You’re right – it would be much more useful if Facebook included links in the notes when displaying them on the wall, or allowed the title link to lead to the actual article rather than another Facebook page. They do it for posted links, but it appears that when it comes tofeeds they’d rather keep users and external content inside Facebook.
I was wondering if there was a way to post this directly to a group rather then to my main FB feed?
I have a group that I am running on FB and would love to just post my blog posts there. Please let me know if this is possible.
Thanks,
Jeff
Jeff: This plugin only produces a feed – whether you can include the feed in a Facebook group, I don’t know.
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