Adding a Facebook Share Button

Posted by Gabe on January 16, 2010 under Facebook | Be the First to Comment

You would think that because I am a software developer by trade I would be the first to know about all the latest and greatest technologies. Unfortunately that is rarely if ever the case with me. I think it is because I see that many times technology is created more for technology’s sake and less for its practical use. I see technology at its best when it improves our lives in one way or another.

So maybe that is the reason why I have been largely ignoring the “Facebook Connect” technology. Maybe yes and maybe no – I guess I never really understood what it was and what it could be used for. So this morning I set out to learn more about it.

I still must admit I haven’t fully explored all of its capabilities, because when I saw the “Facebook Share” button I absolutely had to implement it on our web site.  It allows users to easily share your content on their Facebook walls. 

Here’s how it works. You place a Facebook Share button on one of your web pages.  We did it on the “shout-out” pages which are individual pages parents can send to their families that highlight just their hero. Here’s an example:

When a user clicks on that button, something similar to the following appears:

The user is able to add a comment and share it directly to their Facebook profile. How cool is that? The good news is that it is not that difficult to implement. Just follow the simple steps provided on the Facebook Share page.

Now if you are a WordPress blogger (like me) and you want a plug-in that will do the same thing, go to your Admin page, under Plug-Ins click ‘Add New’ and search for ‘Facebook Share’.  You will get several results. I tried a few of them and wasn’t perfectly happy with any of them. The reason being is that I wanted it to be able to pick up a particular image (not make the user select from whatever is on your page).  This was relatively easy to do when I implemented it on our site because there is a “linkrel” option that determines the picture you want to go with it.  This is more difficult to set in a blog environment (especially for me) because I try and have a picture on every post and there is no way to assign a particular picture directly to the Share feature. It would be nice if they implmented a custom field for this.

 So I settled on the AddThis plug-in, which not only shares to Facebook but it also allows the user to share it with other platforms.