The Facebook Tools plugin for Movable Type enables you to easily and automatically share your MT entries on Facebook. The plugin pushes updates directly to Facebook immediately when entries are published, avoiding the delays of other services. Future versions of the plugin will add additional Facebook integration features.
Post New Entries to Facebook Within Seconds of Publishing
There are a number of free services out there that will automatically share your entries to Facebook. In most cases, these services work by periodically checking your blog's RSS feed for new entries to post. While this works, it means a time lag or delay before new items get posted to Facebook. The delays get worse and more frequent when these services become popular. TwitterFeed has over 1,000,000 users and NetworkedBlogs has over 300,000 -- because they have so many RSS feeds to check, it can often be a long time before they get around to yours. The Facebook Tools plugin solves this delay problem by pushing the Facebook updates directly from MT, immediately, when the entry is published.
How it Works
The plugin is pretty simple. First you register your Facebook Application (easy to do, takes less than a minute) and then authorize MT to post updates when new entries are published. After that, every new entry gets pushed to Facebook quickly and directly and automatically. The updates include an image from your entries (if present).
Facebook Tools Pro
With Facebook Tools Pro, you get the following extra features:
- Post updates to Facebook Pages instead of user profiles
- Post to both blog and author profiles at the same time. This is great for multi-author blogs, or if you want to post to both your person profile and to your blog's Facebook Page.
- Optional Filters can be used to only share entries with specific Categories or Tags
- Optional customized status message for each entry (the default is the Entry title).
- Option to use a different Facebook App for each blog in your system.
Requirements
Most required modules are included in the download file for Facebook Tools. Because the Facebook API uses "Oauth 2.0", it must use SSL. As such, one of following are required (plus any dependancies), but may already be installed by default on your server:
- Crypt::SSLeay, ****OR***
- IO::Socket::SSL
If your system doesn't not already have one of these, note that the latter is known to be easier to install.
Installation
- Download and extract the zip file, then upload the contents of the 'plugins' directory into the 'plugins' directory of your Movable Type installation (often /cgi-bin/mt/plugins/).
- Upload the contents of the 'mt-static' directory into the 'mt-static' directory used by your Movable Type installation.
- Create a Facebook Application. This is easier than it sounds, and it only few settings are needed here. Choose a name for your App, which can be the same name as your blog. The upload a Logo and an icon image -- of these the icon is more important. (if you want you can use my Logo image and my icon image.) Then click on the "Website" tab on the left, and fill the "Site URL" field with the domain of your admin MT login eg. http://www.mydomain.com. Then save the settings, you can leave the rest of the settings the way they are.
- Copy the "Application ID" and "Application Secret" in the settings for the plugin, then save the settings.
- Return to the blog-level plugin settings and click the Facebook Connect button to authorize your blog to post to Facebook. The Facebook authorization dialog will ask for the necessary permissions, click "Allow". After authorization, if using the Pro version of the plugin, you will be given an option to choose one of your administered Facebook Pages to post updates to.
- Return to the settings once again and click the "Auto-Share" setting to enable auto-posting to Facebook, and adjust other settings as desired.
- (Optional for Pro) Authors can also connect their MT author profile with a Facebook account by choosing the "Facebook Account" item from the left menu of their user profile. Note that entries will be posted to Facebook only if "auto-share" is enabled in blog settings for the plugin.
Get Facebook Tools Pro
Get Facebook Tools
Facebook Tools is free for non-commercial use:
Download Now
Downloads: 285
As always, comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome.
Future versions of Facebook Tools may include other integration features such as integration with Facebook Likes, Comments, and more. Suggestions are welcome.
Comments (22)
Mark: Great plugin, and it works like a charm.
One thing I noticed: If there's no image with the entry, it pulled a seemingly random one from the Web page.
Also: In terms of text, what is the plugin pulling to send to Facebook? The entry body, a portion of it, or the excerpt?
Posted byJeff 
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September 17, 2010 9:23 AM
Posted on September 17, 2010 09:23
what is the plugin pulling to send to Facebook? The entry body, a portion of it, or the excerpt?
Posted by طيور الجنه | September 18, 2010 7:46 AM
Posted on September 18, 2010 07:46
Is FacebookTools configurable on a per blog basis when using in a multi-blog installation? In a multi-blog installation, can it be enabled on a per-blog basis?
Posted by mastoll | October 12, 2010 1:24 PM
Posted on October 12, 2010 13:24
Some really great photos here. I'd never even heard of 8-bit music before so thanks for enlightening me! Jim.
will be fresh in my ears as long as i live.
Posted by شات وناسه دردشة وناسه | October 23, 2010 2:43 AM
Posted on October 23, 2010 02:43
Some really great photos here. I'd never even heard of 8-bit music before so thanks for enlightening me! Jim.
will be fresh in my ears as long as i live.
Posted by سعودي كول | November 8, 2010 7:33 AM
Posted on November 8, 2010 07:33
I'd love to know about it
Posted by شات صوتي | November 24, 2010 12:12 AM
Posted on November 24, 2010 00:12
ءبلريس يبل
Posted by سعودي كول | November 24, 2010 12:12 AM
Posted on November 24, 2010 00:12
سعودي كام
Posted by سعودي كام | November 24, 2010 12:12 AM
Posted on November 24, 2010 00:12
تنسب
Posted by تجنن | November 24, 2010 12:13 AM
Posted on November 24, 2010 00:13
know about it
Posted by دردشه صوتيه | November 27, 2010 8:14 PM
Posted on November 27, 2010 20:14
I installed this per the instructions, and it all apparently went well, the installation said it completed OK. However, on Step 5 of your instructions, I have no "Connect to Facebook" button to click. I'm at a loss on how to proceed.
Posted byJoe 
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January 25, 2011 11:33 AM
Posted on January 25, 2011 11:33
Figured out my own problem. I neglected to upload the image to mt-static. Once I did that, it was fine. :)
I now have a new problem. The feature I need is the ability to push to Facebook Pages, not my profile. As I'm unemployed, and it's a free site with no adverts and whatnot, I don't know that I can justify the expense of the Pro version.
Bummer.
Posted byJoe 
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January 25, 2011 2:58 PM
Posted on January 25, 2011 14:58
Also, when the entries do get posted to my page, it picks a really weird picture from the page, one of the pictures that makes up my site framework, not from an article. Is there a way to control the picture picked, or don't post one at all?
Posted byJoe 
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January 25, 2011 10:00 PM
Posted on January 25, 2011 22:00
@DFishDesign (Joe), the plugin selects the image to post in one of two ways:
-if looks for an image "asset" that is associated with the entry. If it finds one, it will use it. No current way to specify *which* image, currently it grabs the first image associated with the entry.
-if no assets found, it tries to extract the first image in the entry, looking at the first <img> tag it finds.
In your case, it sounds like neither of these is the case as you netion the image is not from the entry, If the plugin finds neither of the above, it doesn't attach an image at all. In such cases, Facebook *may* try to get smarty on its own based on the entry URL, but I am not sure if they will try to pick an image in such cases.
Posted by Mark Carey
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January 26, 2011 9:40 AM
Posted on January 26, 2011 09:40
Check out my site. In every single test, unless I have an image IN the entry (which in about 9 out of 10 I do not) it grabs the Firefox image on the sidebar all the way to the bottom. That has really nothing to do with the entry.
It would be nice if the plugin could be given a specific image to pass along, or possibly force a dummy image to go with it - like a 1x1 blank image or something.
As it stands now, I have to remember to put an image in the entry, otherwise it picks that Firefox image from the sidebar, which I really do not want up there.
Any thoughts?
Posted byJoe 
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January 26, 2011 9:58 AM
Posted on January 26, 2011 09:58
Whoops - I had put my site in the "URL" field, but I guess that got thrown out since I'm logged in via Facebook. The site is http://www.rangerfans.com
Posted byJoe 
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January 26, 2011 11:00 AM
Posted on January 26, 2011 11:00
Joe, seems like Facebook is automatically choosing an image. In this case it is choosing the first "not small" image it finds, which happens to be the firefox one on your entries without embedded images. In such case there *is* a way that you can tell Facebook about the image you want (which also works with regular sharing/liking outside the plugin). Trying add the following to your site head section:
<meta property="og:image" content="thumbnail_image" />
BUT, replace thumbnail_image with the full page to a "default" image (your site logo or a rangers logo, for example). In an ideal world this would refer to an entry-specific image URL (if one exists) and then default to a generic site image for text-only entries --- but the plugin should take care of the entries with images, and hopefully this will take care of the text-only entries...
Posted by Mark Carey
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January 26, 2011 12:13 PM
Posted on January 26, 2011 12:13
Thanks, man - I'll try that.
Now to get you to let me post to Facebook pages with the free one. hahahaha. :)
Posted byJoe 
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January 26, 2011 12:36 PM
Posted on January 26, 2011 12:36
Hey, that trick worked. I posted something new this morning, and forgot to include it, but I added in the code, and tried a test post, and it kept the image out. Cool!
Posted byJoe 
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February 1, 2011 1:24 PM
Posted on February 1, 2011 13:24
and forgot to include it, but I added
Posted by كلام | February 8, 2011 1:58 AM
Posted on February 8, 2011 01:58
Thanks for the plugin works great!
I have run into an issue (I'm assuming this is an edge case) and hope to find some direction here. I am using the reblog plugin to ingest feeds from various blogs I operate with hopes to leverage this plugin (fb tools) and also the twitter tools plugin to map the blogs back to the corresponding accounts on each platform. It seems that each facebook and twitter tools are not aware of the entries being ingested and republished via reblog. does anyone have any ideas?
thanks in advance!
Posted by Jake | March 17, 2011 6:55 PM
Posted on March 17, 2011 18:55
Tried to install this, and when I went to login via Twitter, I got this error msg
Posted by الخيال | June 9, 2011 10:44 PM
Posted on June 9, 2011 22:44