If you’re like me, you’ll like to keep up with what your friends are up to but don’t always have time to check Facebook. Or maybe you’re just somewhere where access to the Facebook site is blocked. Work, school, etc.
This is a simple solution to bring the Facebook data to you. Using the dashboard widgets available in WordPress 2.5, this plugin will process your Friends status updates, posted items and/or your Facebook notifications RSS feed, and add a widget for each to your WordPress admin dashboard. So now you can keep up with whats going on in your friends lives from anywhere without needing to access Facebook!
As of version 0.9.8, you can also add these widgets to your blog front end. Just check your Widgets page once the plugin is installed and configured!
You can also customize the height and width of the widget, and the number of items displayed.
If you come across any bugs, let me know in the comments below. I’ll also be adding support for internationalization before the 1.0 release.
(Version 0.10.1)
Compatibility
As of version 0.10.1 this plugin only supports WordPress 2.8 or above. Although if you’re desperately wanting to run it on a version of WordPress as low as 2.5, drop me an email and I’ll send you over an older version of the plugin.
Installation
1. Download the plugin
2. Unzip facebook-dashboard-widget.zip
3. Upload the entire facebook-dashboard-widget folder to your plugins directory
4. Go to the Plugins page in your WordPress Administration area and click to ‘Activate’ the Facebook Dashboard Widget.
Setting Up
Setting up the plugin is relatively simple, but you’ll need to add the relevant feed URL’s from your Facebook page. Once you’ve installed the plugin, check out the options page at the bottom for detailed instructions on where to find what you need.
Screenshot
The Dashboard Widgets
Version History / Changelog
- Version 0.10.1 – Replaced functions deprecated in WP 3.0 – min. requirement now WP 2.8+. Posted items fix. Widget control issue fixed. Various other minor fixes.
- Version 0.10 – Fixed tags, WPMU support, DB options tidy up, plugin page settings link, now supports WP 2.7 and above
- Version 0.9.9.3 – when_posted() fix, added readme.txt changelog, updated “how to find your facebook feeds” help section
- Version 0.9.9.2 – Sidebar theme compatibility fix
- Version 0.9.9.1 – Formatting fix
- Version 0.9.9 – Fixed issue with posted items comments not showing
- Version 0.9.8 – Sidebar widgets added
- Version 0.9.5 – Widget height options for pre & post WP 2.7
- Version 0.9.1 – WordPress 2.7 Compatibility
- Version 0.9 – Added support for “posted items” feeds.
- Version 0.8.1 – Added Dashboard Widget Manager support.
- Version 0.8 – Beta Release
Thanks
To Ron ( http://wpmututorials.com ) for his help with WPMU compatibility.
Donation?
All my plugins/themes I’ve designed/built and provided on this site are free of charge, but the one cost that I can’t recoup is the time I put in – not just the design time… but I’m a firm believer that you should be willing to support what you release, and as such I reply to all emails and comments I receive, and generally try and help people get the best out my code.
So if you feel like giving me the warm, fuzzy feeling of knowing someone cares, why not donate a couple of $/£ ? Its not mandatory in any way, but i guarantee it’ll put a smile on my face 😉
Nice plugin, will have to try it out, i need my facebook fix at least once a day if not more!
I’m the same – thats what gave me the idea 😉
Glad you like it!
Does this plug in work with Facebook Pages in addition to an individual Facebook Profile. It’s a GREAT add on but we’re trying to pull information from our FAcebook fan page (for a business) more than for a personal profile.
thanks!
Damm , Facebook site is blocked by my country… hufff…
btw Mou, Did you got my email ?…
@Alexa
Thanks! Unfortunately, I don’t think it’ll be possible. The plugin uses existing RSS feeds generated by Facebook, so if the feed doesn’t exist I can’t display it. I’ve looked around and it doesn’t look like Facebook provides an RSS feed for fan pages.. 🙁
Mou, at the point is very nice plugin.
Congratulations!
@arham: Facebook, blocked on you country, where you live?
Peace.
Hi
Do you know of plugins that will display your facebook status, or your friends statuses, or even other info on the front-end of wordpress?
Thanks
Ian
Great idea for a plugin, wish I’d thought of it first! I’m downloading it now 🙂
Hi Ian
This plugin could be adapted to display the same info on the front of your blog. Displaying your own status may be a bit more tricky because Facebook don’t provide an RSS feed for this.
Cool. I have install this, and gonna blog about it
hi. Thanks for plugin
perfect.
regards
Nice…I have a multi-author blog that uses a dashboard widget plugin which enables all authors to edit their dashboard widgets (namely RSS feeds).
Can this functionality be added to this plugin, so that the site admin could add the widget to the dashboard but individual users could then edit it to include their personal Facebook details?
Thanks
Hi Scot
Interesting idea. It wasn’t on my to-do list, but I’ll certainly take a look into it in the future.
Thanks for the idea 🙂
@mou send some of your footy friends my way at sportstwit.com and we’ll call it even. actually, the reason i want the facebook plugin to apply to individual authors is because i use it on the backend of our site in this way (think popurls.com) to provide fantasy sports RSS feeds to our members. cheers
pretty nice widget !
thanks for the code
regards
John Jones
http://www.johnjones.me.uk
thks
Sorry but i cannot make your plugin work. I installed it and configured with feeds URLs but i cannot see in “design” part of wordpress how to add that widget in the template, as it’s not visible. Please can you help me ? Thanks !!
Fable
The widget is designed to work on your dashboard (ie, Admin back-end) – not on the template.
Its could easily be altered though, if you know anything about WP development.
– Chris
I have some problems with it, ist this plugin working with the current wp release ?
Iula
Could you give me the exact version of WP you are using?
Also, are you getting an error? Could you tell me what it is?
this isn’t working for me — i get an error after adding the feeds:
Warning: array_search() [function.array-search]: Wrong datatype for second argument in /xxx/wp-admin/includes/plugin.php on line 1044Warning: array_search() [function.array-search]: Wrong datatype for second argument in /xxx/wp-admin/includes/plugin.php on line 1044
Warning: array_search() [function.array-search]: Wrong datatype for second argument in /xxx/wp-admin/includes/plugin.php on line 1044
Warning: array_search() [function.array-search]: Wrong datatype for second argument in /xxx/wp-admin/includes/plugin.php on line 1044
Error! Options page not found.
not sure what to do. i’ve tried editing options.php in the fdw.php page, but that does no good. thoughts? btw i’m using wordpress 2.7
Hi Sharon
The latest version of the Facebook Dashboard Widget it 0.9.5 – can you confirm that this is the version you are using?
There were some errors similar to that prior to my last update, but the latest version should fix that.
Try updating the files, let me know if its still not working!
– Chris
If anybody has been successful in displaying this on the front end please let me know. Trying to do that now.
Hi Rhand
The new release does exactly that. Unfortunately its stuck in Subversion at the moment – haven’t managed to work out how to get WordPress.org to recognise the update as a new release.
The latest files are here: http://svn.wp-plugins.org/facebook-dashboard-widget/trunk/
Now fixed 🙂
thank you, opening Facebook from my home internet was a pain…
Works great, thank you
hi
great plug!
some ideas that would make it extra spiff:
1) get fb profile pic fed into it as well, make it optionable & resizable & clickable -i think this is imp.
2) let user select who they want to feed, instead of it just taking everyone’s feed – let us choose up to 30 feeds.
3) maybe there can be a random feed, so that upon page refresh it selects 5-30 different or shuffled feeds.
bugs:
only displaying 5 posts on front blog, 30 in dashboard – any fix?
thanks!
s
ahh! ignore that bug – forgot to change the number in the widget!
smooth.
Glad you got it sorted 😉
As far as your suggestions go, at the moment the plugin simply processes what RSS feeds are available – and unfortunately, what you see now is all the data they provide.
I’m looking into Facebooks recent announcement about opening up more of their data as part of a separate project – if I see anything I could incorporate into this plugin without it needing a full rewrite, I’ll add it. 🙂
Thank you very much, it’s exactly what I was looking for!
thanks for facebook dashboard widget!!!
it’s cool
I downloaded this as I thought this would be a great plugin. However I now realise this only works on the back end! This would have been brilliant if it had on been a template plugin!
Hi Jon
It works on the back end *and* as a sidebar widget. Once you’ve entered your details, just go to the appearance menu and add the widgets you want to display.
OK will get back on the case..cheers.
I am not sure if this plugin works on the new facebook layout!
The RSS feeds haven’t changed (as far as I know) so it should still work. The feeds are still coming through on my blog. Are you getting an error message?
I will re activate it and try again..cheers.
Hi again, I can’t see any RSS feeds on facebook! Just wondering where the friends RSS feeds are? i can’t find them!
It looks like FB moved or restricted or otherwise did something nasty with the link to subscribe to your friends’ status updates. The link is no longer on the Friends page. I’m guessing that if you already have such a link, it will continue to work, but for those of us who just downloaded your fine-looking plugin and are now looking for this link, no dice. I wrote to FB themselves to see if I could get an answer…
This is a great plugin. Is it possible to make a sidebar widget out of this?
That would be really useful for me, and I am sure many others.
Hi Bijan
The plugin is already enabled to work as a sidebar widget. Simply activate the plugin and go to appearance->widgets and add it to your sidebar.
I can’t seem to find any FB RSS feeds. Facebook is really closed – I hate it in fact. But my luddite normal/non geek friends all use it.
Also this is a one way thing correct? I can’t respond to a FB entry from the dashboard? I’d need to pop over to FB to do that right?
No, not at the moment. It just grabs the RSS feed and displays the data.
I get 404 not found on options page. Change I edit this manually? To put the feed URL in?
I want to use this so much now that FB is blocked in China – as my blog is in HK and a similar – though two way – plugin for twitter works great! But I can’t find the damn links in FB to use! This new FB sucks! It makes it like twitter – but it is not like twitter and it confuses the hell out of me… how does one navigate it? 🙁
I, too, receive an error (options page not found) when I attempt to update the plugin’s options. I am running wordpress MU 2.8 using version 0.9.9.2 of your plugin. Any thoughts? Thanks.
The plugin doesn’t support WPMU. I’m not sure why, to be honest I’d never looked into it.
Although I’ve been doing some work on MU recently, so I may revisit it in the future and see if I can make it compatible.
I’ve been using the notifications rss feed, and it works fine, but now it seems that facebook publishes the feed with some sort of spam on the top. It places this link above my actual notifications: “Find out what this week has in store for you! Read your horoscope now!!” See this example: http://www.facebook.com/feeds/notifications.php?id=72605113&viewer=72605113&key=bbb8d67458&format=rss20
Any idea where that comes from?
Are you sure thats not a notification from some dodgy Facebook app one of your friends is using?
Go to your Facebook notifications page and click the link, it’ll probably take you to a horoscope app…
Actually it links to http://www.facebook.com/notifications.php
I was also thinking that it might be someone’s app, but it was still showing up after I disabled notifications from other apps.
Interestingly, if you google “Find out what this week has in store for you! Read your horoscope now!!” there are plenty of clues.
I think all application “notifications” point to facebook.com/notifications.php. You’ll find out what app is generating it by clicking the link on that page – although if you’ve deleted them now it may be too late.
It definitely sounds like the sort of spam you get from a Facebook app, judging by some of the crap thats showing up on my notifications feed!
That makes sense. The weird thing is that it doesn’t show up on the notifications page at all: I only get it in the rss feed.
Hello. I have the latest version 0.9.9.3, I just downloaded it, but I still have problems when I update the options, I get the message: Error! Options page not found.
I can reload the page and then I can manually set them there, but this isn’t good practice for the other users. (I have WPMU 2.8.4)
I also don’t see how to put the statuses and notifications to the template. I see them only in Dashboard.
Please help. Thank you very much.
Hi Simso
I haven’t tested it with WPMU so to be honest I’m not sure why it’s not working. I said in a previous comment though, I’d take a look and see if I could make it compatible for the next release.
I’m not sure if its the same with WPMU, but to add them to the sidebar just go into the appearance->widgets menu and add them to the sidebar that way.
The widgets work fine. The only problem i see is the save options.
Options.php doesn’t exist i think (in WPMU) but also i think is the way the data is saved.
I’m beginning a new site using wordpress and this is a feature I may want to try. I’ll let you know how it works.
Thanks.
This may be a stupid question…because I assume this is just a known… Where do I find the ‘options page’?
Check the options page once the plugin is installed. Instructions for finding your feed URLs are near the bottom of the page
Thanks,
Hi, Have you checked if Facebook has released any more interesting API-wise, that you’re planning to use? A fuller feed with longer exerpts or something.
I was wondering what the status refresh rate is because it worked but nothing seems to refresh after changes are mode on FB
change hidden field id from page_options to option_page for wpmu. regards
hmm I want to know if its possible to make these 3 facebook widgets in a private place? (admin area or something).. I want it personal, I don’t want to show facebook activities to everyone on my blog..
Thank you
PS: nice widgets!
The plugin shows them on your admin dashboard. It won’t show them on your sidebar unless you activate the widget yourself.
can you tell me how to access the option page so that i can register my feeds becuase it still says that the link appears to be broken.
thanks
can you tell me how to access the option page so that i can register my feeds becuase it still says that the link appears to be broken.
thanks
Any chance of Buddypress profile integration? That would rock!
can you tell me how to access the option page so that i can register my feeds becuase it still says that the link appears to be broken.
Hi
On the plugins page there should be a “settings” link next to the Facebook Dashboard Widget plugin.
Otherwise, its in the “Settings” menu on the right hand side.
There is a 1 minute fix for the “Error! Options page not found” error located here:
http://sitesires.com/error-options-page-not-found/
Hope this helps!
Indeed a superb plugins for wp blogs, myself going to use on my personal blog @ http://blog.ekendraonline.com
Chris, gets much gratitude. A small donation is all that I can support for. thank you again!
Can this plugin works for Facebook page? I want to display at my blog any threads generated at my Facebook page. Can this plugin do that?
Hi Chris, thanks for this plugin. I have it running on WP2.9.2. All well aside from the ‘days ago’ which started at ‘15000’ and is counting from there :-). Don’t want to waste your time but any pointers as to what might be causing this would be appreciated.
Cheers
Hi Bob and Chris,
I am having a similar issue with version (.10.1). Do not have the problem when I revert back to version .10, which I have been happily using for many months. Would like to stay current with the plug-in so would appreciate any ideas you have on how to fix this.
To be more specific, the widget is bringing in facebook status updates as having been posted “15316 days ago”, rather than the correct amount of time of days ago.
Love this plug-in and appreciate you writing it, Chris. Hope you can help, or Bog, if you’ve resolved it yourself, would love to know how you did it.
Thanks,
Laura
nice widget, i try, ty a lot
Very nice!
Nice plugin. I want to be able assign different user feeds per user who logs into my site. The widget is not customizable per user, or is it? If you can do that this truly will be useful.
Hi,
seems to be a simple question. I would like to change the widget title “Facebook Posted Items” into a german title – no idea how to do it.
great read mate but how to get your rss feed? Can you sending us an e-mail with instructions pls? Thanks
You’ll find the instructions at the bottom of the settings page.
I’m not sure if its the same with WPMU, but to add them to the sidebar just go into the appearance->widgets menu and add them to the sidebar that way.
Hi Chris, great job!!!
Is it possible to display the feeds without the links?
I would like my visitor to stay on my page instead to jump to Facebook by clicking the line-feed.
Thanks
Interesting idea, not something I’d considered.
The plugin is due an update, but I’ve been so busy for months now that I haven’t had a chance. I’ll make a note to add an option for the next release.
Still no chnage to having the widget pull data from a fan page rather than a profile?
Hi Shane
I’m not sure if fan pages have RSS feeds. If they don’t, it won’t be possible using this plugin.
Can we update status from dashboard with this plugin?
Why not?? 🙂
I love your plug-in and have been using the previous version (.10) for a year or so. Tried updating to version .10.1 but it isn’t working. Initially pulls the feed but says the status update was “15359 days ago”. Also doesn’t seem to update. Went back to using the .10 but would like to stay current if I could resolve this issue.
Also, since updating wordpress to version 3.05, I have to deactivate the plug-in in order to be able to edit posts. If it is activated I get internal server errors when attempting to view or edit posts from within the dashboard. Problem seems to exist with wordpress 3.1 as well.
I am curious if others are having these issues? Or if there are suggestions for a fix?
Thanks! Love this plug-in and want to keep using it!
I got the link for the notifications feed from facebook and placed it in the correct settings area. When it updates on the site, it only pulls my blog posts (which I have subscribed to via facebook). If I click the link for the notifications feed, it shows the notifications that I want to show on my site but they don’t come through for some reason. Any ideas?
Thanks for a great app!
It’s really a cool plugin, Thanks!!!!!
Interesante aplicacion para worpress, la necesitamos para webs y otros blogs.
Hi there,
I had the plugin working fine, but now there’s a ‘fatal error’ get_items() on line 116 is the message it displays now instead of the facebook posts. I tried updating, but it still shows the message. What should I try?
I’m beginning a new site using wordpress and this is a feature I may want to try. I’ll let you know how it works. Thank you
Thank you