Blog, Facebook, PHP, WordPress, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Shortcode

Add a Facebook Follow Button in WordPress (or With PHP)

The Facebook Follow button lets people subscribe to the public updates of others on Facebook. The button is Facebook's somewhat successful response to Twitter's domination in the follow space. As long as the other person has enabled the feature in their privacy settings, others can simply subscribe to that person without having to become friends. While you're here, follow me and try it out!

UPDATE, 5th February 2018: With the release of Graph API version 2.11, the Follow Button is deprecated. For Graph API versions 2.10 and under, the Follow Button was supported until February 5, 2018. The following code no longer works. It's kept as a reference only.

Add a Facebook Follow Button in WordPress (or With PHP)

Image: Screenshot from Facebook's website .

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Our shortcode will permit you to render the follow button in any available format anywhere on your WordPress website. An upcoming article will show you how to display the follow button, like button, and any other social connectors at the top or bottom of every article (as we've done).

Button no longer supported

Because of the frequency at which Facebook tends to update features for their social plugins, our plugin may be a better alternative to the shortcode if you're not one to action the necessary code alterations yourself when Facebook introduces a change (our plugin will show you a notification when an update is available).

The Result

The examples below may look a little odd because we use a grey background that clashes with the default white rendered by Facebook.

The default shortcode of [fbfollow] will show the following:

Button no longer supported

The example above that has a single button aligned to the right was accomplished with the shortcode of [fbfollow layout="button" align="right"].

I've set my default width in the shortcode to 600 (pixels), so the rendering spans across the whole post container. To use a large button that's centered, I'll use the following shortcode: [fbfollow layout="button" size="large"]. The result:

Button no longer supported

There are a large number of combinations and button types. For the last example, we'll display a count inside the button. The shortcode of [fbfollow layout="box_count" size="large"] will produce the following:

Button no longer supported

Shortcode Attributes

Since there are a large number of attributes, it's expected that you'll alter the attribute array to reflect your desired default behaviour. In an upcoming plugin release it's likely we'll build a little back-end form to save your options.

href

The href is either your full Facebook username URL or your user ID.

width

The width of your follow container.

height

The height of your follow container.

layout

The layout is either standard, box_count, button_count, or button. The maximum dimensions that apply to each layout are shown below (source: FB).

Maximum dimensions that apply to Facebook layouts.

size

Available size options are small and large.

colorscheme

The colorscheme is either light or dark.

kid_directed_site

If your web site or online service, or a portion of your service, is directed to children under 13 you must set to kid_directed_site="true".

show_faces

Specifies whether to display profile photos below the button (standard layout only). You must not enable this on child-directed sites. It's false by default.

align

The button will center by default. To align left or right, use align="left". Padding detailed below.

padding

When aligning left or right you will likely require padding around the container. Default padding provides 8 pixels either side, and 15 above and below. To alter, use as follows padding="5px 10px 5px 10px"

WordPress Shortcode

Copy and paste the WordPress function into your theme's functions.php file or, if you sensibly have one installed, your custom functions plugin. You may optionally download and install our plugin from the bottom of of the page.

It's a requirement when using this function that you download the FBSDK function. Review its use and download the code here. It's possible that your theme is already rendering the SDK by default (open up your source code and search for "connect.facebook.net" to confirm).

<?php

Add a Facebook Follow Button in WordPress (or With PHP)

http://www.beliefmedia.com/facebook-follow-button-wordpress

Requires Facebook SDK: http://www.beliefmedia.com/facebook-sdk-wordpress

function beliefmedia_facebook_follow_button($atts) {

extract(shortcode_atts(array(

'href' => 'https://www.facebook.com/mkhoury', /* Defaults to current WP page */

'width' => '600',

'height' => '100',

'layout' => 'standard', /* standard, box_count, button_count, button */

'size' => 'small', /* small, large */

'colorscheme' => 'light', /* light, dark */

'kid_directed_site' => 'false', /* true if < 13 years */

'show_faces' => 'false',

'align' => false,

'padding' => '8px 15px 8px 15px',

), $atts));

/* If a full URL we'll snatch the ID */

if (strripos($href, 'http') !== false) {

$href = rtrim($href, '/');

$chunks = explode("/", $href);

$href = end($chunks);

}

/* Embed code */

$return = '<div class="fb-follow" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/' . $href . '" data-layout="' . $layout . '" data-size="' . $size . '" data-show-faces="' . $show_faces . '" data-colorscheme="' . $colorscheme . '" kid_directed_site="' . $kid_directed_site . '" data-width="' . $width . '" data-height="' . $height . '"></div>';

/* Formatting */

$css = ($align !== false) ? 'float: ' . $align . '; padding:' . $padding : 'text-align:center;';

$return = '<div style="' . $css . '">' . $return . '<div style="clear: both;"></div>

</div>';

/* Result */

return ($align === false) ? '' . $return . '' : $return;

}

add_shortcode('fbfollow','beliefmedia_facebook_follow_button');

If you require shortcode to work in a sidebar widget, you'll have to enable the functionality with a filter. If you're using our custom functions plugin, you'll have that feature enabled by default.

PHP Function

Used outside of WordPress, the following may be used. As with the WordPress code, it requires the Facebook SDK (included in the PHP download for the purpose of a working example).

<?php

Add a Facebook Follow Button in WordPress (or With PHP)

http://www.beliefmedia.com/facebook-follow-button-wordpress

Requires Facebook SDK: http://www.beliefmedia.com/facebook-sdk-wordpress

function beliefmedia_facebook_follow_button($args = '') {

$atts = array(

'href' => 'https://www.facebook.com/mkhoury', /* Defaults to current WP page */

'width' => '600',

'height' => '100',

'layout' => 'standard', /* standard, box_count, button_count, button */

'size' => 'small', /* small, large */

'colorscheme' => 'light', /* light, dark */

'kid_directed_site' => 'false', /* true if < 13 years */

'show_faces' => 'false',

'align' => false,

'padding' => '8px 15px 8px 15px',

);

/* Merge $args with $atts */

$atts = (empty($args)) ? $atts : array_merge($atts, $args);

/* If a full URL we'll snatch the ID */

if (strripos($atts['href'], 'http') !== false) {

$href = rtrim($atts['href'], '/');

$chunks = explode("/", $href);

$href = end($chunks);

} else {

$href = $atts['href'];

}

/* Embed code */

$return = '<div class="fb-follow" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/' . $href . '" data-layout="' . $atts['layout'] . '" data-size="' . $atts['size'] . '" data-show-faces="' . $atts['show_faces'] . '" data-colorscheme="' . $atts['colorscheme'] . '" kid_directed_site="' . $atts['kid_directed_site'] . '" data-width="' . $atts['width'] . '" data-height="' . $atts['height'] . '"></div>';

/* Formatting */

$css = ($atts['align'] !== false) ? 'float: ' . $atts['align'] . '; padding:' . $atts['padding'] : 'text-align:center;';

$return = '<div style="' . $css . '">' . $return . '<div style="clear: both;"></div>

</div>';

/* Result */

return ($align === false) ? '' . $return . '' : $return;

}

/* Usage */

// $args = array('align' => 'left', 'size' => 'large');

echo beliefmedia_facebook_follow_button($args);

The $args options array is merged into the resulting $atts array.

Considerations

The code to render the social buttons above and/or below each post is forthcoming. It permits the follow button to display the current WP authors details rather than what's defined.
Because of likely updates, please subscribe to our Facebook page .
More information is available on Facebook .

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