Posted on 21 October, 2009 By
Kim Woodbridge
30 Comments
How to Add the Facebook Fan Page Widget to Your Website
Facebook has a pretty cool fan page widget that you can add to your website.
The widget is fairly easy to install and can include photos of your page’s fans, a stream of articles or both.
The downside to this widget, like any widget, is that is can slow down the loading of your page and works better in some browsers than in others.
- Login to Facebook and go to your Fan Page
- Click on the link that says ‘Add Fan Box to Your Site’
- You will then be on the page where you can customize the fan box. You can have streams (the postings on the fan page), fans, or both. Since my fan page stream mostly contains the same articles that are on my website, I chose to only display the fans. The right side of the page will give you a preview of what the fan box will look like.
- The settings provide code specific to Blogger and Typepad but if you have any other type of website, including WordPress, select other. You will be given a block of code that you will want to copy (highlight the code box and use Ctrl+C on your keyboard).
- Those of us using WordPress will probably want to place the code in a sidebar widget.
- The code will contain a variety of options that can be edited. The facebook developers wiki contains the elements that can be modified. For example, the default width was too wide for the bottom of my sidebar so I made that smaller. You can also change how many fans are displayed, the height and the number of streams (posts on the fan page).
Do you think using this widget will get more people to fan your facebook page? Or do you think it’s unnecessary sidebar bling?
photo credit: Fr Antunes
Related Posts:
Posted In :
Facebook
If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my RSS Feed
October 21, 2009 at 9:27 am
Kim, you’ve just got to stop posting so much great stuff about Wordpress. I just don’t have the time to implement all the stuff you write about, or even read them. My Favorites is filling up with bookmarks to (Anti) Socal Development.!
:-D
October 21, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Hi Dot – LOL – I’ll try to write more crap that no one cares about ;-)
October 21, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Hi Kim,
This is great information. Now I just have to learn how to set up a fan page on Facebook. and I see in your related posts, you’ve written about that, too.
Your site is like one stop shopping. Love it!
Barbara Swafford´s last blog ..Words For Sale
October 21, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Hi Barbara – Thanks! I’ve covered a lot about Facebook fan pages so if you just go to that category in my sidebar, you should find most of the info that you need.
October 21, 2009 at 3:04 pm
I deleted my Facebook fan page… I just can’t handle so many things!
vered | blogger for hire´s last blog ..Outrageous Photoshopping: Why We Should Keep Talking About it
October 21, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Hi Vered – Oh – that’s too bad. I don’t spend too much time on mine – I should probably try to make it more interactive.
October 22, 2009 at 9:37 am
Hi Kim,
Thanks as always for the great posts.
I opted not to do the actual fanpage widget on my site – just to keep things looking consistent as I have Social Media Icons for a number of my locations.
But I have used this on another site and it did work really well (as easily as you mention above!)
Michelle @mmangen
Michelle´s last blog ..How uncomfortable are you?
October 22, 2009 at 11:13 am
Hi Michelle – Thanks. I put the widget on my site to write the article and was planning on removing it after a couple of weeks. I got 20 new fans in one day since I added it! So, for now, I think I’m going to leave it and see what happens.
October 25, 2009 at 3:24 am
Hi Kim, I really like your all post because of your post i got lot’s of knowledge & today i got one more new & great information about facebook now i can easily set up a fan page on Facebook. :)
Hosted Call Center´s last blog ..Predictive Dialer – An another form of Hosted Call Centers
October 25, 2009 at 8:23 am
Hi – I’m glad the articles are assisting you with Facebook.
November 2, 2009 at 3:51 pm
hi there. wondering if you know of a workaround to get the FB fan page widget to work on myspace?
November 2, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Hi Jenn – Unfortunately, I don’t have any experience with myspace so I’m not sure if the widget will work there or not. It does contain javascript, which they might not allow. For example, I can’t add code to a facebook fan page that contains javascript either.
November 4, 2009 at 9:21 pm
thanks anyway Kim!
it’s true that myspace does not allow javascript. it seems like there is a way, but it also seems very complicated. if i figure it out, i’ll post it here.
November 10, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Kim,
Thank you for the great tutorials. I have a quick question:
Is it possible to add this fan page widget in the body of an html email with iContact for example, and have it appear once the email is sent? I can get it to appear in the body of the email in the preview, but once the email is sent, the widget does not show up in the email.
Thanks in advance.
November 11, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Hi Maciek – Have you tried it in different email programs?
I don’t know the answer to this but the widget does use javascript and the email program may not want to run it due to security issues.
I think the best thing to do is ask the newsletter people.
November 11, 2009 at 6:12 am
Hi there,
Your site is listed #2 for the keyword “facebook fans page widget width” and cardeo 1.
I have a problem regarding the width of the widget displayed.
I set the widget width as 250 but it’s displaying the size of 952×150 px. I’m tired of searching how to customize the width to 250px width.
Even your FB widget is displaying 952×150 px on Kimwoodbridge.
Any idea how to bring it back to my control. I don’t want to use an IFRAME !
Thanks.
Indian Girls Club´s last blog ..Shocking 180 Desi Girls Smoking Pics
November 11, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Hi – I have mine set to 180 width and 350 height. I didn’t use px in the code – it’s just width=”180″ height=”350″
January 4, 2010 at 1:30 pm
what if I cannot find the add “‘Add Fan Box to Your Site” option listed in step 2? I have looked for it where you show it and all over but cannot find it?
Thanks for any help
D
January 4, 2010 at 1:39 pm
Hi Damian – Looks like once again Facebook has moved a setting. Go to Edit Page instead. On the right hand side is a section called ‘Promote Your Page’. The 4th one should say “Promote with a fan page box’.
January 5, 2010 at 10:50 am
Running into a Facebook-Wordpress snafu, maybe you can suggest what’s going on with my site.
The developer wiki — http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Fan_Box — indicates two scripts: the default script and a smaller one-line script for sites already running Facebook Connect and querying those javascripts.
I am running FB Connect for comments.
So, if I use the default script as my widget, then the fan box only appears on http://ariwriter.com but not on individual posts and pages. If I substitute that widget with the smaller one-line script, then the fan box only appears on posts and pages but not the central landing page.
Ideas? How can it be on everything? If I insert both scripts into the widget panel, then the homepage sees two fan boxes.
Ari Herzog´s last blog ..How Electromyography May Change Your Life
January 5, 2010 at 11:21 am
Hi Ari – As I have no experience with Facebook connect, I don’t think I can answer the question without doing testing and research. I did, however, have a couple of thoughts.
1. Did you try deactivating all of the other plugins except for Facebook connect? Perhaps there is a javascript conflict … Except, it seems like this would be an all or nothing problem.
2. Ok – I just looked at your site. The widget works on single posts pages where Facebook connect is actually displayed. That page is loading the scripts needed for the widget to work but the other pages aren’t. Is there a way to load the libraries on all pages?
January 5, 2010 at 11:28 am
Beats the heck out of me. I suppose if the choice is posts and pages, or posts and pages and the homepage, I’d rather have the latter but will take the former. If someone’s commenting, they’ll see the box. If they’re not commenting, they won’t. I imagine more people are apt to click the box if they comment.
Ari Herzog´s last blog ..How Electromyography May Change Your Life
January 5, 2010 at 11:34 am
Hi Ari – It’s something I can add to “things to research when I have time list”. Did you try deactivating other plugins? This could be hard to try to duplicate without using all of the same plugins and the same theme.
I would go for having it on posts and pages rather than the homepage. If your visitors are like mine, they are usually coming to an individual post or looking for specific information.
January 10, 2010 at 4:40 pm
I HAVE A PERSONAL FACEBOOK PAGE AS WELL AS A FAN PAGE. HOW CAN I ADD MY FACEBOOK FAN PAGE WIDGET FROM MY FAN PAGE TO THE LEFT SIDEBAR OF MY PERSONAL FACEBOOK PAGE? IS THIS POSSIBLE TO DO? I WAS THINKING THIS WOULD ALLOW ME TO ADVERTISE MY FAN PAGE TO ANYBODY WHO COMES TO MY PERSONAL PAGE. ANY SUGGESTIONS AND COMMENTS AND IDEAS WOULD BE APPRECIATED. THANK YOU.
January 10, 2010 at 6:24 pm
Hi Eric – No you can’t add the widget to the sidebar of the profile page. You can use the Custom Profile Box to create a link in your sidebar to the fan page. The problem with this is that boxes will be going away so I don’t know how long it would work.
http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/how-to-link-to-your-facebook-fan-page-from-your-profile-page/
February 21, 2010 at 11:55 am
Kim,
I have tried adding the Fanpage to my site, but all I get is ‘Coupons on Facebook’
What am I doing wrong?
Thanks
Barb
Free Coupons´s last blog ..Folgers Coupons
February 21, 2010 at 12:26 pm
Is this for a profile page or a fan page? The ones for profile pages work differently.
February 21, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Kim,
It is for a Fan page.
I have seen the widget appear once, but when I clicked
on another post it was not there again.
Barb
Free Coupons´s last blog ..Folgers Coupons
February 21, 2010 at 3:48 pm
Update –
The fan page widget appears when the category links are clicked, but not when the recent posts are clicked??
Free Coupons´s last blog ..Folgers Coupons
February 22, 2010 at 6:48 am
There must be something on the single post template that is conflicting with the widget that isn’t happening on the category template. I took a quick look but nothing jumped out at me.