Byrnesys Blabberings

In 2008 all signs point towards a continuation of the popularity of social networking sites such as facebook, twitter, myspace, bebo etc. The only problem is, as was the problem with the original mobile phone networks, different friends are on different networks. 

I have taken facebook up much more than any of the other sites due to the fact its cleaner (in almost all uses of that word) and the majority of the friends I dont see day to day are on that network. I have also taken to keeping my status updated on facebook, just for fun and because twitter never really kept my attention.

Though my one bug about it all was how little all my online networks interacted, I knew it was possible as I saw the likes of shawn blanc include his twitter status on his blog sidebar. Yet I had resigned to the fact that it would take some good coding knowledge to pull off an inter related feat such as that, until I managed, and VERY simply at that, so I thought I would share this solution and small step toward inter-related social networking/blogging harmony.

The following is a short guide to setting your facebook update to be included on your wordpress blog sidebar – Warning this only works if "widgets" are enabled on your sidebar (I found out how to do the majority of this here):

1) Find you facebook status feed, this is easier said than done as facebook dont supply all your feeds very intuitively. Go to your profile page and at the mini-feed title click "see all", now click the link on the right bar called "Status Stories" then at the bottom of the right sidebar under "subscribe to these stories" click on "My Status". Once you have done this click on the address in the address bar, this is your facebook status feed. For a more graphical walk through of this check out this blog

2) Now you need to burn the feed so that the wordpress widget you create can read it properly, you can use a free google service called feedburner to do this, it is very simple and intuitive but if you can’t manage then drop a comment and some one will come to the rescue. Once you have the feedburner address for your status updates which should read something like http://feeds.feedburner.com/MyFacebookStatusUpdates then you are ready to go into your wordpress admin page.

2) In your Wordpress admin pages Go to Presentation and then the sub title of widgets. You should then be able to drag and drop a box from the bottom called RSS1 or similar into a position on your side bar.

3) Once thats in you need to configure it by clicking the configure icon on the right of this rss box

4) Pick a title for the sidebar section and include your feedburner feed, remember to save changes by clicking on the box on the right and you’re all done. 

Any Problems, leave a comment, if you like screenshots then there is a much more intuitive guide minus the feedburner section at Chanux here