Have a website with your Facebook Page on the sidebar? You know, the one that pulls in your latest page posts or the people that have liked your page?
Heads up! Facebook just announced a big change.
“With the release of Graph API v2.3, the Like Box plugin is deprecated and will stop working on June 23rd 2015. Use the new Page Plugin instead. The Page Plugin allows you to embed a simple feed of content from a Page into your websites.“
I’ve always struggled with the LIKE Box and what FB thinks we should be using it for. They would like to be bringing in the content from our FB Page to the website. The problem with that is that most all of the content should be originating from your website to begin with. Still, there’s a few cool things that the LIKE box does.
- People can LIKE your page directly from your website
- It shows the visitor, their friends who have liked your page
I just changed mine to the new version. Here’s what my Like Box used to look like.
Note: this is a screen capture as I want this post to work after the deadline.
I was doing something a little different with mine. I wanted to show only the faces of people that had liked my page. Why show the posts when they start here to begin with right?
You can see new version on the sidebar or embedded below.
I tried to do the same thing as I did with the old version. Obviously it doesn’t work the same way. Maybe I’ll work on it later.
The big take away from this is that if you have a LIKE box on your site you’ll need to update it to the new version.
On the negative side, the old box was a simple iframe script meaning most anyone could do it.
With the new version, you’ll need to be able to
- Create a FB app (to get an App ID)
- Upload a script to the root directory of your site
That’s easy for me to do but I don’t know how many average website owners will be able to do that.
If I built your site and you want an updated Facebook LIKE Box, let me know, – I’m happy to do it for free.
If I didn’t build your site I’ll be happy to create one for you – I’ll just have to figure out what to charge you.
Nothing ever stays the same in technology and social media.
He's an avid hockey fan, rides a mountain bike, sometimes rides a road bike, has a few motorcycles (he had a really fast one, bought a cool orange one, rode a really slow one, and now,a perfect "BDR Weapon"). If that isn't enough, he makes cheese and sourdough bread, loves strong beer and good red wine, and poorly plays the Mandolin.
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