Facebook and Twitter comments intregation

I was in a forum yesterday, and someone or that forum’s member asked how to intregate Facebook and Twitter comments in a wordpress blog.

I found it is really interesting, because I have found so many blogs have this Facebook and Twitter comments box as an extra comment field, because people can choose if they want to leave their comments by many ways.

Either by logged in to their Facebook (FB) accounts, or Twitter accounts, or as guest, or even in their WordPress.com’s account.

In the visitors or commenters side, this comment field could be more complicated, because they have to type in their login username as well as password before they can leave comment.

Because of this, something to be aware of, this commenting system can reduce amount of commenters, since most of us would prefer something simple to leave comments.

Another side, there is an advantage, this commenting system will definitely reduce spam bots comments, since bots cannot type username and password manually.

Manual intregation – Facebook comments is different than Twitter comments

FB is one of the most visited website everyday, apart of Google, as a search engine. I guess that’s why, it has a developer page, where you can some useful plugins, or features to intregate them in your wordpress blog.

In my older entry, how to add Facebook comments in wordpress, I have created a video tutorial on how to add FB comments field under your blog post manually without a plugin.

That means, we edited the theme files to display that commenting box, to allow your readers post their opinions or feedbacks directly from their FB accounts page. (related: Facebook can’t create apps).

Displaying Twitter comments with a plugin

If Facebook comments box can be added to wordpress theme files manually without using any plugins, it is a bit different with Twitter comments in WordPress.

As you probably have seen in many blogs, some people use “disqus” commenting system to engage their reader’s discussion.

I personally don’t use disqus commenting system, because besides adding an extra plugin will increase my plugins usage, but also I want my commenting system to be as simple as it is.

I have tried disqus and intense debate commenting system, and the easiest to add Twitter comments in your comment area is IntenseDebate.

I am currently only using default wordpress comment field.

If you want to add Facebook and Twitter comments field to your wordpress blog pages and posts, you can try this Intense Debate wordpress plugin.

Download the plugin from wordpress.org plugin database here.

I have tested with wordpress 3.2 beta version and it is a compatible plugin that supports the latest version of wordpress when this post I write.

Suppose you want to know how to install wordpress plugin, you can find a video in this install wordpress plugin tutorial. (type “Intensedebate” in plugin search box, should be the first one in the list).

Once you have installed and activated the plugin, you need to create an account in IntenseDebate website or use your wordpress.com username if you have one.

Once you have the plugin activated, and you already connect to IntenseDebate website, you will need to figure something to display “Twitter” login.

Because by default, this plugin will show, openID, wordpress.com login icons, and Twitter login, you need to configure it first in IntenseDebate.

Here are the simple steps to display “Twitter” in your dashboard of IntenseDebate.

1. Login to your IntenseDebate account.

2. Go to your dashboard.

3. Look at the top right of your page, you should see “sites” tab. Click this tab, and you will see your site’s URL

4. On the site’s setting, you should see some buttons to enable, Facebook, Twitter and Open ID.

5. Tick on “Enable logins via Twitter” to enable Twitter comments in your blog.

6. Click save changes, and we are done 🙂

This is the end result of this plugin, with Twitter login enabled. If you want also to enable Facebook, you will need Facebook API key, visit my how to find Facebook API key to find yours.

It is definitely not a difficult task to add Facebook, Twitter comments, and other commenting system in your wordpress blog with this cool plugin.