How To Manually Install Facebook Comments In Any Theme

There are advantages of installing Facebook comments manually rather than simply installing a plugin.

Some of these benefits are:

• Use of conditional tags to load the Facebook javascript only on specific posts.
• Use of theme specific and WordPress hooks to determine the exact position you want the FB comment form to display.
• Customization of the Facebook comments plugin code.

There’s a few steps involved including:

1. Create a Facebook Developers App
2. Get code snippets
3. Create a .js file for the Javascript SDK
4. Enqueue and hook in script

Once you’ve created a new app, you can then grab the code.

The first code snippet goes in a new .js file which i named fb-comments.js and placed in a new folder named js in the child themes root directory.

The second snippet is added to a custom function and hooked into place using the WordPress comments_form hook or a theme specific hook position like genesis_comments_form.

You’ll also need to enqueue the script which you can see in the code snippets below.

Here’s all the code:

The first code block contains the Javascript SDK.

The 2nd code block contains 2 snippets. The 1st to enqueue the fb-comments.js script and the 2nd to hook in the Facebook comments form.

Here’s a few links which enable you to install Facebook comments using plugins or code in themes like Genesis which provide boxes for scripts.

Different Ways To Install Facebook Comments

• Install & Setup Facebook Comments Plugin
• Replace Native WordPress Comments With Facebook Comments
• Install Facebook Comments Using a Scripts Meta Box in Genesis