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How to Add Facebook Send Button in WordPress

Last updated on June 22nd, 2012 by Editorial Staff

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How to Add Facebook Send Button in WordPress

Previously, we showed you how to add the Facebook Like Button in WordPress. The like button allowed your users to like/share your blog posts with their friends on Facebook. Recently, Facebook has announced a new addition to this like button known as the “Send button”. The send button allows your users to share your blog posts with their friends that are on Facebook as well those who are not on Facebook. They can also use the send button to send the message to Facebook Groups that they are part of. Think of this as an email-this button on steroids because it has the social touch to it. Each send counts as a like on Facebook. When someone likes a post, it is shared with all of their friends. But due to hundreds of friends that each person has, the news feed is crowded with so many other things causing your post to be ignored most of the time. The Send button is here to solve that problem because now users can actually suggest your post to a selected friends / groups which will allow you to get GUARANTEED exposure as most people check their Facebook messages. In this article, we will show you how to add the Facebook Send Button in your WordPress blog.

Note: Sometimes, Facebook doesn’t show the right thumbnail image, or the right title by default. To prevent that issue, you should add Facebook Open Graph Meta Data in your WordPress.

Now that you know that this is useful, lets add it in your WordPress posts. First open your single.php file in your theme’s folder, then paste the following code inside your loop (In some themes, you will need to locate loop.php file to do this):

<div id="fb-root"></div>
<script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"></script><fb:send href="<?php echo get_permalink(); ?>" font=""></fb:send>

But the problem with above code is that it is not the best method. Facebook Send Button can only work well when it is in combination with the like button because without it, it has no social effect. So let us show you how to combine the like button and Send button in one like we have it in this post above.

<div id="fb-root"></div>
<script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"></script><fb:like href="<?php echo get_permalink(); ?>" show_faces="true" width="450" send="true"></fb:like>

As of now, the send button does not work with the iFrame version of the Like Button, so you would have to use it this way.

Once you paste the code, you are done. You should see something like what we have at the top of our post. (Click on the button to see its functionality )

There are other parameters and options for this plugin.

If you want to show the friend icons under the button, then you should use the parameter:

show_face=true

If you want to display the simple button with only the count and nothing else, then you want to use the parameter:

layout=box_count

If you want a darker color scheme for your button, then you need to use the parameter:

colorscheme=dark

If you want to change the text from Like to Recommend, then use the parameter:

action=recommend

We think that this send button will be very helpful. Because it is very new, we do not have the data to present it to our users on how much it is helping us, but if you subscribe to our newsletter, then you can be sure to receive updates about this and other cool marketing tricks that will help you grow your blog.