March 23, 2010 
Unless you’re giving away free beer on your website, chances are that you need the assistance of 3rd party social media to make users aware of interacting with your WordPress community. This week the WordPress community has been bursting with new ways to connect the social networking sites users use most with WordPress sites so that information and interaction can be easily shared across platforms.
Welcome the Facestream plugin for all of your Facebook streaming needs on your BuddyPress site. This plugin allows you to synchronize your user’s BuddyPress activity items with their Facebook posts. It also sends out updates upon forum topic creation and topic reply. Peter Hofman developed this plugin and is also the author of the very excellent Tweetstream plugin, which has been downloaded more than 1,800 times since it was released less than a month ago.
How to Set-Up the Facestream Plugin
There are three simple parts to setting up this plugin. After you download and install the plugin, it will guide you through the steps under the Dashboard >> Facestream settings, but here’s a preview so you’ll know what to expect:
Get an API key From Facebook
In order to interact with Facebook you will need to create an app that communicates from your site to theirs. Go to: http://developers.facebook.com/setup.php and login. Create the new app for your site and then save the API Key and Secret Key to input for the plugin.
Set the Filters (Optional but highly recommended)
Filters allow you to set words that you want the plugin to filter for so it will only show Facebook posts that mention the specific word(s). This keeps the plugin from cluttering up your BuddyPress activity stream and making it completely unmanageable. You can tailor the plugin’s output in the stream to be relevant to your site by including multiple filters.
Set the User Options
This plugin is truly flexible with the following options:
- Allow users to sync to buddypress.
- Allow users to sync updates to buddypress.
- Allow users to sync links to buddypress.
- Allow users to sync photo’s to buddypress.
- Allow users to sync video’s to buddypress.
- Max facebook items import per user, per day.
What I enjoy is the fact that the user has control over all of the settings for his profile. He can link all of his updates, set his own filters, or choose not to activate the plugin at all. This is a great way to get more multi-media items shared across your BuddyPress site using the Facebook API without having to depend on BuddyPress plugins that may or may not be up to date. I tested this plugin with WP 2.9.2 and BuddyPress 1.2.2.1 and it works as advertised, so you can have the confidence to try it out today.
Hi Sarah,
Thanks for the update! :-)
Niiice! Now all we need is a Twitter login/signup plugin and the circuit will be complete! Why anyone would even bother with crap like N!ng or Social “No” is beyond me.
I have a new install of WP 2.9.2 and BP 1.2.2.1 and neither tweetStream nor FaceStream are working as suggested. Specifically, after setting up the API references back to twitter.com and Facebook.com the setup screens shown are not available. And, the references to member pages are broken.
Might this be specific to WPMU 2.9.2? That would be good to reflect in your post, since that’s something people should know ;)
It might be a conflict with some of the plugins you’re using. I would contact the developer since he wrote both the plugins and may have encountered this issue before.
really would love to use both these plugins but they are not working on wpmu / buddypress latest version … can anyone help ?
on twitterstream i get this when i tried posting a tweet from the activity screen
Fatal error: Call to undefined function bcpow() in /home/mydomain.com/web/public/wp-content/plugins/tweetstream/tweetstream.php on line 1071
and on facestream it doesn’t even activate the plugin
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_ELSE in /home/mydomain.com/web/public/wp-content/plugins/facestream/facestream.php on line 898
Does this work with the same FB API key as WP-FB-Connect?
This is a great plugin although I had limited experience with it due to a clash with WP-FB-Connect. I first activated this plugin to play around with it then attempted to activate FB-Connect. It activated fine but there was a notification that there was a conflicting plugin using the FB API. It said I could ignore the warning but login may not work. It was right, the plugin wouldn’t save the settings while Facestream was activated. Once deactivated FB-Connect worked properly. Im sure this issue will be addressed so ill just wait patiently.
I am using WPMU 2.9.2 BP 1.2.2.1
The FaceStream plugin apparently uses a different (older?) version of the Facebook API, and therefore one of 2 things can happen:
1. If WP-FB-Connect is already activated, the FaceStream plugin won’t work.
2. If the FaceStream plugin is already activated, WP-FB-Connect will post a warning that another (older) Facebook API exists, and to contact the plugin provider to (basically) fix their code. If you proceed, you’ll find that the WP-FB-Connect plug will fail.
So sure, the plugin works when isolated by themselves, but Mr. Hofman needs to either update his API reference or make the call private to his procs so it doesn’t cause other plugins to fail.
Hi Sarah,
As I had mentioned earlier, I’ve been waiting for this plugin and for you to break the news! :-)
I’ve installed, its simply brilliant!! However, I’m not able to update BuddyPress with the Facebook updates. The BuddyPress to Facebook updates work fine.
I’m missing something here?
I´m too than Amit. No load to facebook.
Well i have released a new version with some fixes, will release another oen after the weekend with more fixes etc.
hi!
I would also love to use the Plugin. It works great from BP -> FB. Every update is directly avaible in FB. But if I write something in FB – nothing happens in BP. Also with the newest version.
Is there a menual how to setup everyting in FB correctly? I use the same App API as my WP-Book Plugin uses…
Thanks a lot!
Philipp
I am also having problems with this plugin, after a little research, I went to my database in usermeta and changed my facestream_id meta_value from 1.0000088656E+14 to my username and then I was able to post to facebook (it worked with either my Facebook Id # or my Username), I still can not get facebook to send to buddypress, some of the other facestream database fields could also be wrong? If I knew what all the Facestream meta_values looked like in a working example then maybe I could figure it out or at the least input the values into my table as temp fix. If it is not to much to ask can anyone with a working install provide a copy of their working facestream database fields (changing their personal info of course)
The plugin seems great, but I followed the instructions and I have not gotten it to work completely.
I installed WPMU 2.9.2 and BP 1.2.3 and if I performed my facebook stream WPMU, but at the time of posting some of my WPMU to Facebook, the button is doing an action but does not stop posting.
Could anyone give me more directions?
Thank you all.
Mine didn’t work, dno’t even get the button, just the text “Connect with Facebook”
Any idea anyone?
Never mind previous comment. I got it.
hi all….. my name enda. i have 1 question..how to set up facestream complete…..any 1 can help me….please send for shellyenda02@gmail.com…..thank b4
I have Facestream working. It posts to my wall and if others in buddypress complete the setting they can post to their wall.
What I’d like to do is post to a group/page/community and not each person’s wall. Is there a way to configure facestream or an application in facebook to post feeds to a page?
I also had twitterstream working and then upgraded to WP3.0 – seemed to work until set wp to multi-user.
Now there’s an error when accessing the site with twitter call back. Had to disable.
So as often happens when writing or talking out a problem a resolution appears.
I decided to pull from facebook instead of push to FB.
I loaded an application in FB called RSS graffiti. It is very easy to configure, Rss graffiti can post to pages and walls. I set it up to post the activity feed from my WP/BP site to the Facebook group.
Check out civilsay group in Facebook and you’ll see the results.
Still need solution for twitter feed that works.
Howdy.
I’ve installed tweetstream and facestream using WordPress 3.0 and Buddypress 1.2.5.2
Tweetstream works as expected. FaceStream however corrupts the group/forums features in buddypress.
Only way out to solve the issue was to uninstall FaceStream. I hope the plugin gets updated to run under the latest versions of WP and BP.
Regards.
Martin
Pingback: BuddyPress | Will Work for Tips! ;-D
How many of you actually use buddypress none of the sites in the comments are buddypress communities but it’s noce to see some links have been removed.