Adding Google Friend Connect to your WordPress blog is easy. Friend Connect provides a cool way to add another dimension of “community” to your blog or website. I added it to my sidebar as a WordPress Widget, and I’m starting to see side conversations develop, in addition to the comments on individual blog posts. (This site uses the Thesis WordPress Theme.)
It is also nice because people that frequent your site can meet each other, and discover other websites or blogs that like minded people are members of.
How To Add Friend Connect To Your WordPress Blog
On Twitter a lot of people who are saying they’ve been “whitelisted” to be part of the Friend Connect program, so I assume that it will get easier and easier to have access to it. Here are the steps to add Friend Connect to your WordPress Blog.
1. Log into Friend Connect at http://www.google.com/friendconnect/home/
2. Click on the “Set Up A New Site” button. This will walk you through a short process.
3. Upload files - canvas.html and rpc_relay.html to the root directory of your blog.
Note: Google has simplified this step and you no longer need to upload these files. The process will ask you for the name and URL to your website that’s it! (as of Oct 2, 2009)
4. Get the code for the “Members Gadget”
5. Go into WordPress Admin -> Design -> Widgets (this assumes you are using a widget enabled theme.)
6. Create a Text Widget, give it a title, and insert the HTML code into the the Widget.
Now people can join your site as members. They can see other members on your site and meet them. You might want to consider adding some other Friend Connect Gadgets to the site now.
I use the “Wall Gadget” so people can leave comments and start discussions. There aren’t very many Friend Connect gadgets available yet, but the next one I plan to try is the ratings and review Gadget.
Update: Google has released the new Social Bar for Friend Connect. Here is a walk-through of How to Add the Google Friend Connect Social Bar to Your WordPress Website.
What about you – are you experimenting with Friend Connect yet? If so, leave your website url in the comments, or better yet – become a member of this site by Joining in the Friend Connect gadget in the right sidebar!
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I know for sure it’s the javascript code in the TEXT widget that is crashing my wordpress blog. I know this because I took out the text, it worked. I put it back in, crash. Did this repeatedly. BUT, It only crashes on SOME computers, but for the majority it is fine. Do you reccomend that I do anything to fix this?
Can someone tell me how to do step three please. Thanks!
I’m unable to make this work. I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong, though! Sigh.
This doesn’t work, because blogs hosted on Wordpress don’t take Javascript, nice try though
@Quibbler, that’s true on WordPress.com blogs, but not on self-hosted WordPress sites. This site, for example is self-hosted and I’ve added Google Friend Connect to it.
This is crazy. We call tissues – “Kleenex”, packing tape – “Scotch”, photocopy – “Xerox”. And we’re not far from calling the internet – “Google”.
Google friend connect works on my self hosted blog under every browser except for firefox, the area just comes up blank.
Does firefox block this java code? Have I left something out or is there some extra code that firefox requires?
We have been having the same problems elsewhere. Usually it is just too many widgets installed and code bumping into code. Also everytime we have had these problems when we took the orginal theme back to a clean install without all the widgets junkin up the place, Google Friend Connect ran just fine.
It works just fine on my sites right now so we can rule out the browser as a whole. Google does go to great lengths to write clean non browser dependent code.
Also what FF version are you using? I would update to 3.5.5 as it is a bit better then previous.
I am using firefox 3.5.5
I just find it strange that it works in many other browsers and not in forefox.
I only have a few widgets installed but nothing to over the top, mainly I use the text widget with some HTML in it.
@Chris Lang – thanks for helping people out over here, I appreciate it. Nice YouTube channel you have, by the way!
Jason Saggers,
Are you using the All in One SEO pack or Facebook Connect for fan pages from FB?
What theme are you using? I am getting to the bottom of this sooner or later. It has to be one of these things. Only thing in common with all blogs I know of with this problem.
Is it the blog you linked to above? http://www.jason-saggers.com/
I tried loading that blog on the 3MB WiFi I was on and after two minutes the blog still had not loaded the homepage. After two minutes I have up on a single blog post.
You either have a major problem with that blog, it has a serious error code somewhere or your host is using a tin can and a string.
With the load time I experienced Google Friend Connect’s connection to Google’s servers would time out and you will get a blank placeholder, it has to do with FireFox timing out slow sites and then not allowing you to refresh and rerequest.
Bring your load time way up and I bet GFC works for you too.
That is by self hosted blog, it is stored here in Australia and my host is normally quiet good.
I just loaded the web site and it took about 10 seconds if that to load the main page (www.jason-saggers.com)
I made the theme and I thought it was designed okay.
I do use the All in One SEO pack but I don’t use any kind of facebook connect.
I have removed the Google friend connect text widget that I was using for the time being.
I am normally quiet good with my images and saving them for web. I don’t have any problems that I am aware off.
It is just my personal blog but I would like it to work correctly.
@Jason Saggers – it is probably a JavaScript library conflict. Are you using any JS libraries in your theme? Here’s a discussion on a Google forum where one person ran into a similar problem and posted a fix.
That is absolutely awesome Don!!! I will get back to you and see if this fixes the blogs that are currently having problems.
So far every one did have the All in One SEO pack on it. When we went to a fresh install of the theme in a sub directory for testing purposes GFC worked every time.
Thanks for the link, that could be just one more piece of why GFC is not working at times lately.
Cheers! = Chris
PS Happy Thanksgiving to all in the states.
@Jason Saggers,
Your site is blazing fast now, must have been network problems yesterday with Thanksgiving here in the states being a very busy Internet day.
Try shutting of the All In One SEO pack and see if GFC works Jason.
Do it at a low traffic time just for a few and then re-enable it. If either fix works let us know because there are many others with the same problem.
Having the same problem on Firefox. Shut off the All in One SEO, still same problem…any other suggestions?
All I get is nothing but blank by pasting the code into the text widget.
I still cant get this working in Firefox, works perfectly in every other browser that I have installed.
The funny thing is that when I was at work the other day I accessed my site with Firefox and the Google friend connect worked perfectly.
So when I come home I tried it and it still doesn’t work.
This is very strange, actually it doesn’t bother me that much because I don’t get a lot of readers and they certainly don’t click on Join this site…
very helpful……..
I’m having trouble getting this to work on my blog as well. I use Firefox and all that shows up is a bunch of letters and symbols. I would love to know how to get this to work on my blog.
@Brenda – I took a quick look at your site, and it looks like you are using WordPress.com rather than self-hosted WordPress. Unfortunately Google Friend Connect does not work with WordPress.com, at least not yet…
Here is an article that describes the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org (also called self-hosted WordPress.)
Thanks so much for checking it out for me. Hopefully Wordpress changes that sometime soon.
I was just at WordCamp in Phoenix and had a chance to speak with Matt Mullenweg, the creator of all things WordPress. He did say that integration of widgets like Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect (yuck) may be coming soon.
However what I got from our conversation is that he is NOT taking sides in the Facebook / Google / Microsoft war and unless he can offer integration to both sides he will offer none. He did not say that directly but that is what I walked away with. So yeah, if you want to do a hosted blog and add Google Friend Connect then Blogger is the only game in town for now.
The followers gadget of last year in now Google Friend Connect and it comes by default with each new Blogger blog created there.
Since Google removed the FTPing of files and now offers a single JavaScript addition to create GFC it is only a matter of time till we see this integration everywhere.
Here is the solution to why Google Friend Connect does not seem to work in some browsers.
http://www.googlingsocial.com/?p=449
It has nothing to do with the browser and everything to do with JavaScript.
Hope this helps you out. Let us know.
Thank you for finding this and posting it here Chris!
-Don
Hey Don, you don’t know how glad I am too.
I have spent countless hours trying to sort this out and a guy just commented on my blog that this worked right away for him.
I don’t know why I didn’t think to email one of my Google Wave developer contacts before and ask him to walk down the hall and ask a GFC guy WTH?
I never thought it would be a WordPress issue…. LOL
I have given up on this for the time being.
I does seem to be a Java problem I think.
Sometimes it works and others it doesn’t.
So I have removed it.
really good post, i couldnt imagine how many things we can do with wordpress blog, it is really briefly explined step bye step, especially thank you for letting us to see all your coding.
works like a charm….thanks for the such a wonderful explanation.
rgds
vj
I appreciate the comprehensive post you’ve written Don.
How interesting it is, because I’ve added Google’s friend connect to my WordPress today before I see your post. How much more convenient it would be to do it if I read your content at this page sooner.
Now, I must grow my list over there and invite friends to join, like I invite you as well.
Thanks for your great tutorial, but unfortunately, this gadget doesn’t work at my blog. I have a standard one (no upgrade) and I entered the copied html-code into the text gadget. Result: Just the full html-text is shown. Do you know by chance why? Thanks in advance.
@starconfig, vj, Rahman, Thank you!
@Mylanqolia – what kind of blog do you have, is it a self-hosted WordPress blog? What is the URL to your site?
-Don
Here is the solution to why Google Friend Connect does not seem to work in some browsers.
http://www.googlingsocial.com/?p=449
The link and the discussion is in comments above.
Also it helps if you add the link in your comment so we can see your blog. Hard to help without seeing the domain you are under, shared, or hosted solution.
@Don: Thanks so much for the quick respond!!! Well, it isn’t a self-hosted blog as far as I know but it’s no problem to give you the link of my make-up themed blog (so sorry, it’s just boring girl stuff). Here it is: http://mylanqolia.wordpress.com/ Hope that it helps to find a solution. Thanks again!!!
Actually that is not a self hosted blog, that is a hosted blog. Hosted by another site. You will not be able to run any JavaScript based gadgets there. http://mylanqolia.wordpress.com/
A self hosted blog would be on your domain like:
http://mylanqolia.com (if you have registered and own the domain)
I always suggest running any site on your own domain and I am sure Don will tell you the same. You see when you host a blog on Blogger or Wordpress.com they own your content. They can close your site if you violate their TOS or they decide your content is not to your liking.
Also if you get a spam complaint and a hosted URL is in the email, you can get closed down even though you are innocent.
Now I know none of us here send spam, but all it takes is someone who for what ever reason clicks the spam button in say Gmail or Yahoo and you can be gone even though you are not a spammer.
Just a few reasons to move to your own domain. Hope this helps.
Well, Don, it’s a very good introduction on how to add and set up Google Friend Connect to a blog. Now, what we’re waiting for will be your next post:
“How to Attract People to Join Google Friend Connect”!
@Chris: Thanks a lot for the very helpful answer. I don’t know if it’s worth it to get an own domain as I have a very small blog for 2 years that doesn’t attract many people due to the shallow make up topic. I’m not a professional, it’s just a hobby. I don’t write about world politics or about human rights and I don’t earn money with it. So, a domain would be nonsense. But anyway, thanks a lot again.
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