Facebook’s official WordPress plugin is here, bloggers rejoice

Facebook has announced a new plugin for WordPress that will allow bloggers to tap into Facebook features, such as social publishing and mentions directly from their WordPress dashboards.

According to Facebook engineer Matt Kelly: “Once the plugin is installed, you can cross-post content published to WordPress to your Facebook Timeline and the Facebook Pages you manage. You can also mention the names of Pages and friends as you post to further distribute your content.”

According to WordPress, the plugin will allow bloggers to:

• Post to an Author’s Facebook Timeline whenever they publish a new WordPress Post or Page.
• Mention friends and Facebook Pages. This posts to their Timelines as well as lists them on the WordPress Post or Page.
• Post all new WordPress Post or Pages to a specified Facebook Page.
• Like, send, and subscribe buttons can be enabled in a click and are fully customizable.
• Incorporate Facebook Comments, including full SEO support.
• Enable Open Graph Protocol integration.
• Set up a Recommendations bar, which allows users to click to start getting recommendations, Like content, and add what they’re reading to Timeline as they go.

The plugin also makes the following widgets available:

• Activity Feed: Shows readers their friends’ activity on the site, such as likes and comments.
• Recommendations: Gives readers personalized suggestions for pages on your site they might like, as well as a Recommendations Bar option to give users the option to add content to their Timeline as they read.
• Customizable Like, Subscribe and Send buttons.
• Comments Box: Makes it easy for people to comment on your site and post back to Facebook, and includes moderation tools. The plugin also features automatic SEO support for Facebook Comments, so search engines can index them to improve your site’s visibility.

WordPress is by far with web’s most popular CMS, powering approximately 16.6% of the entire web, from The New York Times to CNN.