How to Embed Facebook Albums in WordPress

Do you want to embed Facebook albums into your WordPress website?

Embedding Facebook albums is a great way to boost social engagement on both your WordPress website and your Facebook page.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily embed Facebook albums in WordPress, step by step.

Embedding a Facebook Album in WordPress

WordPress used to come with built-in embed support for Facebook albums. Just like you embed a YouTube video, all you had to do was to copy and paste the URL of any Facebook album and WordPress automatically fetched and displayed it.

However, all of this changed recently when Facebook and Instagram made changes to their API. These changes made it impossible for WordPress to continue oEmbed support for Facebook and Instagram.

Now if you paste a link to a Facebook Album, WordPress will show you a message that ‘Sorry, this content could not be embedded’.

You can convert it to a link, but that wouldn’t display your album and instead take users to Facebook to view your photos.

Luckily, our sister company Smash Balloon created a fix for Facebook and Instagram embeds in WordPress.

This allows you to easily embed Facebook albums in your blog posts, pages, and widgets with even more features and functionality.

Embed Facebook Albums in WordPress with Smash Balloon

Smash Balloon is the best Facebook plugin for WordPress which allows you to easily display your Facebook feed on your website to boost engagement and get more likes.

First, you need to install and activate the Smash Balloon Custom Facebook Feed plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once activated, go to the Facebook Feed » Settings page and then click on the ‘Licence’ tab. From here you need to enter your license key which can found under your account on the Smash Balloon website.

Next, you need to click on the ‘Configuration’ tab and then click on the big blue button to connect your Facebook account.

You’ll be able to choose whether you want to connect to a Facebook page or a group. We’ll connect to a page for this example, but you can connect to a group and share those albums as well.

This will take you to Facebook where you will be asked to log in to your Facebook account and click on the Continue button.

After that, you will be asked to select which Facebook page(s) you would like to connect. Simply check the boxes next to the pages that you want to connect to your WordPress site.

Click on the Next button to continue.

You’ll be asked to select permissions for the page. Make sure that they are all turned on otherwise Smash Balloon may not be able to fetch content from your Facebook account.

After that, you can click ‘Done’ to finish setup.

You’ll be now redirected back to your WordPress website where the plugin will ask you to select which page(s) you want to use. Simply click to select the page(s) and then click on the ‘Connect this page’ button to continue.

Smash Balloon will now show your page as connected. Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Settings’ button to store your changes.

Displaying Your Facebook Albums in WordPress Using Smash Balloon

Smash Balloon is highly customizable and offers multiple ways to display your Facebook albums in WordPress.

1. Display All Your Facebook Albums

This method is easier and allows you to show all your Facebook albums in a WordPress post or page. Users can then click to view photos in your albums in a lightbox popup.

Simply go to Facebook Feed » Customize page and scroll down to the Post Types section.

From here, you need to uncheck all other items except Albums. You will see a few options like album source, title, and other settings. You can leave them unchanged if you are unsure.

Go ahead and click on the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page to save your changes.

Now, you need to edit the post or page where you want to display your Facebook albums. On the content editor screen, click on the add new block button (+) and then add Custom Facebook Feed block to your content area.

The plugin will then automatically fetch albums from your Facebook page and display a preview of them in the content area. You can now save your changes and preview the post / page to see your albums in action.

You’ll see your Facebook albums listed in a neat grid layout. Clicking on the album will open it in a lightbox popup.

2. Display a Specific Facebook Album in WordPress

Smash Balloon also allows you to easily embed a specific Facebook album anywhere on your WordPress site.

For that, you’ll need their Album addon which comes with the ‘Smash’ plan.

Simply go to the Facebook Feed » Extensions page and click on the Get This Extension button.

This will take you to the Smash Balloon website where you can purchase the extension or upgrade your plan.

After that, you can download and install the extension like you would install any WordPress plugin. Upon activation, return to the Facebook Feed » Extensions and check the ‘Activate’ option under the Albums extension.

Don’t forget to click on the Save changes button to store your settings.

You are now ready to embed any Facebook album from your page or group to your WordPress blog.

First, you will need to find the ID for the Facebook album that you want to embed. Simply visit Facebook and open the album and you’ll see the album ID in the URL field.

For instance, your album URL may look like the following.

https://ift.tt/3oyJVBD

In this URL, the numeric string after the set=a. is your album ID.

After obtaining the album ID, you can copy and paste it somewhere safe. You’ll need it in the next step.

Now, simply edit the post or page where you want to display the album. On the post edit screen, you need to add the shortcode block to the content area.

Inside the shortcode block, you’ll need to enter the following shortcode.

[custom-facebook-feed album=YourAlbumID]

Don’t forget to replace the YourAlbumID with your own album ID that you copied earlier.

You can now save your changes and preview your post or page to see your Facebook album embedded in WordPress.

We hope this article helped you learn how to embed Facebook albums in WordPress. You may also want to check out our guide on how to create a custom Instagram photo feed in WordPress, and how to create an email newsletter to connect with your visitors after they leave your website.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Embed Facebook Albums in WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.

January 11, 2021 at 06:00PM

8 Best Popular Posts Plugins for WordPress (Compared)

Are you looking for a way to show popular posts on your WordPress website?

Displaying popular posts helps your visitors find your best content and increase your page views. It’s also a great way to interlink your pages to boost SEO.

In this article, we will share the best popular posts plugins for WordPress.

Why Use a WordPress Popular Posts Plugin?

Using a WordPress popular posts plugin helps you point users towards the articles that other users already found helpful.

Popular posts are usually your most successful content, which means they more likely to increase user engagement, conversions, and sales.

They are also a good opportunity for internal linking to your other less popular articles. This improves the SEO score for other articles and helps users discover more content.

You can create highly engaging funnels using popular posts, related posts, and conversion optimization tools. All of which lead users to sign up and help you grow your business.

That being said, let’s take a look at some of the best popular post plugins for WordPress that you can on your website.

1. MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress used by over 2 million websites. It lets you properly setup Google Analytics without editing code or hiring a developer.

They have the best Popular Posts feature which allows you to show your popular articles anywhere on your WordPress site. You can use also use Inline Popular Posts to show articles inside your content.

If you want to show articles in the sidebar or at the end of your content, you can select the Popular Post Widget.

MonsterInsights even lets you display your top-performing products anywhere on your eCommerce store.

The plugin offers different themes to choose from, and you can customize the design by changing the title color, size, label color, border, and more.

You can sort your popular posts based on comments, share count, or manually select posts that will randomly rotate in the widget.

If you have custom dimensions set up like post type, then MonsterInsights will automatically pick the top 5 posts from Google Analytics from the past 30 days and show them as popular posts.

Pros: MonsterInsights offers lots of options to display popular posts. You can select different themes, layouts, styling, and customize each popular post widget. It can automatically determine popular posts and show them on your website.

Cons: To get powerful features like eCommerce tracking, conversion tracking, and custom dimensions, you’ll need the MosterInsights Pro plan.

2. WordPress Popular Posts

WordPress Popular Posts plugin is one of the most downloaded popular posts plugin on the market with over 300,000+ active installs. It allows you to show popular posts with many different conditions.

You can show recently trending articles by selecting a date range. You can also show most commented or most viewed articles.

It is multi-widget capable, which means you can add the same widget multiple times into the same or different sidebar. You can apply your own custom CSS, show post thumbnails, excerpts, author, comment count, number of views, and more.

Pros: WordPress Popular Posts is a powerful plugin with all the options you would need to display your popular posts. Support for custom post types and the ability to add the widget multiple times allows you to create a different set of popular views, e.g., Popular Posts, Popular Reviews, etc.

Cons: The plugin creates two extra tables in the database to store popular posts data and cache. While some people might argue that it is a better approach to keep this data out of default WordPress tables, others may find it database intensive. Also there’s no option to connect with real analytics.

3. Top 10 – Popular posts plugin for WordPress

Top 10 Popular posts plugin for WordPress is another strong candidate in our list of the best popular posts plugins.

As far as the features are concerned, it matches WordPress Popular Posts and even adds some more features. Top 10 also comes with a highly configurable widget and shortcodes.

Despite the name, you can choose to display any number of popular posts. It allows you to select a date range to choose from. You can show post views, author, post summary or excerpt, and post thumbnails in the popular posts list.

Top 10 comes with a built-in caching system to make it less resource intensive. It also plays along nicely with WordPress caching plugins like W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache.

Pros: Top 10 Popular Posts Plugin is feature-rich, flexible, and easy to setup. It has aggressive caching to reduce the server load, and it works nicely with WordPress caching plugins.

Cons: Plugin settings page have way too many options, and beginners may find it a bit complicated. Also there’s no option to connect with real analytics.

4. Relevant

Relevant will help you show your popular posts, featured articles, related content, and latest posts on your WordPress website. It comes with multiple widgets including one for popular posts and a neat settings page.

You can display popular posts by comments or page views. It also allows you to display post thumbnail, author, excerpt, and post date.

Don’t want to use the widget? Relevant also comes with shortcodes and template tags that you can use to display popular posts anywhere on your website. You can also enable post blocks before or after post content.

Pros: It combines featured, latest, and related posts functionality into one convenient package.

Cons: The popular posts feature does not allow you to show popular posts in a particular date range.

5. Trending/Popular Post Slider and Widget

Trending/Popular Post Slider and Widget allows you to show popular posts in a slider, a grid block, or as a plain list. This way, you can show your best content in more engaging ways than just a list of links in your sidebar.

It comes with a simple settings page where you can choose the time range. This allows you to show posts trending during a particular year, month, or week.

The plugin comes with easy to use shortcodes that you can add to your posts or pages. You can also use the shortcode in your page builder plugin modules.

If you want to implement it directly into your theme, then you can use template tags to do that.

Pros: Ability to add popular posts sliders, carousels, and grid blocks and show them anywhere on your site.

Cons: Limited features than other popular posts plugin. The slider, carousel, and grid blocks only work with shortcodes. The widget is basically a list of links with post thumbnails, excerpts, and some metadata.

6. WP-PostRatings

WP-PostRatings is the next popular posts WordPress plugin on our list. It helps you show the most highly rated posts on your website and allows users to rate articles.

You can choose the rating icons and who can vote on articles (all users vs. only logged-in users). It supports rich snippets, and it is highly customizable through filters and template tags.

The best part about the plugin is its ratings widget, which shows top-rated posts on your website. This allows you to show popular posts by user votes. The plugin also works with WordPress Popular Posts plugin.

For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to add post rating system in WordPress

Pros: You can show popular posts based on user rating instead of page views or comments.

Cons: To implement the plugin, you will need to add template tags in your WordPress theme files, which can be tricky for beginners. If you haven’t done this before, then check out our guide on how to copy and paste code in WordPress.

7. Display Posts

Display Posts is a popular WordPress plugin that allows you to display WordPress posts by creating your own custom queries using shortcode.

It lets you easily showcase your top content anywhere on your site through shortcodes. For instance, you can show posts by comment count using the following shortcode:

[display-posts orderby="comment_count"]

It also works with plugins like shared counts, which allows you to display your most shared articles as well.

The plugin lets you filter posts by category and display content based on share count and the number of comments. In your display parameter, you can include excerpts, thumbnails, author avatar, and more.

Pros: Display Posts is extremely flexible and you can fetch and display any posts you want as popular posts. It offers detailed documentation and tutorials to help you get started.

Cons: The shortcode has many parameters and no styling. This would make it a bit difficult to use for beginners.

8. WP Tab Widget

WP Tab Widget is a user-friendly and fast WordPress plugin to display popular posts on your website. You can show articles based on pageviews, comments, tags, and recent posts all in a single widget.

The plugin lets you select which tab to show on your site and control the number of posts to show in each tab. The best part about WP Tab Widget is that it only loads posts when a user clicks on any tabs.

This makes the plugin lightweight and ensures your WordPress site runs without slowing down. Besides, you get different customization options such as show or hide post date, number of comments, excerpts, and more.

Pros: A super-fast plugin that doesn’t compromise website performance, as it uses AJAX to display popular posts under each tab. Plus, you get to show different types of posts in one widget.

Cons: WP Tab Widget lacks flexibility and offers limited features in the free version. To get predefined designs, drag and drop features, and more, you’ll have to upgrade to its Pro version.

Which Popular Posts Plugin is the Best?

We believe that MonsterInsights is the best popular posts plugin for WordPress. It lets you show your best content anywhere on your site and offers lots of options for customization.

You can display posts based on share count, comments, manually select articles, or automatically pick the top 5 posts from Google Analytics through custom dimensions.

With MonsterInsights, you also get additional tracking features that help you better understand your audience. Find out the source of your web traffic, top landing pages, referrals, device breakdown, and much more.

We hope this article helped you find the best popular posts plugin for WordPress. You may also want to see our list of the best WordPress plugins for all websites, and our tutorial on how to add web push notifications in WordPress to grow your traffic.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 8 Best Popular Posts Plugins for WordPress (Compared) appeared first on WPBeginner.

January 08, 2021 at 05:00PM

How to Recover and Restore Deleted Pages in WordPress

Are you trying to recover deleted pages in WordPress?

If you accidentally deleted a WordPress page, then it is possible to recover it from Trash.

In this beginner’s guide, we’ll show you how to easily recover deleted pages in WordPress and WooCommerce.

How WordPress Handles Deleted Pages?

Just like your computer, WordPress moves deleted items into a ‘Trash’ folder. Doing that removes those items from your website and admin screens, but they’re not deleted permanently right away.

After 30 days, WordPress automatically deletes the item permanently from the trash, and your WordPress database.

If the page you deleted is still in the trash, then you can go ahead and restore it. We’ll show you how in a minute.

However, if it has been deleted from trash too, then you will need to try other ways to restore the deleted page in WordPress.

Sometimes you may accidentally delete a page and not notice it for a while. For instance, if you have multiple pages with the same name, and you end up deleting one that you actually needed.

Another common scenario that we have seen is users accidentally deleting pages needed by WooCommerce or their WordPress membership plugin.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily restore deleted pages in WordPress and WooCommerce. Here is quick table of content, so you can jump to the section that best fit your needs.

• Recover Deleted Pages from Trash in WordPress
• Recover Deleted Pages in WordPress Using a Backup Plugin
• Recover Deleted WooCommerce Pages
• Recover Selected Pages from a WordPress Backup (Advanced)

Method 1. Recover Deleted Pages from Trash in WordPress

This method is the easiest, and you should try it first before doing anything else.

Normally, when you delete an item in WordPress, it is sent to the trash folder, and you can recover it for the next 30 days. After that, it will be automatically deleted forever.

Simply go to Pages » All Pages inside your WordPress admin area. From here, you need to switch to the ‘Trash’ tab to view all the pages that have been deleted during last 30 days.

If the page(s) you want to recover is listed there, then simply take your mouse over the page title, and you’ll see the option to ‘Restore’ it.

You can also restore multiple pages at once by selecting them and then choosing ‘Restore’ from the Bulk Actions drop-down menu at the top.

You can now go to Pages » All Pages and locate the restored page there.

That was quick and easy, but what if the page you deleted is not listed under Trash?

Don’t worry, there are other ways to restore deleted pages in WordPress.

Method 2. Restore Deleted Pages in WordPress Using a Backup Plugin

Backups are one of the best WordPress security and productivity tools. All WordPress websites must set up a proper WordPress backup plugin.

These WordPress backup plugins not just help you recover a hacked WordPress site, but they can also help you recover deleted content including pages.

Note: WordPress backup plugins allow you to restore your entire website to an earlier point. This means any other changes you made to your website after that time can be lost.

If you know when you deleted a page, then you can access the last back up before that time to restore your website.

If you don’t have a WordPress backup plugin installed, then there is still a fairly good chance that your WordPress hosting company does, and you can still restore it via cPanel.

For step by step instructions you can follow our guide on how to restore WordPress from a backup. It shows how to restore WordPress from a backup using UpdraftPlus, BackupBuddy, phpMyAdmin, cPanel, and more.

Method 3. Recover Deleted WooCommerce Pages

By default, WooCommerce creates pages for the checkout, cart, shop, and account management. These are important pages for your WooCommerce store to function properly.

If you accidentally delete a WooCommerce page, then you can first try restoring it by looking into the Trash (see Method 1 above).

If you cannot find the page in trash, then you can simply create a new one. For instance, you can go to Pages » Add New and then create a blank page titled ‘Cart’.

Similarly, you can create other WooCommerce pages as well for shop, checkout, and account.

After you have created new pages, you can tell WooCommerce to use these new pages instead. Simply go to WooCommerce » Settings page and switch to the ‘Advanced’ tab.

From here, you can select pages you created earlier under the Page Setup section.

For the shop page, you’ll need to switch to the ‘Products’ tab and then select the page you want to use as your Shop page.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save changes’ button to store your settings.

Method 4. Restore Selected Pages from a WordPress Backup (Advanced)

This method is a bit complicated, unreliable, and is not recommended for beginners. However, it would be useful if you don’t want to restore a complete a website and lose any changes you made after that backup.

You can simply restore your WordPress back up to a local server installation and then copy and paste the page contents that you wish to restore.

First, you’ll need to download your WordPress backup files to your computer. Simply go to your WordPress database backup plugin page and you will be able to see recent backups.

For instance, here is how you’ll see your recent backups listed in the UpdraftPlus.

Simply click on the database backup to download it to your computer.

Next, you will need to restore your WordPress site to a local server. You can install WordPress on your computer using WAMP (or MAMP for Mac).

After that, you can use can install your WordPress backup plugin on local server installation and restore using the backup files.

Optionally, if you have only the database backup, then you can restore that using phpMyAdmin as well.

Once you have restored the WordPress database, you will need to update WordPress Site and Home URLs in the database. To do that, simply open phpMyAdmin on your local server by typing the following URL:

http://localhost/phpmyadmin/

After that, you need to select your WordPress database from the left column and then click on the wp_options table. Switch to the browse tab and locate the rows containing ‘siteurl’ and ‘home’ under the option_name column.

You’ll notice that the option_value column contains the URL of your live website. You need to edit both of these rows and replace your option_value to match your local server WordPress site.

After that click on the ‘Go’ button to save your changes.

You can now login to your localhost installation, and you’ll see all your old pages listed under Pages » All Pages.

Go a head and edit the page you want to restore. All you need to do is copy the content and paste it to your live WordPress website as a new page.

Don’t forget to update or publish changes on your live website.

We hope this article helped you learn how to recover deleted pages in WordPress. You may also want to see our complete WordPress security guide to keep your WordPress site safe and secure, and our list of the must have WordPress plugins for all websites.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Recover and Restore Deleted Pages in WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.

January 07, 2021 at 05:30PM