Hello TagDiv Team-
I’m curious if there’s any support, or plans for supporting, the new Facebook Instant Articles. Looks like it could be a potential game changer for those of that rely on FB for traffic.
https://instantarticles.fb.com/
Thanks!
Use the beta plugin from Automattic, much like the AMP plugin as best solution.
Since these are “edge” technologies, it’s not practical for theme developers to hack themes on weekly basis as the respective tech rolls out.
Using a plugin that is agnostic is really best solution and Automattic is on the front of everybody with this stuff since they go to the dev conferences and have a more direct relationship with FB than theme devs do, and they have the big money clients like TIME on WP VIP.
And of course ‘register your interest’ with FB so they will inform you when it’s rolled out, including joining the FB group for the tech, per their guidelines/docs/confirmation email.
Hey Chris-
Yeah, we got an early invite from FB so just playing with the plugins now.
You’ll probably recognize my little photo being a pest in the FB group once the tech rolls out… I seem to be a “bug magnet” with this stuff, as with the AMP roll out 😉
So yoast has a good writeup on getting your site up to par with AMP
https://yoast.com/wordpress-amp-part-ii/
https://yoast.com/setting-up-wordpress-for-amp-accelerated-mobile-pages/
Basically summarized here to get AMP working: http://screencast.com/t/eIGyCleh
Re: fb instant articles, once they are available to everyone, fb will have an official plugin it sounds like
http://media.fb.com/2016/03/07/instant-articles-wordpress-plugin/
Tagdiv, are you guys planning to take any steps to incorporate into the newspaper core (either AMP or instant articles) or for the time being do we take Chris S’s suggestion of keeping it silo’ed with plugins?
Hello,
At the moment there is no plan to implement this so there is no official implementation method yet so Chris’ method is the best solution for the moment. Maybe in a future version we will implement support for this but it is still to early to tell so I cannot promise anything.
Thank you!
For those who think they’re on the cusp of this stuff (sadly I have to be), there is now also the Apple News Publisher format, which *also* has a beta plugin for WordPress.
So, between
* AMP
* Facebook Articles
* Apple Publisher
I don’t see any theme developer going too nuts in trying to bake all of that in.
HOWEVER, that being said – TagDiv *will* need to (hopefully) come up with solution for the hit counter not incrementing for AMP views, even if it’s a hack (hint!).
That won’t really be possible with the FB and Apple versions as those are essentially custom RSS feeds where the content loads on the other sites/apps (to enable captive advertising outside scope of ad blockers); whereas AMP is part of the site and uses local content, and simply uses cloud based CSS/styles for speed, while stripping out any errant old HTML or javascript.
Chris S
It seems from some things you’ve said recently you run news type sites? I do too and have built traffic over four years into a relatively high number (hyperlocal or slightly bigger than hyperlocal really) – I’m on a AppleNews, Google News, AMP – However FB Instant Articles seems different in that the others require a click to my site – FB keeps it in the app (initially) – Just wondered what your view was? Do you think we have to use it as a social signal/users like it?
I’d guess use it for some content on rollout say one in ten posts whatever?
Advertisers pay me based on traffic of course, surely this will drop massively if you put all content on FB?
Cheers
Pat
One site we will be adding to Fb new system. All rest will be wait and see. Our main site has been online 16 years. ?
Thanks Chris
Yes I hope there’s an option to select articles for FB IP – in the plugins etc – will try selected ones
It appears UK Nationals are planning to put about one in ten articles through FB – while one US National has gone the whole way and done all of the news articles.
Just to share some experiences improving site speed for the many who post here to discuss…
What I’ve also done (My site is an independent ‘hyperlocal’ news site – slightly bigger than hyperlocal really) which I think is good practice given FB Instant Articles and AMP (Already on Apple News for almost a year now) is almost ‘forget the desktop’ exists.
Due to 75%+ mobile visitors it seems good practice (if a ‘live’ news site with say 100+ articles per week) to get the site as fast and safe as possible – this may help others
– I’ve removed all home page blocks except ‘ticker’ – a lightweight grid with no slider- and a sidebar
– Removed all plugins or deactivated ones no required all the time
– Implemented Chris S .htaccess and functions.php tips exactly as described – inc image resizing
– Paid Cloudflare with page rules to remove wp-admin etc- following TagDiv recommendation settings except RocketLoader ON – Mirage in ON
– Removed my subscriber pop-up and won’t use one – promote subscriptions via another route – FB ads – Twitter ads perhaps
– Removed SumoMe and anything that fetches CSS externally
– I do run UberMenu on main site and ShiftNav on mobile (for a better user experience) – But run NO mega menu or dropdowns
– Currently RocketLoader (Cloudflare) runs and doesn’t break anything
– Only added Google Analytics via YoastSEO not on Theme Panel box – it’s there and working
– ADDED a user text box to point people to how to navigate the site – believe it or not saying ‘Press load more or click coloured category labels or main menu’ actually gets visitors to do that!
Results –
Before – GTMetrix – PageSpeed B YSlow C Page size (Homepage) 3.2MB Requests – 187 – Load time – about 7-10 secs
Pingdom 5-7 seconds
After – Page Speed A (96%) YSlow B (82%) Page size (Homepage) 1.2MB Requests 96 – Load time – 2 secs
Pingdom 700ms-1.3 secs
The theme still looks great on desktop but it’s not worth getting caught up in the aesthetics if the visitors aren’t looking at the pretty views – it looks brilliant on mobile and that’s what matters.
So Instant Articles is live now but seems there are problems. I used the Plugin Facebook adviced and I believe I did everything right, however it seems it isn’t fetching the article content. I honestly don’t know if it is my configuration, the plugin, facebook or the theme.
How much does SumoMe affect things like page requests and render blocking? I have it installed and just ran a Website Grader test. The site got a really high grade except for these two things and the lack of an SSL certificate.
Is it possible to use facebook instant articles with newspaper theme, i get an error “No rules defined for <p> in the context of Bold” How do i fix it?
same problem. please help!
just enable mbstring in your hosting. If you’re in servers like digitalocean. pls google on how to install mbstring and execute the command. that’s it. once done, your next article works fine on facebook IA. 🙂
thanks vbzu its works 🙂
