Sharing Options from WordPress.com to Facebook Are Changing

Starting August 1, Facebook will no longer allow third-party tools to automatically post to Profiles. Here’s how it affects you.

July 23, 2018

Mark Armstrong

We wanted to update you about an upcoming change Facebook is introducing to their platform, and which affects how you may share posts from your WordPress.com website to your Facebook account.

Starting August 1, 2018, third-party tools can no longer share posts automatically to Facebook Profiles. This includes Publicize, the tool for WordPress.com and Jetpack-powered sites that connects your site to major social media platforms (like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook).

Will this affect your ability to share content on Facebook? It depends. If you’ve connected a Facebook Profile to your site, then yes: Publicize will no longer be able to share your posts to Facebook. On the other hand, nothing will change if you keep a Facebook Page connected to your site — all your content should still appear directly on Facebook via Publicize. (Not sure what the difference is between a Page and a Profile? Here’s Facebook’s explanation.)

If you’ve previously connected a Facebook Profile to your WordPress.com site and still want your Facebook followers to see your posts, you have two options. First, you could go the manual route: once you publish a new post, copy its URL and share the link in a new Facebook post. (You can also share right from the WordPress mobile apps after a scheduled post goes live.)

The other option is to convert your Facebook Profile to a Page. This might not be the right solution for everyone, but it’s something to consider if your website focuses on your business, organization, or brand.

While Facebook is introducing this change to improve their platform and prevent the misuse of personal profiles, we know that this might cause a disruption in the way you and your Facebook followers interact. If you’d like to share your concerns with Facebook, head to their Help Community.

In the meantime, WordPress.com’s Publicize feature (and social media scheduling tools) will continue to be available to you for posting to Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms.

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69 Comments

Comments are closed.

  1. Lindi Roze Jul 23rd at 6:15 pm

    Thanks for the information

    Liked by 27 people

  2. Ms Debi Closet Resources/Sarasota Fla Jul 23rd at 6:23 pm

    Great info….
    Do have a question…why is it I can’t copy/paste an article from Facebook to my blog to insert my own commentary….did before, but unable to now

    Liked by 18 people

  3. Steven Colborne Jul 23rd at 6:36 pm

    Thanks for the update! In my experience it’s better to post a link to a blog post with a personal message that relates to the audience on whichever social media platform you’re using (whether it be Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, or elsewhere). People dislike automated content-pushing as it can feel like a lack of care has been taken. So the changes Facebook are making won’t affect me much as I compose posts on social media sites manually and one by one anyway.

    Liked by 39 people

  4. Dev Jul 23rd at 6:44 pm

    Thanks for the heads up

    Liked by 24 people

  5. andrea Jul 23rd at 6:50 pm

    Hello
    Thanks for informing.

    Liked by 7 people

  6. Live Love Quiz Jul 23rd at 6:56 pm

    Thanks for the info!

    Liked by 5 people

  7. M.N. Stroh Jul 23rd at 7:58 pm

    Thank you for letting us know!

    Liked by 5 people

  8. aurelio_starssurfer Jul 23rd at 8:10 pm

    Facebook is no longer a platform that drives blog posts. Only paid postings bring some visitors to blogs and websites. Pages on Facebook are programmed for many unlikes. There is no feedback on posting more on Facebook, just for the sale of products.

    Liked by 19 people

  9. Tim Gatewood Jul 23rd at 8:19 pm

    I noticed that Publicize to my Facebook page stopped working months ago. So, I’ve already been posting a link there. This new change just makes Facebook less useful, IMHO. I wish they would stop making their platform worse.

    Liked by 20 people

  10. contentwriteranjali Jul 23rd at 8:46 pm

    Thank you for sharing this information ahead of the happening. 🙏

    Liked by 17 people

  11. Herbert Dupree Jul 23rd at 9:22 pm

    It’s too bad Facebook is doing this. Found myself auto-posting to Twitter because I may reach a less captive audience. Right now, my blog is not a business or moneymaker, so reach isn’t as important to me.

    Liked by 14 people

  12. Lee Roth Jul 23rd at 11:03 pm

    As a professional photographer who licenses my images, I’ve never liked that when sharing to Facebook from my WordPress blog that they get the entire photo gallery, not just the featured photo. If I want all of my photos stripped of their metadata and made into orphan works, I wouldn’t have bothered with a WordPress site in the first place and would simply upload direct to Facebook. I disabled Facebook sharing as soon as I saw what it does. Good riddance!

    Liked by 19 people

    • Alexander S. Kunz Jul 24th at 4:54 am

      If you’re a professional and use your personal FB profile for commercial purposes you’re in violation of FB’s TOS anyway. You should share your WP posts to a FB page. As a benefit, the dreaded “enhanced sharing” (ie. direct upload of photos from your WP blog posts) doesn’t happen then either.

      I am NOT saying that FB pages are actually any good for this purpose… 😛

      Liked by 4 people

  13. cheapandcheerfullife Jul 23rd at 11:39 pm

    I find this a bit disappointing. It would be perhaps better to have an opt-in system – even post at a time. I liked that I could choose to post to various platforms automatically, given that my blog is not for financial purposes.
    At least this explains why I couldn’t link yesterday – I was getting quite annoyed 🙂

    Liked by 17 people

  14. emkarblog Jul 24th at 12:33 am

    Yes, my posts are more for the grieving and I like that it posted directly to those pages that I am mod of, oh well sign of the times I guess.

    Liked by 11 people

  15. IamJirah Jul 24th at 12:38 am

    Thanks for this update. I’ve been waiting for a reason to take a step to creating a page for my blog.

    Liked by 11 people

  16. YourJennyFromTheBlock.com Jul 24th at 1:31 am

    Oh my … I am just getting used to this WordPress thing and now they are going to change it on me? LOL …. great. But good information to know for when it quits working for me!

    Liked by 6 people

  17. allysnotebook Jul 24th at 1:38 am

    Thanks for the update. I will just put the link on facebook whenever I have a blog to share.

    Liked by 14 people

  18. Megha's World Jul 24th at 1:45 am

    Thanks for the information.

    Liked by 3 people

  19. Margy Jul 24th at 2:24 am

    I started a Facebook page for my blog. I use it to link to my new posts, but I also post links to all sorts of things I’m interested in. This makes my personal Facebook profile just for personal things and my page for public things. I agree that Facebook keeps doing unpopular things that annoy people, but I don’t think there is any other program right now that all my friends and family would agree to using. So, we just have to accept that we are guests in Mark Zuckerberg’s house.

    Liked by 6 people

  20. mchotstuff Jul 24th at 3:34 am

    I guess I got lucky. Created a facebook page where I invited my friends to follow. Those who were interested would get updates, those who weren’t wouldn’t get bothered and didn’t need to block or unfollow me for spamming blog posts. Thanks to that thinking I don’t need to worry about this change, as my blog is connected to a page and not my profile.

    Liked by 5 people

  21. nyamwezi Jul 24th at 3:45 am

    Thanks for this update, Mark.

    Liked by 5 people

  22. righteousbruin9 Jul 24th at 6:00 am

    Thanks for the update. I have thus created a page, so my family and others who are on Facebook can see my posts readily.

    Liked by 10 people

  23. Venkatachary Jul 24th at 6:15 am

    Thanks for informing. I may have to change my linking URL now to get it posted on my Facebook Page.

    Liked by 3 people

  24. Tony Jul 24th at 7:16 am

    The other alternative is to simply dump Facebook altogether 🤬

    Liked by 26 people

  25. haranddev Jul 24th at 7:32 am

    Thank you for the information.

    Liked by 2 people

  26. admin Jul 24th at 7:57 am

    Thanks for the information 🙂

    Liked by 3 people

  27. Neeraj Bhushan Jul 24th at 8:08 am

    Auto posting wasn’t a good option, in the first place. Glad this has been realised. WordPress may stop its such automatic sharing options. If one is keen on sharing one’s posts on third party apps or platforms, one should do it individually. Thanks for sharing this info, anyways.

    Liked by 10 people

  28. watchingthedaisies Jul 24th at 9:09 am

    Thank you for the update.

    Liked by 2 people

  29. Za K Jul 24th at 9:48 am

    Thank you Mark for the clear explanation 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

  30. Jude Tulloch Jul 24th at 10:13 am

    To be honest I’m over Facebook. Last time I linked my WordPress site to Facebook, my Facebook account got high-jacked; my email attempts to reset my password did not get to Facebook. I then started being flooded with new “followers” with dodgy names all from outlook.com (They have finally given up on me.)

    As of the end of this month I’m no longer posting on on Facebook as I feel the company has too big a share of the social media market. It’s a difficult decision because so many people connect through Facebook, but that is exactly why it continues to grow and squeeze out competitors.

    Liked by 12 people

  31. chiptheduck Jul 24th at 11:28 am

    No problem. I avoid facebook like a plague. Infantile, trivial and often malicious.

    Liked by 16 people

  32. thecedarjournal Jul 24th at 12:46 pm

    I have to say after the last security issues FaceBook had I delated my FB account totally. That is also about the time I came to WordPress. I never liked that FB had total control over my account to the point of selling my personal information and contacts to other companies. The fact that they were helping influence the USA elections outcomes really was the final straw for me! No loss for me and I am very happy with how I can choose how I want my account in WordPress to be connected or not connected. I am not generating money with my blog and I own the rights to my material. Thanks WordPress for all you do!!

    Liked by 18 people

  33. emmansagini Jul 24th at 4:37 pm

    Thanks for the update

    Liked by 2 people

  34. mokshmoh Jul 24th at 6:11 pm

    Useful content. Thanks for sharing. However, it will make people open facebook every time they want to share anything and this increases frequency of footfall of the users.

    Liked by 2 people

  35. Midlifemimi Jul 24th at 8:23 pm

    There are days when I wish I could delete my FB account. I have 12 grandchildren and I enjoy getting updates and photo’s from their parents. I also have some extraordinarily funny friends who brighten my day! So many changes and now this! I can’t keep up, and I should be too old to care, but i do.

    Liked by 12 people

  36. Ali Reza Jul 25th at 6:14 am

    Thanks, I’ve made the right decision to deactivate my Facebook account 😀

    Liked by 8 people

  37. enochered Jul 25th at 7:46 pm

    I have never actually posted anything to Facebook,it has always been handled by Publicize. I thought I had refused to accept an invitation to join Facebook when they started to ask for too many personal details, but they gave me the site anyway with what I had started to write. So I wont be missing them too much because doing it all yourself is a drag.. Thanks for letting us know.

    Liked by 10 people

  38. RobbyeFaye Jul 25th at 9:23 pm

    Thanks for the heads up!

    Liked by 6 people

  39. dotluvs2write Jul 25th at 10:07 pm

    Thanks for the info!

    Liked by 4 people

  40. heavenlyrevelationsfromdaddy Jul 25th at 10:29 pm

    You all are stellar, the gross disruption just points to the conglomerate bull crap of FB, which sucks. I wonder how their little minions sleep at night, but I digress. Thank you for still hooking us up with other sources and hopefully FB will suffer from it’s own game one day, now I’m just prophesying.

    Liked by 4 people

  41. challenge demon Jul 26th at 4:37 am

    Cool, nice to know.

    Liked by 5 people

  42. Mark Young Jul 26th at 7:42 am

    Thanks for the insights!

    Liked by 5 people

  43. seraphimtony Jul 26th at 12:14 pm

    Thanks for this info 🙂

    Liked by 5 people

  44. Linda Ealy Jul 26th at 12:27 pm

    Thsnk you for sharing this.

    Liked by 4 people

  45. ankita saxena Jul 26th at 1:49 pm

    Thanks for the update. It will help bloggers to maintain their consistency even after the changes. Really appreciated!

    Liked by 3 people

  46. Sarah Potter Writes Jul 26th at 1:54 pm

    A further reason, among many existing ones, to fall out of love with Facebook. Not that I was ever into it totally in the first place. WordPress is a much more interesting place to hang out.

    Liked by 9 people

  47. robbiesinspiration Jul 26th at 3:40 pm

    Oh bother, more admin for us.

    Liked by 2 people

  48. Sylvia ntsombi Jul 27th at 12:30 pm

    Thanks for the info

    Liked by 5 people

  49. pamsmind Jul 27th at 3:04 pm

    Great it is appreciated. It is causing a lot of confusion and mayhem.

    Liked by 4 people

  50. moinillon Jul 28th at 11:48 pm

    Thank you for the tip. I just changed my FB profile account for a page .. hopefully I will not regret it.

    Liked by 2 people

  51. Community Noise Jul 29th at 6:33 pm

    I just paste a link for my new blog post onto my home page. Then I can write a little intro for my friends. It provides me control, too. I don’t know … why does everyone think everything has to be auto-this or auto-that? But, anyway, thanks for the note.

    Liked by 8 people

  52. TechGlamour Jul 30th at 12:49 pm

    thanks; for sharing this wonderful articles with us. It is helpful and informative!

    Liked by 6 people

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