Tutorials

How to Embed a Facebook Post in your WordPress Sidebar

Updated

Written by

Dave Warfel

Reading Time

3 minutes

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In this article, we’re going to take a look at the quickest and easiest way to embed a Facebook post in your WordPress sidebar. We’re going to focus on using a method that is built into WordPress core, and does not require any WordPress plugins.

You can embed Facebook posts from both people & Pages, but the posts must be Public. If they are only shared with friends, or a particular audience, they cannot be embedded in your WordPress sidebar.

All you’ll need is the post URL, which I’ll show you how to locate in this article. From there, we’re going to use WordPress’ oEmbed feature.

SEE ALSO: How to Embed Tweets in Your WordPress Sidebar

Embed Facebook Post Using oEmbed

To embed a Facebook post in your sidebar using oEmbed, all you need to do is paste the post URL into a WordPress Text widget.

NOTE: This method requires WordPress 4.9 or later.

Find Your Facebook Post URL

First, navigate to your Facebook feed, and find the post you want to embed.

Then, find the date & time that the post was published.

Find Facebook post URL
In this example, “October 17 at 12:50pm” is the post date/time.

Now, you can either…

  • right-click the date/time, and choose to Copy Link
Tweet URL copy link
Options shown after right-click

or…

  • click on the date, and then copy the URL in your address bar

Facebook post URL in browser bar

Either way, be sure the Facebook post URL is copied to your clipboard.

Go Back Into WordPress

Now head back into your WordPress admin area, and navigate to Appearance > Customize.

Appearance > Customize navigation

Click on Widgets, and find the widget that you’d like to add your post to. Depending on your theme, you could have several widgets listed.

List of WordPress widgets available
A list of available widgets for in Twentysixteen theme

Now click the + Add a Widget button.

Add a Widget button in WordPress Customizer

Type in “text” in the search box to quickly locate the Text widget. Add this widget to your sidebar by clicking on it.

Now simply paste the Facebook post URL into the Text widget, and watch it magically appear in your sidebar.

WordPress Facebook embed sidebar animation

Title (optional)

If you’d like a title to appear above the post in your sidebar, simply enter one in the box labeled “Title.”

WordPress text widget title input

Publish or Schedule Your Embedded Facebook Post

The final step is to publish or schedule your post to go live in your sidebar. Choosing Publish will make the post appear immediately, or you can Schedule it to go live at a later date.

WordPress widget publishing options
How to publish or schedule your FB post.

Read more about scheduling WordPress changes in the Customizer.


WordPress developers can also consider using Facebook’s official embedded posts plugin.

If you have any questions about embedding a Facebook post in your WordPress sidebar, please let me know in the comments.

Dave Warfel

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Dave has been working with WordPress since 2011. He's built 100s of client sites and almost a dozen of his own. He's tested almost every plugin you can think of, hosted with at least 10 different companies, and gone down every SEO rabbit hole you can imagine. When's he's not tinkering with new software, you'll find him in the mountains of Colorado, trail running, summiting peaks, and rippin' downhills on his mountain bike. 🏔️🏃🚴🤸

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