How to Get Facebook Notifications from the Facebook Comments Plugin on your Site

We use the Facebook Comment Plugin for our software reviews, because we like the validity that real people's profiles lend to their reviews. But, I was irritated with it because I wasn't getting any kind of notification when someone left a new review. I finally fixed it so our moderators get notifications in Facebook when someone leaves a new comment in the Comment plugin. Here's my notes in case they help you!

• Add the meta fb:app_id tag to any page using the Facebook Comments Plugin. Also if you're using the data-href attribute in your fb-comments div, the url referenced by the data-href attribute must also have the fb:app_id meta tag. For most people these two pages are one in the same (and the comments are referenced to the current page), but if you've had to move sites/urls and keep your comments, they may be different.

<meta property="fb:app_id" content="REPLACE_WITH_YOUR_APP_ID" />

• Make sure the account you want notified is "involved" with the comment plugin. In our case, the appropriate people are moderators for the Facebook Page tied to the Facebook App tied to the Comments Plugin, but I assume being a Comments Plugin moderator, or Facebook App admin will suffice. I've also read that adding the fb:admins tag along with the fb:app_id tag will work as well.

That's all we needed to do! Definitely leave a comment if you notice additional steps needed to get notifications working on your site, or if you have questions!

Update November 11, 2017:

Our Facebook comment notifications, moderation tool link, and some moderation functionality broke a few days ago. The underlying cause was that we had a fb:admin meta tag and a fb:app_id tag. Digging through some Facebook Comment Plugin bug reports we learned that deep in the documentation, it says use one of these tags, but not both (sigh). We removed all traces of our fb:admin tags, and left only the fb:app_id tag in place, purged cached Facebook data for the comment url we were having difficulty with, and within a few minutes the moderation tool link and moderation functionality was back.