Want to drive more traffic from Facebook & earn more money?
If your answer is yes, today seems to be your lucky day.. Read on…
Facebook Instant Articles are not new to users like you who are super net savvy.
As bloggers & webmasters, FB Instant Articles are a boon & a curse. It’s a boon because it will give us more traffic from Facebook, but at the same time it’s bad because you won’t be able to show your widgets or email box like you do right now.
Needless to say, the Facebook Instant Article is here to stay & the sooner you integrate it, the better it will be for you.
I have waited for quite a long time to share this article with you as I wanted to give you all the necessary details & guidelines to configuring FB Instant Articles within your website. Today, I will be sharing the complete tutorial + a video guide to help you set up Facebook Instant Articles for your blog.
If you are not aware of FB Instant Articles, let me quickly give you an overview of what they are & why they matter.
What are Instant Articles?
The Instant Article is a feature by Facebook that solves the problem of slow loading of articles. An Instant Article is an HTML5 document optimized for fast mobile performance, rich storytelling capabilities, branded design, and a customized visual display. Once you have enabled Instant Articles on your website/blog, whenever your articles are shared on Facebook, users surfing on the mobile app will be able to see the Instant Article icon. The icon represents that the article is an Instant Article & it will open within seconds.
The Instant Articles icon looks like this:
I’m sure many of you already have experienced Instant Articles when using the Facebook mobile app on your smartphone. If not, from now on pay attention or check a few posts on the ShoutMeHindi Facebook page using your Facebook mobile app.
There are many pros & cons of using Facebook Instant articles. The pros outweigh the cons in the majority of cases especially since Instant Articles are not too old and there is a great amount of room for improvement & innovation in the coming days. Instant Articles are very crucial for countries like Brazil, India, Philippines & many other countries where low connectivity is an issue.
Check out this video to understand how Instant Articles looks on a smartphone:
I will cover the full pros & cons of Facebook Instant Articles in the coming days, but for now let’s setup Instant Articles for our WordPress blog.
How to Setup Facebook Instant Articles on WordPress platform:
I would suggest you to go through the steps mentioned below & then watch the video guide. While watching the video, start configuring Instant Articles for your WordPress site. It should take about 15 minutes to configure everything & within one day, Instant Articles should be live for your website. So, let’s get started:
- Login to your Facebook account
- Head over to the Instant Articles signup page & click on “Sign up”
This will lead you to next page where you need to select the Facebook page where you would like to enable the Instant Articles tool.
- Select the page & click on “Enable Instant Articles”
- After enabling Instant Articles for a page, you can always access the configuration page by going to page settings > Instant Articles
Here we need to do following things:
- Claim your URL
- Add RSS feed (For other platforms, you can use their API to setup Instant Articles. Here is the guide for the same)
- Submit for review
We will also be configuring the official Instant Articles WordPress plugin which I have covered in-depth below. If you feel you will be stuck in between, don’t worry as the video guide will make it easier for you to follow everything. A user with basic computer skills should be able to follow this guide.
So let’s get started:
Claim your URL
Click on “Claim your URL” & that will give you a Meta tag which you need to add to your Website <head> tag. You can do the same by editing your header.php file or if you are using Genesis WordPress theme like me, watch the video below.
Once you have added the Meta tag, clear your WordPress cache.
Now, click on “Claim URL” & you will see a success message (shown below).
The next step is to setup the RSS feed for Instant Articles which will be done with the help of the official WordPress plugin for Facebook Instant Articles.
RSS Feed & Official Facebook Instant Articles plugin
Facebook has partnered with a few publishing and analytics platforms to make it convenient for bloggers to create and post Instant Articles.
Install the Official Facebook Instant Article WordPress plugin. This plugin is developed by Facebook, Automattic & few more developers. Upon activation of the plugin, a new feed will be generated & you can check it by adding /feed/instant-articles to your domain name.
So, in my case it was:
http://shoutmehindi.in/feed/instant-articles
Go back to your Facebook page Instant Articles setting & add this RSS feed into the “Production RSS feed” area (Refer to below screenshot).
Click “Save”.
Now we’ll get the last few things done.
Configuring the FB Instant Article WordPress plugin:
- To start using the plugin, you need to input the Facebook App ID and App Secret. For this, you need to create a Facebook app which is pretty easy.
- Follow the below-mentioned steps & it will be done within 5 minutes.
- Go to this page & click on “Add a New App”
- On the pop-up select website as the option.
Click on “Create App ID” & on the next page, enter your website URL without “HTTP://”
Click on “Next” & then click on “Skip quick start guide”. On the next page, you will see your App ID & App Secret.
- Also, you need to make your new app live. Click on App Review > Change the toggle to “yes” & this will make your app live.
(I suggest you to watch the video to make it pretty easy for you).
- Now, head back to the Facebook Instant Article WordPress plugin settings. Copy the App ID & App Secret to the WordPress plugin.
- Click on “Next” & you will see the option to Login with Facebook. Click on it, validate your login & select your Facebook page from the drop-down.
Click on “Next” & that’s it.
The plugin is configured & you can submit articles for review. Now, before we complete the final submit for review step, click on “Styles” & click on “default”:
Here you need to add your website logo (mandatory) that should be sized 690 by 132 Pixels.
Tip: If you don’t have the logo, simply create a blank canvas of the size 690 by 132 in Snagit or any other image editor tool you have & use your blog name as your logo.
Once you have uploaded the logo, click on “save & done”.
Submit for Review:
Now, this is where it gets tricky, as you need to submit 10 posts for review. Here is what you can do:
- Go back to your WordPress dashboard
- Open 10 already published blog posts in edit mode
- Save all of them & this will send those articles to your Facebook Instant Articles RSS feed.
Once that is done, you will be able to submit your articles for review.
Submission approved & enable auto-publishing from RSS feed:
It usually takes about 3-4 days for your submission to get approval.
For one of my blogs I got the following errors:
General Errors: Empty Instant Article: The Instant Article does not have any content.
Error : General Fatals: Sorry, We Couldn’t Parse the Article
For that blog, I deleted all posts from the Instant Article production which were giving errors & resubmitted them for review.
For ShoutMeLoud, I got approved & after approval, the screens looks like this:
One important thing, you should enable auto publishing from the RSS feed.
Update: Here is the guide to make money from Facebook Instant Articles
Video guide:
Here is the video guide that I have mentioned above. This will clear any doubt that you might have for configuring Instant Articles for your WordPress blog:
Facebook Audience Network:
One of the things that most publishers are worried about is monetizing articles served via Facebook Instant Articles. Well, Facebook has opened Facebook Audience Network which lets you earn 100% of revenue generated via it. Here is the official explanation on FB Audience Network:
Publishers can directly sell and deliver banner ads, video ads (click to play or sound off), and animated ads containing HTML5, Javascript or CSS (provided the ads do not expand, collapse or any block content). Publishers can also monetize through the Facebook Audience Network, delivering high value, relevant and engaging ads from over 3 million advertisers on Facebook.
Audience Network provides publishers and developers with engaging, high performing ad units backed by Facebook’s 3 million advertisers. Audience Network extends the reach of Facebook campaigns beyond Facebook, and provides publishers a way to monetize their content with relevant, better-targeted ads and innovative native ad formats.
Once you click on “Get Started”, you will also get the link for the Audience Network dashboard. You can use this resource to configure your payment option. If you don’t update your payment option, Facebook will stop service ads once you have reached $100.
Just to let you know, it takes about 5 minutes for your Audience Network application to get approved. I will do a detailed article on this in the coming days.
Update: Here is the guide to make money from Facebook Instant Articles
Helpful resources:
- Analytics & measurements for Facebook Instant Articles
- Developers Guide to Instant Articles
- Facebook Instant Article partners
In the coming days, I will share tips & tricks to get most out of Instant Articles. For now, go ahead & configure it for your blog. Do come back & share your experience with us.
If you have found this guide useful, share it with your friends who have a WordPress blog.
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I get following error message. waiting for solution
No rules defined for in the context of InstantArticle
No rules defined for in the context of InstantArticle
Hi Harsh,
Great Post !!
Can we use Google Adsense Ads in Facebook Instant Articles ?
Now this plugin doesn’t work/compatible with the latest WP version. Shows 404 error while updating the post.
This is a amizing tutorial. Easy to understand to follow the steps from start to finished. Besides, the video tutorial give mo understandings. I just complete set up Facebook Instant Articles on my website. Yes, it increase my page engagements and traffics. Thanks.
I had tried signing up for facebook instant articles but failed since I didn’t knew that exact process. I will follow these steps and try signing up now.
Hello Harsh,
Its been a while to read any posts on this blog. I guess I have landed on an informative post. I haven’t used facebook instant articles feature and I think i’m gonna surely give it a try.
Thanks
Thanks for this amazing guide. I was able to set up Instant Articles on my Blog finally. Well, I did get caption errors. 🙁 But somehow I read their FAQ and found my way out. One thing I am gonna say is that errors are common, no blog will hardly get approved in the first chance. Anyways, now my blog loads fastest in the facebook network. 🙂
Hey Harsh,
Your article is quite informative and I tried configuring instant articles using the same process mentioned. But post submission of articles I am consistently facing errors. For instance, some text elements like kickers and subtitles are missing.
It would be great if you share a detailed information on the error part of the facebook instant articles.
Thanks
Hi Harsh,
Thanks for this information! I’ve been approved now but my articles are not showing as instant articles.
When I view them in pages manager I can view them as beautiful instant articles but as soon as I tap share and put it on my timeline, it’s just a standard link to my site :S
Do you have any advice?
Has anyone else experienced this issue?
Thanks
Dennis
@Dennis
Have you done all the steps after “Submit for Review:” section?
Hi Harsh,
Thank you very much for your support. I had this issue of the Instant Article FB plugin not showing up any setting in the configuration page afer activation. So I installed another plugin, which worked charm (Page Frog).
The problem currently i am facing is even after I uploaded the logo and adjusted and saved it, the issue raised is Missing Logo. I tried several times. but still the situation is the same. Would you let me know what to do, please?
Thank you very much
Thank you Harsh for sharing this wonderful guide. I had set up instant articles for my website Online Rockers Hub by referring this guide. But now, the plugin has been updated. You can even submit your articles for review from the plugins homepage. The plugin looks cool now.
Hi Harsh,
i am trying Instant article and successfully set up my blog but i found out wherever i used html pre tag or code tag , its not appearing in instant article. I tried to manually edit the parsed code but in preview i am not able to see. Have you faced such scenario ?
@Rakesh
I haven’t noticed this but I will do that for future posts.
Hi Harsh, I Have seen your video on FB instant article which is g8 source to setup it up. I want to ask you after setting all process and been approved by FB for this option my article are not showing in fan page could u please advice what to do? RSS feed is connected but still nothing?
Thanks for your help
Hi, Harsh, I have successfully enabled Facebook Instant Articles on my website but I cannot see the ads on the instant articles and I am getting this error “Not started – please send an ad request”. Please help me to solve this issue.
Thanks for this amazing guide. I was able to set up Instant Articles on my Blog finally. Well, I did get caption errors. 🙁 But somehow I read their FAQ and found my way out. One thing I am gonna say is that errors are common, no blog will hardly get approved in the first chance. Anyways, now my blog loads fastest in the facebook network. 🙂
Hi Harsh,
I am getting this error, Could you please help me out.
Missing content – text elements
Some of your articles are missing words or pieces of text that are found in the web versions. Some common omissions include:
Kickers
Subtitles
Captions/Credits
Video controls
Aim for your Instant Articles to exactly match their web counterpart—except when you’re using special Instant Article features that don’t work on the web.
Hey Pankaj,
You can find your answer here:https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instant-articles/troubleshooting
Can you explain me how can I implement an Instant Article on the three pages?
I have on the first one. What is the next move?
Thanks a lot
Hello Harsh!
I just set up Instant Articles today and I’m feeling really proud of myself. It sounded complicated at first but I just simultaneously did the configuration along with watching your video and it was quite fun, Really!! I got stuck a couple of times but mostly those problems just solved themselves.
So thanks bro! I really owe you. I’m now waiting for approval. So fingers crossed!
Also I read somewhere that we have control over what gets published at FBIA. So is it possible that we can cull content from our Blog to publish in Instant Articles. How do we do that?
If you get time do write a post about it.Regards
I got approved for instant articles but I am not really liking it. My readers can’t even comment on my posts when they are viewing it as an instant article. Now I have removed everything, plugin, disabled app, etc. But still I am viewing my old posts as instant article. How do I get rid of this? I don’t want any of my article to be viewed as instant article.
Please help.
Thanks
I just tried to activate the plugin & it broke my website! I get this error now: Could not create component: “Logger” is not a component class as it does not implement “Aventura\Wprss\Core\Plugin\ComponentInterface”
This is way harder than it ought to be.
Hy harsh how r you?
My application rejected. It shows text content missing. I am using infolinks. Is it any problem for intant article approve.
@Krishnendu
I see a lot of people having this error & in your WordPress post editor you should be able to see any error & fix it from there.
Thanks for the detailed guide. I have been trying to publish instant articles on one of my blog, but everytime I get some kind of errors within WordPress about some transformers and custom rules about how our content is going to be shown in Instant Article wrapper.
I am unable to resolve the issue. I am using Genesis and thought such errors won’t happen, but looks like this is keeping me from publishing instant articles. 🙁
Thanks for sharing i just sucesfully registered and submited and it got approved in 2 minutes
The instant article is now approved, Thanks to you Harsh. But, I am quite confused about placing ads in it via Facebook audience network. Can you provide some insight for setting up ads in the instant article with Facebook audience network?
Hi Harsh!
I love your site. You are such an invaluable resource! I am completely tech-delayed! I followed all of your steps. I am getting this error message on my posts. The plugin is rejecting my articles and not submitting them. Any tips on what I am doing wrong?
This post was not yet submitted to Instant Articles.
This post was transformed into an Instant Article with some warnings [Learn more | Transformer rule configuration | Toggle debug information]
No rules defined for in the context of InstantArticle
Thank you for sharing this in-depth guide with us. This is really helpful. I am going to setup Instant article on WordPress.
Thanks for Information about Facebook Instant Articles for WordPress. Your Article is impressive and very informative. I am now regular visitor of your website and bookmarked it.
Great post Harsh. I have just completed instant articles setup process and now awaiting review. I hope I get approved soon.
Thanks
Is it update blog post which you wrote before.
@Palas
Yes, with few things added:
1) New screenshot after review is done.
2) Auto publishing from RSS feed.
how to add meta tag without Genesis WordPress theme
Hi Harsh,
Is it mandatory to use Ads and Facebook Audience Network? Can we setup up FBIA without it?
It’s optional.
Hey harsh,
followed your steps and now after that review by fb… I am getting some errors …
“”””
-MISSING CONTENT
Missing content – text elements
Some of your articles are missing words or pieces of text that are found in the web versions. Some common omissions include:
Kickers
Subtitles
Captions/Credits
Video controls
Aim for your Instant Articles to exactly match their web counterpart—except when you’re using special Instant Article features that don’t work on the web.””””
Hi! I am getting the same error message. Did you find a solution?
I’m also getting the same error. Does anyone have a solution for this?
Well illustrated article to setup Facebook instant article, it took me less than 30 minutes to do the whole process.
Hi Harsh,
I liked this article. It was not just informative but also income booster, thanks for the article. I enjoyed reading. But one question to ask you, Can I implement GOOGLE ADSENSE ADS and AS WELL AS FB ADS on my blog?
I am waiting for your reply. Thanks!!
Wow! Thanks for the guide. I did not know about Facebook Instant Article at first, and now i know how to implement it. This information is very helpful. Great work.
@Diverse
Happy to help. Looking forward to hearing much more from you.
Hello Harsh,
Your method works like a charm. My posts get to FB instant articles flawlessly – as opposed to another plugin I was using. Now, I’m waiting for Facebook to approve my articles. Nice Work!
Hi Harsh
While Configuring i got the below Error
When i Claim the URL
The fb:pages tag on the url doesn’t contain this page’s id. The url has fb:pages tag but they don’t have this page’s id. Please work with your developers / webmaster to add this tag to your website.
Can you Help me in this ??
@Sudheer
How are you adding the meta tag? Open your site homepage, check source code & see if meta tag is there or not. If it’s there, most probably it’s cache issue. You need to flush all the cache & also from Cloudflare (if you are using it).
Try & let me know
Hi Harsh,
The above problem is Solved when i place Meta tag in the Header.php but i am facing another issue After Claiming When i Gave App id and App Secret Still it is Showing Login With Facebook it is not Showing my pages.
Help me in the above..please
Thanx for video guide,,,,,, i will be started with new facebook page…..
Thanks Harsh for this insightful article. I have learnt so much and I successfully setup the Facebook instant article with my website. All thanks to you. My Website is this Hanalaura.com
@Poonam
Happy to help. Looking forward to hearing much more from you.
Hi Harsh,
Thank you for sharing this in-depth guide with us. This is really helpful. I am going to setup Instant article on WordPress.
hello sir
im your big fan, i just start a blog product review and i always get distraction from shoutmeloud, nice and helpful article, hope you ill guide me always
Thanks Harsh for this insightful article. I have learnt so much and I successfully setup the Facebook instant article with my website. All thanks to you.
I am waiting for your guide on activating the Audience Network. It is something am having issues with at the moment. Thanks Harsh for being a good online friend. You rock!
Hi Harsh, I am getting the below error message while trying to log in from my Facebook for “Instant Articles” plugin from WordPress.
“Given URL is not allowed by the Application configuration: One or more of the given URLs is not allowed by the App’s settings. It must match the Website URL or Canvas URL, or the domain must be a subdomain of one of the App’s domains.”
Please suggest.
I have already got the solution. I think in article you have missed one step. After Creating your Facebook app and making it live, you will have to go to the Settings tab and then click on Advanced settings. In advanced settings, you will have to define “OAuth redirect URIs for Facebook App” otherwise the WordPress plugin will not allow you to connect to the app. In the redirect url I have used the name of my domain and I was able to successfully connect the WordPress plugin to the Facebook.
Also after installing the WordPress plugin, please check in the instruction whether you will have to use http://www.yourdomain.com or http://yourdomain.com . I had used only http:// which was causing problem but my WP plugin recommended me to use http://www Then my problem got solved.
Thank You,
Himadri
Very Nice Post Every Thing is Clear
Thank you Brother
Hi Harsh
Amazing Article harsh.Thanks For sharing.Very Informative article to To Configure Fb instant Articles for WP
Another great post. Any strategy aimed to improve mobile user experience makes sense. It looks like as marketers one of our priorities has to be to provide a great experience to users no matter what’s their OS or system.
I have followed each and every step to set up facebook instant articles. Waiting for them to review my site 🙂
Thank you for this guide.
You are awesome 🙂
Hi Harsh,
If I use instant article. will I be able to monetize my site and blog post?
Hello, thanks for the detail guide dear, i have done everything as you told, but option to review articles is not yet available, facebook is saying that you haven’t submitted articles to review, although articles are being shown in /Feed/instant-articles.. What to do ?
Hey Harsh….Before few days, I am also trying to set up instant articles for my WordPress blog. But I did not success. When I read this guide I feel like I should try again. so now I wi try again with all above mention steps. Thanks for sharing.
Sometimes I saw article being opened so quickly once I click on the facebook link.Now I know the secret. Thanks alot
Am just seen this for the first time though, but I will read and read this article again to enable me use it on my blogs. But the blog I will like to use it on is still on blogger. Hope you will prepare a comprehensive guide for how to use blogger for this also?
Very well-guided post Harsh and I am sure this content is going to help many bloggers using WP. Similarly AMPs should also be implemented on WP. I am going to share this post right away with all our SEO trainees. Two thumbs up for this detailed post.
Regards
Soumya ROy
Already I have a Facebook App for My website.
we Need Another new FB app For Instant Articles ?????
Hi Harsh,
Thank you for sharing this in-depth guide with us. This is really helpful. I am going to setup Instant article on WordPress.
@Vikash
Happy to help. Keep me updated on how it all works for you!
Hello sir, very helpful post as always. I had no idea about it before reading this article.Thanks again:)
@Akansha
Glad I could help. Let me know how the tips work out for you. I look forward to hearing more from you!
Something new for me. I Have never experienced Instant articles on the Facebook mobile app. After getting your newsletter I came to know about Instant articles on the Facebook mobile app configuration
Thank you !
@Biplab
Happy to help. Looking forward to hearing much more from you.
Very Interesting & helpful article for my blog, I’m searching it a lot but can’t find like you have shown here.
Thanks @Harsh Agrawal
Awesome post, you made it really easy to understand this pretty hard topic for beginners. You helped me a lot so I just wanna say thank to you.
Thank you!
@Kristen
Thanks for the feedback and I am glad I could help.
i have tried this but its asking to update my php version its suitable only for PHP 5.4 or above
Hello Harsh
Thanks for sharing a another great article. Now I am going to create this on my wordpress blog. Thank you so much once again and keep writing please. Actully we non tech person need such great article.
Nice article Harsh! Instant articles is definitely here to stay and we have to get on the bandwagon fast. I would love for you to do a post on getting approval for your articles, as is required by facebook first time we submit the articles.
Another great post from Harsh, I always come here to get new ideas for my blog and never go back disappointed…keep up the great work
Wow..
Thanks HARSH AGRAWAL
Nice post as usual..
Hi Harsh,
I have always been fond of facebook. Lately increasing my engagement rate was big challenge. I guess this tutorial will actually help in increasing my traffic and engagement rate too…
I am currently working on an ebook for beginner bloggers on how I earn money from my fairly new blog. Can Iinclude the link to this post in my blog? This post is a keeper!!!
This is really an effective way for driving traffic from Facebook…once people gets notification on their mobile apps around 50% of them would open it….
You provided an easy guide for this …at evening I am going to configure this..
Do you have any suggestions for using Google Amp?
Hey Harsh this is what we all are looking for, thanks for sharing 🙂
Hey I want to know does AdSense adds works in instant article
@Shashank
I’m yet to explore that part. Will share about the same in coming days.
Hi Harsh,
I am getting this error when I am trying to sign in “Given URL is not permitted by the Application configuration: One or more of the given URLs is not permitted by the App’s settings. It must match the Website URL or Canvas URL, or the domain must be a subdomain of one of the App’s domains.”
@Shoeb
Seems like you making mistake in the configuration of facebook app. Can you watch the video & follow the exact steps mentioned. Let me know if that works for you or not.
I have solved the problem. Thanks Harsh for your post.
Very Informative article and clear instructions, was just wondering if facebook is being fed our article via our rss that means they will get published instantly, does that mean our original articles on our website will loose link juice and get pushed down the list on search engines since fb has higher authoritative page and domain rank ?
@Alex
It won’t hurt your link juice or create duplicate content issue as Instant article uses the canonical tag.
“The URL specified in your Instant Article markup is used to associate the Instant Article version of your article to the web version. This association is important as it helps determine which version of the article to present to a reader based on their platform.”
That’s great then if its going to assist in driving more traffic without affecting link juice, thanks for the info, appreciate it.
Hi Harsh
Great Information, I just follow these steps and try implementing this instant article option. It’s really sound great. Thanks for sharing.
Arpit
Wow so intersting , such a simplest way to explain the steps. I heard before about facebook instant article but don’t konw completly about how to confiqure it?
But that’s the time to impliment it on my webstie which is realted to astrology news. I hope will get good enegagement with the feature facebook launched.
Thanks