Here seems to be the solution why Google Friend Connect seems to work in one browser and not another.
In fact it has nothing to do with any browser, it has to do with WordPress and how browsers interpret and compile JavaScript. We finally narrowed it down to not the browser but the WordPress version.
It seems this only occurs on WordPress blogs and is a matter of a WordPress file called prototype.js not being compatible with Google Friend Connect JSON code. prototype.js (JavaScript file) is essential for WordPress sites to work correctly.
This is why I have no problems here on my Google Wave site or any of my other sites. They are all older installs of WordPress.
From Google themselves it of course is a JavaScript error and Google Friend Connect should work after this code addition before the gadget code in WordPress.
Right click the textarea above, then “Select all, next right click the highlighted code and select “Copy” and paste the code into your WordPress file just above the Google Friend Connect gadget code. Problem solved, or so we believe.
Usually it will be the sidebar.php file that creates your WordPress sidebar that you will be editing. If you are not familiar with HTML make a back up of the file in Notepad first.
Let us know if this worked for you in the comments….
Hope this helps and your feedback on this will help us all. Let us all know if this fixed your problems on your WordPress blog. Also if you are having this problem and your site is not a WordPress blog let us know that too.
Would love to know how to add more friends to google friend connect.
@Scott Bowling,
Two things come to mind immediately.
First your GFC gadget is below the fold on most computers, especially on widescreen type laptops.
The below the fold point has risen a lot lately with the proliferation of wide screen monitors and this is especially relevant on new laptops built to display DVDs full screen.
If you want more GFC members then you need to raise the gadget on your side bar. Also use the GFC bar on your site too. I use both here.
Second, you just don’t have enough traffic. Yahoo shows you only have 51 incoming links and most of your blog posts have no comments.
That tells me your main problem is a lack of traffic. Since your incoming link number is so low I would go and a link building campaign.
For me that would be writing guest blog posts. I got most of my guest blog posts published by first commenting highly on high traffic blogs and demonstrating my knowledge on a very targeted subject.
Previously that was social bookmarking for me. I cast over 52,000 comments in 6 months last year (2008). That brought me 6 major guest blog post spots. That built my list and built my traffic.
But most of all the first thing I would do is move the GFC gadget above the fold and add the GFC bar. That should definitely bring you more GFC members and friends.
Thanks Chris! I’m not sure how you get me information before “I” even know I need it, but I just got my blog up on WP and wanted to put a GFC gadget on it. You truly are a “nostradamus”.
=)
Thanks Steven, glad I could help!
Chris you are the master of investigative research and reporting and you give your results away to your faithful readers.
For people new to a Chris Lang blog, or new to Chris Lang, my advice (free with no commission) is to sign up to follow Chris Lang.
I get most of my best social networking tips from Chris. You are one of the hardest workers on the net.
Thanks!
Rocque
It wasn’t a WordPress Blog, it was a phpGedView Genealogy web site that wasn’t working. Thanks to your little addition it is working just fine for me now!
Thanks again,
Robert
Awesome Robert, one down how many to go?
Feel free to link to the site that now works so we have some documentation that this is finally the proper fix.
Also we may well want to join your now working Google Friend Connect Gadget!
It does not work for me :o( I tried to add the code for GFC Newsletter on the text widget, but it does not work, does anyone know why? :o(
My site: http://www.fernandafranca.com.br/blog
The GFC painel (with members) is OK, ’cause I used a specific widget for it, but I cannot add the Newletter code. Help me ;o)
Thankss!!!!!!
Fernanda.
@Fernanda França,
This code above is specifically for the members gadget or the social bar that is not appearing.
The newsletter issue is another story all together. I will be doing a chapter for my members site later this week so I will be able to solve your problem in the future.
– Chris
Thanks Chris that fixed the problem I was having. I tried for two hours the other night to get my GFC widget to work glad this fix came along. Your a freakin’ Genius.
BTW I had a sneaking suspicion it was something java script related. Too bad I don’t know as much about Java as I should.
Thanks, Chris!!!
I’ll come back to see the new post. I think this will help many people. Thanks in advance.
Fernanda.
Hi Chris,
I’ve used the code above like it was suggested early on. Still GFC won’t work. My site is created with a CMS sytem. It should be more easy to create a site but i haven’t got full control of all the HTML placement. The webmaster assured me that all the necessary changes, still no succes what sovever I’ve posted this bug on several sites where GFC mentioned. Hope i might look in to it.
Thanks any way
Kindest regards, Peter from Amsterdam
Trawling around unable to find an answer to this question: wondered if anyone reading this might…all my Google Friend Connect gadgets work fine except that the sign in is not remembered beyond the page on which the user signs in. Sign in works fine, but navigate to a different page on the site and it requires sign in again. Any ideas anyone? I tried the code above in case that helped but the social bar breaks with that code.
thx for the solution, worked perfectly. u are the best. i added it right before the google code in my text widget.
No joy for me unfortunately. WP has a lot to answer for – right now Sky ISPs can’t see any WP images – graaaagh!
I was trying everything to add the friend connect gadget to my site. I did a search and ran across your site.
This helped and everything is working well.
I had just about given up on getting this to work, and then found your site. Thank you! It works perfectly now.
Appears to have worked perfectly! I couldn’t figure out why I was seeing the widget on Flock, but not Firefox or Chrome! Excellent solution.
Tanks! Obrigado!
Agora funcionou!
It is working ok now. Thanks much for your help.
Claudio aka @_cmom_
Chris, I am at a loss for words. Nothing seems to work. I recently migrated from Blogger to WP premium theme (Genesis) and it worked for the first couple of days. I did add Ad Rotator plug-in after that time, but it was already not working when I did. I did remove AR, but did not uninstall. Most of the time it doesn’t show up for me at all, but in the last couple of days it does. BUT, not for the majority of my readers. I thought that it might be a browser issue, which would suck anyway, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. When it wasn’t working for me, sometimes (not all times) clearning cookies and the cache made it reappear. Sometimes the box is empty, sometimes it is there but the “follow” button is not appearing. My blog was quickly and steadily growing followers until this started and has stagnated at 221 for over a week. At the rate it was going, it should be up to 500 by now. That’s how unfortunate this is. I get emails daily about the issue, and am afraid my readers will eventually leave. Help! Please email me a response, as I can’t always get on the atual internet with 2 little kiddos but get emails on the phone. THANK YOU!
@Kite Koop – When I went to the blog you linked to I got this error;
Fatal error: Call to undefined function is_multisite() in /home/thevil16/public_html/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 505
That has nothing to do with Google Friend Connect. That is a PHP error generated by WordPress.
That means it is a plug in causing the error, WP itself, or the theme.
When you add plugins to WP, they can add code to the theme. Take the plugin out, the code calling the plugin “throws an error” as it is called in programming.
My solution, uninstall the plugin, reinstall the theme.
Also Google Friend Connect is based on your Domain, you can’t move GFC from Blogger to a domain with out a few hickups.
And you can’t move the GFC code from one domain to another, it has to lie on the domain you added it to, to begin with.
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Thank you, works for me
THANK YOU!!! I have been trying to get GFC to work on my blog for a few months now and couldn’t get it to work. I found your post and decided to give it a try. It works perfectly now. Thanks so much.
hmmmm, it still doesn’t work on my blog. I still get a bunch of html. Only thing the code above adds is a horisontal line
according to WordPress the problem is that they strip out the javascript due to security reasons: http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/adding-google-friend-connect-2?replies=2
I have been at this for months trying to get the GFC follower box to appear on my blog. It is visible and works when readers are using Google Chrome or Safari browsers but does not show up on Firefox or IE. Can someone please help me get this thing working?
Here’s the blog: http://www.bellasavvy.net
Thanks much!
~ Dee
By the way, I tried the advice above and it still does not work on Firefox or IE.
~ Dee
I spent several days researching this problem, until today my
boyfriend found your site.
Tested and worked!
Thank you!
Hi Chris,
Thank you. I try GFC, no way I can make it work. I am searching and try all recommendation I found on the internet with no success. I am now take off GFC and add gadgets’ code directly to WP text widget together with your above java script. It’s work well on FF, Chrome, and Safari but still not work on IE.
I try above code and now it works for my WP blog on FF, Chrome and Safari but still not working on IE7 and IE8…
Thanks! I have tried to find the answer whole day long, and at 23 o’clock i found it here
Hey, I know I’m coming into the conversation a little late but I can’t seem to get anything to work. I’m trying to transfer 280 followers from my other blog (foxypinkcheetah.blogspot.com) to wordpress and have used every code I can find. Is it my browser? My theme? Also, is there a way I can use a wordpress theme in blogger? Thanks!
Are you using WordPress on a domain or WordPress.com hosted blog?
I’m using a WordPress.com hosted blog. However, I might just shell out the 10 or so bucks to get the domain. I should probably be more specific about what’s not working as well. I have copied and pasted the whole google friend connect code into the text widget and then, after finding your site, I redid the whole thing but put the smaller code just above the other one. Both times, as soon as I’d click “save” the very bottom of the code would disappear (). I entered it in manually and the same thing happened.
Between the parenthesis should have the less than sign (<) backslash, then the word "script" and the greater than sign.
Nope
Still not working. http://foxypinkcheetah.wordpress.com/
Also, is there any way to transfer my wordpress template to blogger? Blogger’s templates suck and I’m not a computer genius when it comes to HTML.
@Foxy, you are going to have to register a domain, install WordPress on the domain, then I can show you how to move your followers.
So register FoxyPinkCheetah.com, host it on HostGator for $5 bucks a month, install WordPress, the full version there and then move your WordPress.com blog to that domain.
This is the best possible solution, you need your own domain and your own site, it’s time to move on from free hosted blogs and own your content and your site.
Won’t cost you more that about $20 for the whole shebang. Register the domain the same time you set up hosting by calling the host and ask them to throw in a free domain reg with your first 3 months of hosting.
Tech support at your new host will be able to guide you thru set up and moving the blog to your domain.
Don’t feel tech challenged, this is easy and your host will help you on the phone all the way to the end.
Hi! I installed a friend connect widget on my wordpress blog http://www.teenbookaholic.com. The widget works great on the home page but as soon as you go to a post it disappears! I added the HTML above and it just made the widget disappear entirely.
Any ideas?
Vivi
Hard telling Vivi, it probably has to do with your theme of course.
Some WP themes have a different page for single blog posts, called single.php
If you can find that file in your theme, that is why GFC is not appearing on single pages, you will have to add it to that page as well.
hi, a bit late i am so confused. i have put GFC on my blog but only the code that appears. I have put the code you showed above, same thing happen. what seems to be the problem? hope you can help me.
genny
Thanks for replying!
I found the single.php file.
What do I have to add to single.php? The GFC widget’s HTML code?
Sorry, I’m not a techie lol
Tell me how you added GFC…? Did you use WordPress’s widget system? Or did you add the Google widget code to the sidebar.php file?
If you embedded the GFC code yourself, then I would bet you should do the same on the single.php page.
Be sure if you edit WordPress files yourself, you back up the file before hand, I break mine all the time, so I made a video on how to do this yourself here….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opt_8B9w6j4
Let me know that that helped…. – Chris
Right now my blog server is down lol
I went to the Google Friend Connect tab in my google account, went through the steps, customized it, and google spat out an HTML code for me to post into a text widget.
So you went into WordPress, then to the widgets tab and added the GFC code to a new widget, am I correct.
That I believe is your problem, your theme is not calling all the widgets from the sidebar in a single page / single.php
You will either have to enter it manually like I show in the video above, or ask for support from your theme developer.
Alright, Thank You!
Hi Jenny,
I can see from your comment link you are a wordpress.com blog, correct?
http://aquariangirl24.wordpress.com/
WordPress.com does not accept social plugins. You have to use a WordPress stand alone blog on your own domain like this blog is.
I talked directly to Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of the corporation that creates WordPress, and he told me that he has no plans to allow Facebook or Google Social plugins to run on WordPress blogs.
That was last year at this time, things may have changed, but not for GFC on WordPress.com…
you are MY HERO! I’ve been looking all over for this fix!
Thanks so much for researching this and posting it. My GFC box works again.
-Sara
hrumm… still blank. (even when at the google friend connect site – blank in the customize window). http://www.google.com/friendconnect/admin/site/membersgadget?id=16470719500085621107
I tried adding the following code [below] in sidebar.php in a few places… Perhaps it needs to go somewhere else?
Sigh. Worked yesterday. I haven’t changed anything.
window.JSON = {
parse: function(st){
return st.evalJSON();
},
stringify: function(obj){
return Object.toJSON(obj);
}
};
It’s hard to say Lindsay.
First off is your site a blog hosted on it’s own domain? Or is it pulling from WordPress.com or Blogger?
Second, if you are using widgets in your sidebar, it makes it harder to add this code.
Tell me more and we can help….
Interestingly enough – most of the blogs I visit the Google Friend Connect is gone.. (all over twitter too) – something at GFC this time!
I’ll keep you posted!
apparently either google or word press has made a change and this simple little fix that had worked no loner does. LMK if you ever come across an updated fix
Hello, I use google chrome and I’ve been trying to get friend connect to work on my google blogger but it just isn’t. I think it could be that I’m inserting this code into the wrong spot. Could you please tell me exactly where it should go in the blogger html? I found the friendconnect but everywhere I put the code either it doesn’t come up at all or I get this message when I click on it:
“We’re sorry…
We were unable to handle your request. Please try again or return a bit later.”
This is the same problem I’ve had on other blogger sites as well.
Thank you for your help!
Jenni
i’ve succefully put the GFC using widget..
im using selfhost wp..
the problem now,the people that follow does not get the latest post..
and if you see at google reader..the name of the blog is not there..
pls help me..=(
Hi Chris,
I’m late to this party but having the same issue. My site (www.loridyan.com) is self-hosted WP and GFC isn’t working. I’ve just tried using a text widget with your fix added to the code that GFC spat out, but as you can see it’s just a blank box. Suggestions appreciated!
Lori
@Lori – I just checked http://loridyan.com/ in Chrome 12, FireFox 4, Internet Explorer 8 and Opera, worked fine here in all 4 browsers.
I have this feeling that you are all using an ancient browser that you have not updated to a modern version.
Or you have some plugin that is breaking some JavaScrip code. If it works fine here, on all 4 browsers, then it your browser on your machine.
Click the about link under the help menu bar link or the wrench icon in Google Chrome.
If you have a lower version that what I quoted above, then update your browser.
My question to you is this: Can you see GFC here in my sidebar?
Hi Chris,
I’m on Firefox 5 and it looks up to date. I also checked on my ancient desktop in IE and in both cases I can see the heading and text box, but not the members/join this site, etc. And yes, I can see all parts of GFC on your site.
Lori
ps thank you SO much for offering your expertise to all of us newbies!
Lori, what OS are you running?
Hi Chris,
I’m on windows 7
Lori, I am starting to see a pattern here, Windows 7. This all started just about the time Windows 7 started gaining big numbers.
So it’s not the old stuff as I believed to begin with but Win 7’s underlying JavaScript rendering engine. But FireFox should cure that.
Your blog renders GFC fine on Windows XP and my Linux machine, so does yours.
Try running Chrome on your Win 7 machine and let’s see what happens.
http://www.google.com/chrome
Nothing new here, Google Maps broke for quite a while on Win Vista. Does GFC render in your IE 8+ on Win 7?
Hi Chris – it worked! I’ve installed Chrome and can see GFC on my site (with my sad little one member…me!). I also checked on IE 8 and it shows up there, too! So does this mean others will see the blank space if they’re using Mozilla on Windows 7 like I was? I can’t believe this hassle and would’ve chucked my laptop out the window by now if not for you! Thank you thank you thank you!
Lori
Glad I could be of help Lori. So it looks like you have nailed down the first footprint…
FireFox on Windows 7. Every other OS / browser combination seems to work fine, except FF / Win 7. Now we can address this bug with Mozilla’s dev team.
I submitted the bug here to the Mozilla team:
https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/840505#answer-205821
Hi,
I’ve been trying to get GFC to work on my website for ages! I added the widget a few months ago and it was working fine then it started disappearing so I removed it and tried to add it again but a grey line appears when I convert raw text into rich text. I also looked at other onsugar blogs and there are plenty of blogs who have the GFC gadget working just fine. I really dont know what the problem is?
In all our testing the only place things like iGoogle and GFC are breaking are on Windows 7. It is the only single common demonator in all the reports we have had.
Sometimes it’s Chrome, sometimes it’s IE or FF that breaks. Yesterday iGoogle and GFC both broke on my friend’s machine, he swithed to Linux, worked fine. Switched to Win 7 both broke in Chrome. But both then worked in IE7, so right now Win 7 is the common denominator.
You can bet what I am thinking…..
I’m having the issue in Blogger and it is a “known problem” for months now with no answers from them. It seems my widget can be seen for a second when the page is opening but then the sidebar background goes from transparent (my setting for it) to gray (not my setting) and the widget gets hidden. Anyone have a clue how to fix it? I’ve reinstalled several times already.
I just can’t get it working. Tried on all IE, FF and Chrome but no luck. Tried pasting that code into the widget too, but no luck. I only see one blank grey line where the GFC widget should be. Oh Guru, guide me!
Had gfc on blogger and moved it all to a self hosting site. It was fine until today. Having a huge blog hop and all of a sudden the GFC disappears and I am seeing the webmaster this site is not configured…on win 7 and all was fine until a couple of hours ago.
Hi,
I used the google friends plugin. Some people on IE claim that when they try to join and they can’t see the button. I can see it in IE 9. On Safari and Firefox, you see that there are 10 members but in reality there are 40. I added the code below right above the google code and the plugin completely disappeared. This happened when I updated WordPress 3.2.1. Do you have any advice on this?
Thanks,
Nancy
window.JSON = {
parse: function(st){
return st.evalJSON();
},
stringify: function(obj){
return Object.toJSON(obj);
}
};
I want to put the GFC newsletter gadget on my blog but in the design bit, where you can change what is says – I can’t. This wouldn’t bother me too much if what is said in that sec ion was actually what showed up on my blog – instead I get the links I’m to check – not the SIGN UP TO MY NEWSLETTER bit in the code? I don’t understand why this is happening . I thought to move to another newsletter provider, but I can’t import my GFC list to it so I can’t! So annoying and theres no one to help – Don’t suppose you can do so? Shah. X
Hi,
I was reading your fix for Google Friends Connect and I just tried it on my WordPress Sidebar. I copied and pasted like you suggested and put it at the very beginning of the code, but nothing happened. I have the Google Friends Connect at the blog portion of my website at http://www.oklahomapastrycloth.com/blog. Any help would sure be appreciated.
Mary Beth White