I’ve had shied away from moving to WordPress for months because of Google Friend Connect only working on Blogger blots, but now I’ve managed to find a solution and so I thought I share my 5 Steps to Get or Keep Google Friend Connect on WordPress (as of 7th January 2013).

Works only for only self-hosted WordPress as well as Tumblr! WordPress.com-hosted WP doesn’t work as it doesn’t allow iframe-codes in widgets.

01. Have Someone Else Manage It

have your WordPress feed be managed by FeedCat or an another alternative (Feedburner is being killed off!). The address of your FeedCat feed for your WordPress blog will be something like http://feed.FeedCat.com/nameofchoice

02. Trick Blogger & GFC

in your Blogger blog Settings > Other copy the address of your FeedCat address from Step 1 into Post Feed Redirect URL. This way Blogger (and subsequently GFC) will think your FeedCat feed manages and displays the Blogger feed, which isn’t true, but Blogger can’t tell and will display the new WordPress feed to your subscribers, new and old.
If you haven’t gotten a Blogger blog, just create a basic, blank one with a non-dynamic template, give it the same name your WordPress blog has and follow Step 2. You will not have to update, customise or do anything with this blank blog. You just need it as a host for GFC. DO NOT DELETE YOUR BLOGGER ACCOUNT EVER.
Please note: If you used to have GFC on WordPress and lost it due to GFC’s only Blogger-restriction you cannot get it back.

03. Create The Cheat

add the Followers widget to your Blogger blog sidebar and then go to Template > Edit HTML and locate the text <b:skin><![CDATA[/* */ and place the code below right behind the */

#navbar-iframe {
height: 0px;
visibility: hidden;
display: none;
}
 
#Followers1 {
position: fixed !important;
top: 0px !important;
left: 0px !important;
height: 260px !important;
width: 300px !important;
background: white;
}
 
#Followers1-wrapper {
position: absolute;
top: 0px;
left: 0px;
background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;
}

04. Place Sneaky WordPress Widget

create a widget on your WordPress blog and copy the code below into it, Make sure to change the address to the address of Blogger blog. Of course you can change width & height.

<iframe style="width: 211px; border: 0px; height: 240px;" src="http://nameofchoice.blogspot.com/" height="240" width="320" scrolling="no"></iframe>

05. Act Like Nothing Happened

this only applies to those who are generally moving their blogs across to Blogger, not those who already are on WordPress. Import all your Blogger posts to WordPress, delete all the posts in Blogger and redirect the URL to your new WordPress blog.

Voila, you have GFC on WordPress!

Please don’t forget to let me know what you think and do make sure to share the post if it does work for you! Or get in touch at [email protected] and I’ll do these changes on Blogger for you but I’ll need admin-access.