Facebook introduces Wordpress plugin to target millions of publishers on the platform

With Facebook's global roll-out of Instant Articles approaching its launch date, the social network has introduced a WordPress plugin in its attempt to target the millions of publishers on the popular platform.

According to Facebook's blog post announcing the feature, the WordPress open-source publishing platform ''now powers more than 25 percent of sites on the Web.''

With the new plugin, it would now be easier than ever for those same content creators, from blogs to media houses, to correctly adapt and format their articles for Facebook's mobile reader.

Facebook expects the WordPress plugin to address any hesitations publishers might have had in the past, as regards to the technicalities of working with Instant Articles.

To explain the benefits better, Facebook provided two examples of ways the plugin could be used to create optimised visuals and media for articles, which included a piece from Foreign Policy magazine.

''Publishers that use standard WordPress templates can activate the plugin out-of-the-box to create Instant Articles,'' states Chris Ackermann, from Facebook's partner engineering team , digitaltrends.com reported. ''Publishers that want a more customized production experience can extend the plugin to support additional elements.''

The tool could prompt new publishers and content to take to the Instant Articles platform, in view of the wide adoption and usage of the WordPress blogging platform and content management system. The software currently powered 26 per cent of all websites, according to projections of web technology survey company W3Techs.

With Instant Articles publishers can post their content directly to Facebook, instead of posting links on the social-media site to draw users back to their own websites. Facebook said in February that it would open up Instant Articles to publishers ''of any size, anywhere in the world'' beginning 12 April.

WordPress sites would now be able to generate a feed of Instant Articles-compliant posts with only a few clicks. They would first need to install a small piece of software called a ''plugin.''