[Plugin: Simple Facebook Connect] wow. features? questions!

Yes, but it guides you through it. Creating an app is a two step process now anyway.

oh. so publishing doesn’t publish to my wall but rather to my apps wall?

do you know of a palce to get up to date with FB terms and explanations? I started using Fb integration only a couple of weeks ago and am pretty confused as to how, walls, profiles, groups, communities, pages and fans play together ??

No, I don’t know of a good place to learn the terminology. Took me a while to get it myself.

Basically there’s three kinds of things you need to understand.

1. Profile – This is a user’s page. Easy, it’s a person. Friendship is two way.

2. Fan Page – This can be a person or a company or an abstract thing.. Anybody can create them, friendship is one-way, with people becoming “fans” of the thing. Posts made to the page show up to their fans as “Updates”, in a special area of the inbox.

3. Application – This is a program that runs within Facebook to some degree. Basically, it’s a website that can use parts of the Facebook API. Apps are like Fan Pages to a large degree (they can have fans, they have their own set of wall and info tabs, etc), but they also can run custom code on their sites and have it appear on Facebook.

The first two are entirely contained within Facebook. Since you’re a third party site, you want to be an application. Yes, you can make the publish go to your own profile or show up as you, etc, but you can do that in other ways already. The Share button lets you do that. The point of publishing is to make your content appear on Facebook in a special place, where people can interact with it there. Your “Fans” will then be able to receive it through Facebook, or at least links to it through there. Driving traffic back to you, hopefully.

Here’s my Application’s page for my blog, to give you an example:
https://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=116002660893

You’ll see that the “Go To Application” button links back to my site

thanks, that was pretty enlightening. this plugin: https://www.sociable.es/facebook-connect offers the option to invite friends after logging in via FB and calls those a community… I guess thats not a term officially used by Fb as there seems no connection except that well, they were invited !?

How exactly does a FB group tie into all this?

And sorry for highjacking the thread but as I opened it I guess I can go off topic as long as you’re willing, otherwise we’ll just stick to the original topic: your plugin ??

Inviting friends is something that Facebook does offer. Basically, it invites them to join the Application as well. “Community” isn’t a FB term that I know of.

When people connect to your site via Facebook Connect, they’re granting your Application specific permissions. Namely, the ability to get their user information and such. That permission granting makes them a user of your Application.

Inviting their friends is a Facebook specific thing that can be implemented (rather easily, I think). This just lets them send messages to their friends saying “hey, come check out this Application”, basically. Not sure it makes sense in terms of a site’s Facebook Connect application, as really it’d be people inviting their friends to come check out your website. I’ve have to test the idea, see how it works.

Anyway, when a user connects to your site, you get their Facebook user profile number. By keeping track of these, you can determine who is using your application. So that’s what that plugin means by “community”: The total list of users that have ever “connected” to your site.

The way it does it is by creating additional WordPress users for every new Facebook user. I specifically did not want that, so my plugin does not keep track of these numbers. I could keep track of them and show that community box, but I haven’t yet. Nobody’s asked for it. Personally, I like the idea of Fans better. But that’s me. ??

My main focus has been for a single-user blog type site, I haven’t considered multiple WP users much as of yet.

FB Groups are wholly different things, entirely within FB itself. Normal FB users can join groups and post messages and such in those groups.

okk I started now my first tests and am getting confused from the start:

your plugin states: ′Can’t find your key?

1. Get a list of your applications from here: Facebook Application List′

I went there, had to grant ′developer′ access to my profile then I can ′set up a new application′ from that page via https://www.facebook.com/developers/createapp.php or follow the link you gave in your plugin which is: https://developers.facebook.com/setup.php

which one is the right one? they seem very similar but totally different ??

for now I followed the link from your plugin but confusion again: your plugin asks for ′Facebook API Key and Facebook Application ID′ but the facebook page I land on after enabling the connect feature gives me ′API Key and Secret′ is the secret value the Application ID??

###edit### found my Application ID here: https://www.facebook.com/developers/apps.php

one more addition: what else do I need to do with my application? I see this i.e. ′Once you have completed your application, you may submit it to the Application Directory.′ does that increase my ′fame′?
how else do you customize your application? How to allow other users to use it? what could they do with it? What exactly is hte benefit of this application or does it only serve the purpose to allow me to post to my wall/profile?

I have not updated my page to the 2.9 beta, will I have problems using the plugins with 2.8.6?

Einstein2008: The plugin won’t work with 2.8 in all respects. It requires 2.9.

Ovidiu: Submitting the app does nothing of benefit for you, I think. How you use the FB App after that is really up to you. I made it into my sort of “Fan page” on Facebook. Works well, and my blog posts get published to it.

sorry to reopen this thread, but I am missign a feature I kind of remember reading that you had added:

is there a widget that shows the last logged in visitors with avatar from facebook?

No, but that’s a neat idea.

Like show the last X avatars of people who… did what? Logged in? Commented? Connected?

Commented would be easiest. You could exclude site users (like anybody with a login to WP) easily.

kind of what this plugin does: https://www.sociable.es/facebook-connect/

shows the last visitors to the site that were logged into facebook and visited the site. The plugin author calls it the community or similar. doesn’t matter what its called…

But your ideas: logged in? commented? visited? sound great.

Take it as inspiration ??