How to Setup your Facebook Connect Application

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The majority of the email I get from users of the Simple Facebook Connect plugin is questions regarding how to setup their Facebook Application. It’s really not that hard to do, but the plethora of options can seem somewhat intimidating. So here’s the basics of what you need to do.

After creating your application, you’ll need to visit the Apps section in the Facebook Developer Home area. Here you’ll find your application, and the all critical “Edit Settings” link.

Main Application Screen

Firstly, never give out your Application Secret. If you give this out by accident, then use the Reset Secret Key link to get a new one.

Anyway, from here, you want to go into the settings. The settings area is divided into six main sections, but most of the settings are irrelevant. See, you’re building a “Connect” application, not a “Canvas” one. So most of these are meaningless for you. The following ones are what you actually care about:

Application name

Obviously, you want the name of your Application to make sense. I suggest using the same name as your website. You can even use your domain name here if you like. Just be aware that this name is what the Fans of your site will see in their Applications area.

Basic Information

The Basic Information section is important as well, fill it in as you see fit. I also recommend uploading good icons and/or logos for your site. Gives it that finished look.

Contact Information

Contact Information is obviously important as well, but don’t worry about all those extra URLs. They really apply more to Canvas apps. Of course, if you want to make special pages on your site for them and provide the URLs here, feel free.

Authentication Settings

The Authentication Settings page is surprisingly important. Those top two boxes need to be unchecked for a Facebook Connect application. Why? Because when they are unchecked, your Application becomes an “External Website” as far as Facebook is concerned. If you have either them checked, then your app’s Canvas section becomes active and you might have users trying to add it to their profiles and such, resulting in broken pages and a general bad user experience.

Connect Settings

The Connect Settings page is probably the most important one. These settings must be filled in and they must be absolutely accurate. Specifically, the URLs must be the URLs that are actually used by your site. Capitalization matters. The leading “www” or lack of one matters. Whatever the URL your site is in the browser is what you MUST put into these fields. Anything less and your site will not work.

Advanced Settings

The Advanced Settings screen contains these three fields which you need to set in the same way I did. The email domain should be your own domain, obviously. This field must be filled in for you to get real user emails on your Connected site. Without this, you only get proxied emails through Facebook.

Application Profile

Finally, after you have saved those settings, take the time to go back to the main application screen and click the “Edit Application Profile” link. You’ll be taken here, where you can set up the “look” of your application page on Facebook. This includes what tabs are visible, the stuff in the Info section, etc. You can add extra Applications tabs to this page and generally customize all sorts of stuff. None of that affects your site, but it does affect how the App Page looks in Facebook. The more polished it is, the more likely people will “Fan” your Application. And Fans get updates from when you publish posts to the Wall. Great way to drive traffic to your content.

Hope this helps! Mainly, I hope this reduces the number of questions I get about this process. Enjoy SFC!

36 thoughts on “How to Setup your Facebook Connect Application”

  1. First off, love your plugin. Been using it for a couple of months to post to my Facebook FanPage.

    Yesterday, however, the fan page functionality stopped working for me. Everything is still installed/up-to-date/correct as far as I can tell, but when I push the “Publish to Facebook FanPage button” the dialog box opens, only with nothing in it. Weird, especially since the Profile functionality still works.

    Thoughts, ideas?

    Thanks

    1. No. The plugin doesn’t generate that content, Facebook does. So if that popup is blank, then Facebook is broken.

      Nothing I can do about it.

      1. mmm i have the same issue and the same problem.
        I have just set up a new installation of your plugin. Facebook connect seems to work and so do the Profile funcionality. But when i click the fan page button it opens an empty window titled “Publish this story to the Page’s Wall?”
        I hope it is not a new facebook behaviour! regards

        1. Again, Facebook is currently broken. This is not a “new behavior”, it’s a “behavior when Facebook is broken”.

          Wait for them to fix it.

  2. Thanks for this plugin. It really works nicely. These instructions are great as well.

    One question: I am trying to add SSL to my admin panel, and the publish to facebook buttons will not appear. If I use http://…/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=47 as opposed to https://…/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=47 They show up quite nicely.

    I am thinking that there is an issue with SSL and this
    function sfcShowPubButtons() {
    jQuery('#sfc-publish-buttons').html('');
    }

    But am not sure how to fix this. Any ideas?

    Thanks again.

    1. Nope. jQuery doesn’t care whether the page uses SSL or not. SSL would not interfere with the buttons appearing. However, it will interfere with whether or not your cookies work.

      At present, Simple Facebook Connect does not support SSL. I’m planning on adding this in a future version.

      1. Thanks for the quick reply. I know that the plugins are where SSL will give me issues. I will watch for this in the future.

        Thanks

          1. Thanks.

            I deactivated v0.11, upload the veriosn from trunk. When I activate I get:


            Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.

            Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '<' in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wp-dev\httpdocs\wp-content\plugins\simple-facebook-connect\sfc.php on line 78

            I looked at sfc.php and a closing tags was missing after line 78:


            Index: sfc.php
            ===================================================================
            --- sfc.php (revision 201675)
            +++ sfc.php (working copy)
            @@ -75,6 +75,7 @@
            echo '';
            else
            echo '';
            +?>

            <?php

            I will test, but I am still having issues connecting to facebook’s fan pages (even though fb claims the feed is is fixed…)

            Thanks for working on this.

          2. Just wanted to let you know, I set up .12 on my development site and it worked fine (once facebook fixed their issue with fan Pages) and I rolled it out last night to my live site and it is working fine with SSL.

            Thanks for everything.

  3. Hi. I run gamingangels.com. I have installed Simple Facebook Connect with the comments installed, but when a user clicks on Connect with Facebook it brings up the dialog for connecting and asks for email and password, but then it does nothing. The comments aren’t refreshing to allow the user to post. What am I missing?

    Thanks!
    Trina
    http://www.gamingangels.com

    1. Are you getting any messages in the Error Console in the browser?

      Unfortunately, I can’t see your site from my workplace (blocked), so I can’t tell you what the problem might be.

  4. I’m trying to setup sfc so I can post directly to fan pages. In the settings area I’m “trying” to grant publish permissions for the fan page. When I click the button I’m getting an error stating that it is going to a forbidden section of my site. Any ideas on how I can correct this?

    1. Never seen that. I’d need to know what the error actually is.

      Also, check your FB Application. Specifically the URL in the Connect section. Make sure it *exactly matches your URL*. You’d be surprised at the problems a misplaced “www” can create.

  5. Hi!

    I tried my best to setup the plugin at my blog http://blog.doncho.net.

    First, I had incorrectly setup the application. After I found this post, I fixed the application settings and now they’re like here, except that my Connect URL is “http://blog.doncho.net/” (note the trailing ‘/’ at the end – Facebook required me to add it, otherwise it was claiming the settings are wrong).

    Nevertheless, the plugin still does not work. When I click “Login”, I get “Connect with Facebook” button. But when I click it, it just “does something” and then returns me back on the Login field.

    Can you help?

    (Plus, I can see that it does not work with your site as well, no matter how much I’m trying to post this comment, while “Connected with Facebook”, it never got posted)

  6. Trying to get This to properly work.
    The registration Works.
    But when user is connected & Clicks login it redirects to registration page…
    I have tried many themes. & All revolve the same issue.

    Currently Using Facebook Theme. Which I may Keep.. But also would like to modify it to Show the users Avatar from Facebook when posting.

    All help would be greatly appreciated.. & Possibly a beer or 2.

    I have about 30hrs into reading this. Maybe its my lack of understanding or Im totally missing something important… nadayag-halibas.com Login & Register I will enable for a short time. But if you wish to try to help me out let me know via my Profile & I can setup remote, phone, ym, chat? Your Choice.

    http://www.facebook.com/kuya74

    Also your facebook commenting here does not work…

    1. I confirm that I have *absolutely* the same experience. WordPress 2.9.2 (http://blog.doncho.net). I switched the plugin(s) off, because since they do not function well, I’m not risking to leave them working, but the experience was the same as above: Going to Login page => trying to connect with FB => going through the standard dialogs => seems all is OK => …but I hit “Login” page again!

      1. Okay, I don’t really understand what “exactly the same experience” means, because I don’t understand the original problem. What exactly is happening? What does “but I hit Login page again” mean, exactly? When you click the button, then if you have an account already connected, it will log you in. If not, then it will go to the registration page. That is what it is supposed to do.

        I can confirm that on a default setup, Login and Register both work fine. So I need to know exactly what you’re seeing, because I cannot see the same thing on my various testbeds.

      2. Note: If you have the Login plugin activated, but not Registration, and you have not actually hooked your Facebook Account to your WordPress account on the Your Profile page in the admin, then yes, clicking that button on the Login page will take you back to the Login page.

        Basically, you’re logging in with Facebook, but then it cannot find any valid user in the WordPress database to log you in as. You have to connect the two different accounts together first, so that it knows that your WP user your FB user.

  7. Yeah, lemme test it too 🙂

    Seriously, I have some problems with sfc-comments plugin. After I Connect I cannot submit comments form, it says “You must be logged in to Facebook to use this feature.” in a box titled “Request for Special Permissions”. Could you please point me a direction where this bug might come from ?

    I am pretty sure that settings are accurate, the only thing is that e-mail domain is different from urls in connect tab.

    1. It’s not a bug. That popup is basically the one that asks you for permission to give your email address to the site.

      Facebook is having severe problems today. Lots of weird things going on like empty popups and other such stuff. None of this is the fault of the plugin, Facebook itself generates the contents of those popups.

      There’s nothing I can do to fix it. There’s nothing wrong with the plugin. Facebook is borked, complain to them.

  8. uninstalled due to update having errors.

    Currently using the facebook coders connect feature That properly works.
    just misses some of the features of your connect.
    you might get a better idea of how the connect should be if you use the login/register the way facebook-connect does. It has never failed & works properly. Just wish it would work a tad bit different.

    You have lots of good features & they work good compared to the lack of features in facebook-connect.
    I liked how yours connected to fanpage & did a few other things.
    After you update more I might use your connect again

    when connected with your app I am never able to comment. Sorry but your plugin needs lots of work to make it… wish i knew how to code but you are doing great now if you could make it fully work

    1. Version 0.13 had errors with Publish and the Fan Box. Version 0.14 fixes them.

      Login and Register both work correctly, there’s no errors there.

      I can’t help you with your commenting issues without more information. Commenting works fine, as I have demonstrated repeatedly. There’s comments on this post made using Facebook and Twitter credentials.

  9. Hi there, just a quick question: Will a version of these two plugins (Facebook & Twitter) be available without having to alter or add code your comments.php? As I don’t fancy altering code. 🙁

    1. In 3.0, there is support for a standard comments form output, so if your theme uses that (or is modified to use that), then the plugin will be able to put its own buttons and code and such into the form.

      But without that, no, it’s not possible. The theme has to be modified to make space to put the buttons in as well as to mark the location of the form elements in order to hide them naturally.

  10. I used the SFC yesterday to post a blog post to my fanpage but today when I try to post my post I get the Facebook window (blue title bar with white background). Nothing is in the window. It looks like is is stuck. Do you know if it is a FB thing or maybe something changed with the SFC that I’m not aware of…

    Any ideas?

    Let me know.

    Thanks!

  11. This is the only plug in I have going but I keep getting the following error message.

    If you can see this, then there is some form of problem showing you the Facebook publishing buttons. This may be caused by a plugin conflict or some form of bad javascript on this page. Try reloading or disabling other plugins to find the source of the problem.

  12. After installing the plugin and activating the Base, the Settings page is blank. It only displays “Main Settings” and nothing below that…

  13. Hi!

    When I push the Grant Publish Permission, for a fan page, it opens a blank FB window that closes 2 seconds later… the button appears to be “activated”, but if you save and reload it is not activated…
    So, when I tried to publish to a fan page (a group, in fact) it shows a popup error window, saying that “xyz number” can not publish as the “group number” (no idea wich is the fiorst number)

    1. It probably won’t work with group walls for the same basic reason it doesn’t work with application walls. There’s no way to grant the necessary permissions. Facebook lacks quite a lot in this respect.

  14. Great plugin, thank you!

    How can I get the SFC-Fan Box to link to my Fan Page instead of to the Application Page? There are fans in the fan page, but not the application page therefore we look kinda pathetic.

    1. Put the Fan Page id number in on the configuration page where it says “Fan Page”. Then it’ll use that instead.

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