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Plugin: Simple Facebook Connect
Version: 0.11
Last updated: 18 days ago.
Downloaded: 15,405 times.
Overview
Facebook Connect is somewhat difficult to integrate with WordPress sites. Many plugins exist to do this, but they are overly complicated, or have security problems, or just plain don’t do the things you want them to do.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
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Requirements
WordPress 2.9 or higher. Yes, this plugin is for WordPress 2.9, which has not been released as of this writing. Some pieces might work on 2.8, but some won’t.
Features
- Easy to install and use.
- Modular. Only use the pieces you want to use.
- Integrates easily into any theme.
- Simple control panel, only has the options you need for the pieces you activate.
- Secure. Uses the latest WordPress coding techniques to eliminate tricky security problems.
Current sub-modules
- Comment using Facebook Identity (without creating new WordPress users!)
- Share button, with meta support (for Facebook feed items to look nicer)
- User status widget (display your status in a sidebar)
- Fan box widget (get your readers to be fans of your site on Facebook)
- Live Stream widget (let your readers update their status and chat, live on your page)
- Bookmark widget (get your site into the Facebook bookmark bar)
- Connect widget (give your users an easy way to connect in the sidebar)
- Publish posts to your Facebook Application Page (manually, after the post is published… automatic publish coming soon)
- Login support (alpha, not fully functional)
Future sub-modules
- New User Registration support (with FB Connect logins)
- (whatever you like, send me suggestions!)
Installation Instructions
- Upload the files to the `/wp-content/plugins/simple-facebook-connect/` directory.
- Activate the base plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
- Configure Facebook Connect for your site by following the instructions on the Settings screen.
- Activate the sub plugins you want to use through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress and configure them appropriately. Some require no configuration at all, some require minor theme changes.
Licensing
This plugin is licensed under the GPL Version 2 only.
Method to get support
You can email me directly, however I am also a moderator at the WordPress.org support forums, so you’ll find me there as well.
Hey Otto,
I installed SFC and had it up and running great the past few days. It was publishing to my facebook no problem. Now, when I try to publish a post and click Publish to Fan Page, the window pops up, but there is nothing to click on or write on within it. I think the problem started when I tried to log into FC through the WP admin login page. Any suggestions? (I’m not a programmer, so noobie language is appreciated.
-John
SFC does not generate those dialogs, and thus is not the problem. Facebook is the problem.
Read this: http://developers.facebook.com/live_status.php
As it says, they had problems with the “Feed Forms”. This is that problem.
I can’t fix it. There’s nothing I can do. Wait for Facebook to fix it.
And everybody else: Please stop emailing me about it, this is the 10th message I’ve received on this topic today.
I am having trouble with SFC-Publish. I want to publish my posts to my Fan Page. I have the main SFC plug-in activated without trouble. However, when I activate the SFC-Publish plug-in, my Post editing breaks.
If I click on an existing Post, and SFC-Publish is active, then the editing form (the textarea with the post info, toolbars, etc) vanishes. The editing sidebar with Publish, Post Tags, and Categories remains, but the whole editing area simply isn’t there. When I deactivate the SFC-Publish plug-in, everything returns to normal. Ideas?
Just to be sure, I also tried the 0.12 trunk version of sfc-publish.php — same problem.
thanks,
Bryan
Can’t explain that one. Are you using any sort of editing enhancement plugin? The publish plugin doesn’t do anything that could interfere with the default editor. Also, works for me and many others. I’m using it on this site, in fact.
Ok, thanks. Your post inspired me to deactivate all my plug-ins and take a more fine-grained approach. It seems the SFC-Publish plug-in is conflicting with my Topsy Retweet button plug-in. With both active, the problem occurs. When either is active by itself, things are fine. Perhaps they are loading conflicting javascript or something. I will investigate the code.
Thanks.
Bryan
The publish button does make it load jQuery. If this Topsy plugin is using jQuery but is not loading it properly (using wp_enqueue_script), then that might break things.
I got it fixed. They did have a hard-coded jQuery reference in there that I changed to wp_enqueue_script(), and there turned out to be one other PHP issue that only surfaced in the admin, not the front-end. Thanks again!
So, does the “Register” plugin work? Is there a site that can demonstrate it? Making one-click registration is a killer app in my particular case…. can you confirm the extent of this functionality’s development?
Thanks kindly.
Tony Camero
Register works, but it’s not one-click yet. The SVN version in trunk has a mode to do one-click registration, but it needs testing and modification before final release.
oi~
ditto issue as some previous posters, got the white with blue border popup but it stays blank for my fan page, but works when publishing to my personal page. have not installed anything new the last week… it stopped working last night. anyone find a solution, Facebook help is not very helpful :]
thanks.
Hi there,
I’m also having trouble figuring out how to move the Share button to the right side. I saw the post above where you say:
“Moving the button to the right hand side would indeed be a CSS thing. In my case, I use a rule like this:
#alt-login-methods {
float:right;
}”
I’m using WPMU-Dixi and have put that bit of code in as many CSS files as I can find but it still doesn’t change it. Any ideas what need to be done to make it work?
Thanks.
No, that’s the wrong code for the share button. That code would be for the Connect button on the comments section. To move the share button around, you’d probably use something like this:
span.fb_share_count_wrapper {
float:right;
}
really don’t want to but i might have to start looking for an alternative
Look for any alternative you like, it won’t help you.
Like I stated before, the problem you’re describing is not a problem with the plugin. Everything generated inside that blue border popup thing is generated by Facebook. I cannot change those contents. I cannot affect that system in any way whatsoever.
If Facebook is sending you a blank popup box, then that’s Facebook doing it, not this plugin.
Facebook is *broken*. I can’t fix it, because I don’t work for them.
For reference, this is the bug in their bug tracker:
http://bugs.developers.faceboo.....gi?id=8573
As you can see, other people are having the problem too. Hell, I have the same problem.
Until Facebook fixes it, it ain’t getting fixed.
thanks Otto… i’m glad they are seeing the issue and working on it, i hope :}
@Otto: Facebook is a necessary “evil” for me, and i was looking for support yesterday, do you or anybody know how to get in contact with them ? i think you would agree with me that you want this resolved as much as i do (okay, maybe i want it slightly more :}
Hah! Good luck with that. You’re not going to “get support” from Facebook. They are very much a closed system. App developers have been complaining about that for ages.
Hi, I just installed the plugin, did all the api id stuff, and enabled SFC – Publish. I’m using wordpress 2.9.1. wp_head and wp_footer and language are fine in template. I get this error every time I try to make a new post. The post gets published anyway, and after I get the two publish in facebook buttons on the edit post page, but the error is kinda bad. I am working with xampp, on a local machine, it’s like when I first publish a post the user is missing or something. here I paste the error and apologize for my bad english! thanks!
Fatal error: Uncaught exception ‘FacebookRestClientException’ with message ‘user id parameter or session key required’ in C:\xampp\htdocs\documenta\wp-content\plugins\simple-facebook-connect\facebook-platform\facebookapi_php5_restlib.php:3112 Stack trace: #0 C:\xampp\htdocs\documenta\wp-content\plugins\simple-facebook-connect\facebook-platform\facebookapi_php5_restlib.php(1805): FacebookRestClient->call_method(‘facebook.users….’, Array) #1 C:\xampp\htdocs\documenta\wp-content\plugins\simple-facebook-connect\sfc-publish.php(235): FacebookRestClient->users_hasAppPermission(‘publish_stream’) #2 [internal function]: sfc_publish_automatic(380, Object(stdClass)) #3 C:\xampp\htdocs\documenta\wp-includes\plugin.php(339): call_user_func_array(’sfc_publish_aut…’, Array) #4 C:\xampp\htdocs\documenta\wp-includes\post.php(2123): do_action(‘publish_post’, 380, Object(stdClass)) #5 C:\xampp\htdocs\documenta\wp-includes\post.php(1806): wp_transition_post_status(‘publish’, ‘draft’, Object(stdClass)) #6 C:\xampp\htdocs\documenta\wp-inc in C:\xampp\htdocs\documenta\wp-content\plugins\simple-facebook-connect\facebook-platform\facebookapi_php5_restlib.php on line 3112
I unchecked automatically publish to facebook profile and the error is gone, but I would really like to have that option. thanks!
That error occurs when you turn on the “Automatic Publish” functionality without having ever actually “Connected” to Facebook with your site in any way.
You need to be an actual user of your Application for it to be able to publish and such. Try publishing manually using the buttons on the Edit Post screen first. Once you’ve confirmed that you can do that, then you can enable the automatic publishing functionality.
first off, amazing plugin. I take my hat off to u
Took a little bit of fannying on until I eventually got it working but all seems to be going swimmingly aside from one thing I’ve noticed that I couldn’t see mention of anywhere else on here
I’ve linked my wordpress user with my facebook account via connect with the logic that I can just log in with that and post everything. Which works all ok, except when I come to comment on an article after being in the wp-admin panel, its got me logged in as the wp user instead of the facebook connect user and thus isn’t using my facebook avatar. is there something I need to change to get it to remember my user or is it a bug?
No, that’s by design. The Comments plugin is only designed to handle “anonymous” commenters. That is, people without an account on the site. People with an account on the site don’t need any of that Facebook overhead. They have an account already.
If you want the site to use FB avatars in preference to the normal gravatars, then a) I think you’re nuts, but b) there is some commented out code toward the bottom of the sfc-login.php plugin that will do the trick. Just uncomment it out.
Oh, there’s one more change to make to let logged in users see Facebook Avatars.
In the sfc-comments.php plugin, find this line of code:
if ( !is_object($id_or_email) || !isset($id_or_email->comment_ID) || $id_or_email->user_id)
Change it to this:
if ( !is_object($id_or_email) || !isset($id_or_email->comment_ID))
Done and done.
that did the trick perfectly, cheers for the quick response
due to the nature of my site I’ve just gone for integration into facebook for easiness so its more for simplicities sake really
It works but every time I refresh the page the forms show up again as if I were logged out. http://www.lastyearsloss.com/tyku/blog
Try disabling your age verification mechanism, for testing.
I believe that that mechanism is preventing the necessary cookies from being set properly.
Also if im already logged in with facebook the popup box just shows the site in the small window.
disabled the age verification. still does the same thing.
You have the wrong URL configured in the Facebook Application.
I get this message when I try to connect:
Invalid Argument
The Facebook Connect cross-domain receiver URL (http://lastyearsloss.com/tyku/?xd_receiver=1...) must have the application’s Connect URL (http://www.lastyearsloss.com/tyku) as a prefix. You can configure the Connect URL in the Application Settings Editor.
Note that the Application is expecting a www, but your actual site lacks that.
These web addresses MUST be identical. You can’t have differences in capitalization, or www, or anything else.
Go edit your Facebook App and correct the URL string.
HAH! Thanks man it worked!
Hey… i have this error:
Unsafe JavaScript attempt to access frame with URL http://www.dejavubridgestone.com/ from frame with URL http://www.facebook.com/extern.....cale=en_US. Domains, protocols and ports must match.
XHR finished loading: “http://www.connect.facebook.com/ajax/connect/connect_widget.php?id=220357821707&__a=1″.
On this domain: http://www.dejavubridgestone.com/
I have read everything and i really dont know where the problem is.
Greatting from chile!
Where are you getting this error?
I left you a test comment on this post using FB Connect: http://www.dejavubridgestone.com/?p=855
And it seems to have worked fine.
Hey, thanks for the answer! yeah, the site is working fine, but i get the error on load on every site’s page in safari, chrome and FF
I’m looking at your site in Firefox and I don’t see this error you’re describing anywhere. Not in the error console, no popups, nothing on the page itself.
If I can’t see it, I can’t help you fix it.
Thats wird, it appears on my computer, its a mac. Well, thanks anyway, and thanks for your time!. Great plugin by the way! thanks!
I’ve got the plugins installed. But the share button isn’t working. The pop-up box comes up, but when I click “share” nothing happens.
I’ve tried it by activating it automatically through the plugin and by inserting the XFBML manually.
Any ideas?
If you’re talking about the share button I see on this website: http://www.everythinglongbeach.com/
Then it works fine for me. I click the button, the share dialog pops up.
What were you expecting it to do?
Hmmm… sorry to be so daft. It’s wasn’t working for me (OS 10.5.8, Firefox 3.5.7), but, after restarting my computer it seems to be fine now.
Have you noticed that the plugin (or is it Facebook API?) is no longer honouring the avatar size in sfc-comments.php? I have it defined as 28 and it shows up in the source as 28 width and height but the page renders with the facebook avatars at (I believe) the default 48. They also are no longer pulling the graphic from FB, I’m just seeing the generic one.
Here’s an example:
http://glark.org/pig/
Problem on my end do you think or related to all the new Facebook stuff they are rolling out?
I’m having issues enabling SFC on my site. I too get the error “Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘{‘ in ” .. “sfc-login.php on line 185″. I’ve installed via the admin page, and all files seem to be on the server including the facebook apis. Any idea?
PHP 5. It’s required. It’s not optional.
If you’re running PHP 4, then this plugin won’t work and yes, you’ll get exactly that kind of error.
When you publish to facebook from wordpress is it possible to include the thumbnail or video
I would need to know what kind of video you’re posting and how.
Otto, you are amazing for answering everyones questions here. I have so much respect and appreciation for you.
I have a simple question: is there a code that I need to add to comments.php to get the Facebook Connect button to show up so that my visitors can use their Facebook identification to post comments? I’ve activated the Simple Facebook Connect plugin and the SFC-Comments plugin, but the button doesn’t show up! Am I missing something here? I feel like it’s something simple that I’m just not getting.
Dean,
this is from the README file, more info there:
You have to modify your theme to use the comments plugin.
In your comments.php file (or wherever your comments form is), you need to do the following.
1. Find the three inputs for the author, email, and url information. They need to have those ID’s on the inputs (author, email, url). This is what the default theme and all standardized themes use, but some may be slightly different. You’ll have to alter them to have these ID’s in that case.
2. Just before the first input, add this code:
<div id="comment-user-details">
<?php do_action(‘alt_comment_login’); ?>
3. Just below the last input (not the comment text area, just the name/email/url inputs, add this:
</div>
Wow, I knew it was something simple! I installed SFC automatically from inside of WordPress so I never saw a ReadMe file. Thanks very much.
ps. it seems to be working again for me….
Hi,
Could you tell me how to modify the Fan Box widget to be a little larger? Also can I style the header link?
Thank You.
By any chance does this plugin allow me to interface with Events?