I'm using a plugin called FooBox for wordpress that puts share buttons on top of images within a Pop-Over.
Within the settings of this plugin is an option to:
Enable Facebook's new feed dialog way of sharing, rather than their old (and deprecated!) sharer.
Please note that this method requires a Facebook App Id in order to function!
I'm not exactly a developer... so I cannot determine what this means, if its better, how so..
Could someone explain in laymen terms what this is?
Thank you
The old sharer method is no longer deprecated, as Facebook have recently updated it (and removed the deprecated notice that was on their site for ages). Both methods have pros and cons. This is my understanding:
FaceBook Sharer
Easy to implement and no facebook app id needed in order to setup
Can share to personal timeline as well as other facebook pages you are admin for
Sharer recently was updated (Feb/Mar 2014) and no longer accepts custom images and overrides anything you pass it with the image opengraph tags used on the page you are linking to. This is a major problem when used with lightbox solutions like FooBox, because the specific image that is shared no longer gets recognized by facebook.
Feed Dialog
More involved to setup and get working. An app ID is required and the app ID cannot be shared across domains.
It only allows you to share to your personal timeline. No support for sharing to pages that you are an admin for.
It accepts custom images, so FooBox works and the specific image that is shared is the image that is shown in the user's timeline.
I am the developer of FooBox and will be updating the plugin soon with an updated explanation to help users on learning what the difference is.
And since Facebook have removed support for custom images since Mar 2014, we will no longer recommend the sharer, but rather push the feed dialog.
More Info
Facebook documentation page on the sharer. (further down the page under the FAQ section and hardly mentioned)
Facebook documentation page on the feed dialog.
Response from facebook about no longer supporting the custom image for the sharer.
Related
I have an app that controls simple Facebook URL sharing using FBConnect (and therefore FeedDialog). It is used because it does not require the user to be logged in, unlike the native sheet.
Will the forthcoming retirement of v1.0 mean that FBConnect no longer works? The only reference I can see to V1.0 or V2.x is when the username and password authenticates. , prior to sending the URL link. The documentation seems to suggest that FeedDialog is deprecated and may still work but it isn't entirely clear (and does not mention FBConnect).
FBConnect as you have described has been phased out for a long time. Facebook has transitioned to the Feed Dialog (now being deprecated) and now to the Share Dialog.
It appears based on your use case that the dialog that you should investigate using is the Share Dialog. This does not require you to have users log in to Facebook and provides all the functionality to share your URL's across the devices you use.
The documentation with complete code samples for this is located here with subsequent documentation for implementing on iOS and Android.
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/reference/share-dialog
This will allow you to share you website URL on all platforms and allowing you to customize which images are shared with the url's and help format how they are displayed on the news feed.
I'm working on some new features for a CMS, and I'm having trouble finding the information about how Facebook interacts with other websites. If turn key solutions exist for this I'd love to hear about them, but I'm basically just looking for pointers to documentation of how this stuff works behind the scenes. Including php, wordpress, and drupal since those are the base technologies I'm working with, but other platform solutions are welcome.
When you paste a URL into Facebook's "What's on your Mind" box, Facebook will automatically fetch a short page description, as well as a list of possible thumbnails. If there's a video it will often auto-generate the needed HTML to embed the video. I've also seen features where you link to a business's main website, but then are prompted to "like" their Facebook page.
How can I, as an independent website owner, have my pages reacts to Facebook in this way. For example, on the following page (link to a personal website) I have four images. However, if I drop that URL into a Facebook status update, there are no thumbnails for those images.
Also, while I've inferred several features of the notification box, I'm curious if there's other's I'm not aware of.
Again, while turnkey solutions and existing plugins are of interest, what I'm really after is what sort of meta data I need to embed in my own page, or what special responses I need to make to Facebook requests. In other words, how do I program a website to response correctly to Facebook.
Basically you convey that information to user in terms of open graph meta tags. From that Facebook picks up what type of site it is. Is it about a book or some music or some commerical brand or may be has a FB page linked to it? Check this documentation for general idea about graph objects - https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/using-objects/
Coming to specifically the image used as thumbnail, it is specified with og:image meta tag. Important thing to note about it is that FB caches that for ~24hours so don't sweat it if it doesn't show up. You can use this tool to check for your values which fetches it in realtime - https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug
Also Facebook happens to have quite a lot of bugs around this, so it might take really long before it start showing up. If its picked up debug tool, then you are fine at code level. Not much that you can do about it.
I happen to know about this as I authored a tiny WordPress plugin for that and boy I know the support requests that used to come in. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/facebook-like-thumbnail/
Now for 3rd part of your question, even this is specified through meta tags only, like you have primary video content on your website, and you would like it to embed on Facebook when someone puts a link in the status box, so for that this link has code samples http://garethhooper.com/articles/social-media/45-integration/166-how-to-embed-your-own-videos-on-facebook-using-the-facebook-like-and-share-buttons.html
Hope that sets you on track giving you a head start :)
I am new to Facebook API and app development. I am trying to build a facebook timeline cover website where users can auto upload and publish the cover to a new album created in the website/app name. Then they would be redirected to another page on my website with instructions on how to setup the cover on their profile timeline. Most profile cover websites are using the same method such as myfbcovers.com, facebookprofilecovers.com, profilephotocovers.com, facebook.coversdaddy.com, fbcoverlover.com and newfbcovers.com to name a few. I have been searching the facebook developer pages and several tutorials over the net. Some tutorials I checked are:
http://thinkdiff.net/facebook/graph-api-iframe-base-facebook-application-development/
http://daipratt.co.uk/facebook-api-upload-photo/
http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/498/
And also several youtube videos.
But there are several confusions I have about the app. Sorry for the questions if they are too basic as I am a complete newbie who is willing to learn. One of the main problems is that most of the tutorials are outdated as the facebook app creation page etc. Now is different and there is no callback url etc. or canvas etc. in options now which are used in the tutorials. In the tutorials, it is mentioned that for creating a website app or facebook app for page, I need a callback URL which I cannot see now. Secondly, if it is mentioned in those tutorials that I need SSL in my website for an app but none of the facebook cover websites listed above have SSL it seems. I also do not have SSL on my server. So, not sure if that is needed and if an app is needed at all on my local server. And all the apps are doing things different such as I can see these URLs on clicking on some of the clickable links for uploading the cover button. Here are a few examples:
http://facebookprofilecovers.com/wp-content/themes/fbcovers/fb/?i=http%3A%2F%2Ffacebookprofilecovers.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2FHappily-Married-Facebook-Timeline-Cover.png
http://freetimelinecovers.net/facebook/?cov_img=/images/sports-covers/manchester-united.jpg
Some have direct link to the facebook app page such as:
http://apps.facebook.com/profilephotocovers/index.php?id=35 broken link
And only one website seems to have the publish_stream etc. in the url itself
https://facebook.com/dialog/oauth?client_id=162046520556852&redirect_uri=http%3A%2F%2Ffacebook.coversdaddy.com%2Fi-m-not-a-monster-1242.html&state=e4abcdc1d9288be8233a7ac4aa243997&scope=user_photos%2Cpublish_stream
On checking through Live HTTP header, it seems all websites are following a similar pattern which is directly used in the URL in the last website. For example, here are a few steps of the other websites I saw while checking with Live HTTP header.
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/authorize?client_id=112308188876405&redirect_uri=http://www.myfbcovers.com/oauth/callback&scope=publish_stream,user_photos,email
https://facebook.com/dialog/oauth?client_id=237897089598589&redirect_uri=http%3A%2F%2Ffacebookprofilecovers.com%2Fwp-content%2Fthemes%2Ffbcovers%2Ffb%2Findex.php&state=0ca1581f006bdd80bd5da78e95179f3a&scope=publish_stream
And so on.
I could also notice that almost all websites were taking auth for only publish_stream and nothing else. Only myfbcovers.com is an exception which also asks for user_photos and email. Rest are not asking for the same and so perhaps publish_stream is the only permission needed.
So, to create the app is there any tutorial. And do I need to host the app on my own server in a sub directory of the website or does it make direct call to facebook. The reason I am asking is because it seems Facebook apps if hosted on local server needs SSL mandatory whereas none of the above websites have SSL/https. And if I do not need to host the app on my own server then how can I make the photo upload link to facebook and then return back to the website for the rest of the instructions. I am using Wordpress on my website like most of the other sites are doing and so, that should not be a problem I suppose. Any help would be highly appreciated. I am willing to learn properly and some good tutorials for creating the photo album and then uploading the photo to the user's album etc. would be fine too if not with the full code. Any help would be highly appreciated.
NOTE: I have removed the HTTP and WWW part in many of the above URLs as I can only post a maximum of two links being a new user. Please add them if needed in those where they are not present.
Ok, I did not install all the applications above to see exactly what they did. I think your question is long... but pretty straight forward. This is what I understand your question to be :
You would like to create a cover photo generator that will allow users to customize their cover photo by uploading files, maybe doing some editing to them. Also maybe using templates of cool ideas and in the end being able to update their cool new cover photo directly into their profile.
This is not very complicated to do although to this date there is no real documentation (by facebook) about how to dynamically update the cover photo. However there are ways of creating photo albums and uploading photos to there.
If you are planning to make your application run with in facebook - that means use the apps.facebook.com/your_app_name, and have canvas or tab URLS, then you will have to purchase an SSL certificate.
Finnaly, in order to get as close to the functionality your want, you might have to make some sacrifices (becuase changing the cover photo is not possible yet with the Graph API).
To locate the cover photo album you'll have to manually scan through all the users albums names - and for that you'll need the user_photos permission.
Once you have created the photo you want, you could possibly let the user upload it (publish_stream permission needed for this) to a different album, and then give the user some detailed instructions using screen shots and direct them exactly how to change their cover photo.
I recommend you read through the Authentication documentation decide what permissions you need (such as user_photos for the users photos and publish_stream for uploading a new picture or creating an album.)
In addition, there are many many tutorials on the Official Facebook Documentation Pages and their Developers Blog- check them out before going onto other sites that have written their own tutorials. Facebook does update their API quite a bit - but they also (recently) have been pretty good on updating their documentation to mirror the changes to the API...
As serious developers using a 3rd party API (
Graph API ), it is solely our responsibility to keep up to date with changes and to write code and applications that comply with their platform policies.
How do you display the user name / visitor name on a Facebook tab (Facebook app created in an Iframe) without requiring the user to accept additional permissions.
I have tried to use PHP and other examples that I have seen, however they all seem to be out of date or I am missing some type of code to implement.
This should not be in FBML as it will be depreciated very soon on Facebook.
Does anybody have an entire code example (since I must be missing something) of what it would take to implement how they have done it here: https://www.facebook.com/Greenwords - Notice that it does not require the user to click on anything in order to display the name.
Your help would be appreciated.
You used to be able to do this using facebooks FBML syntax. However, as you have stated, these methods are old/depricated.
Taken from the facebook FBML documentation :
We are deprecating FBML. On Jan 1, 2012: FBML will no longer be supported on Platform. June 1, 2012: FBML apps will no longer work. All FBML endpoints are removed. If you are building a new application on Facebook.com, please implement your application using HTML, JavaScript and CSS. You can use our JavaScript SDK and Social Plugins to embedded many of the same social features available in FBML.
So.. to answer your question - you'll have to build your own application and request basic information about the user. Using old and deprecated methods are not a good idea. Facebook has publicly stated that they will no longer support it.
I basically used to take a live stream or comments box and iframe that showing the users name or photo, then position it where I wanted.
The Like Button seems like a very specific, and not very elegant in my opinion, solution to allowing users to post a web page to their Facebook profile. You have two options: 1) Use the iFrame solution, which allows very little flexibility in functionality, integration or appearance or 2) the XFBML solution which requires loading the entire Facebook javascript SDK just for one little "share this" button.
Is the Like Button the only way that is currently supported by Facebook to allow sharing of content to a user's Facebook profile? It seems to be the only method mentioned anywhere in the Facebook developer documentation, and I've had trouble finding any alternatives elsewhere on the internet.
There was a service called Facebook Share:
http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=<your url>&t=<your title>
I guess it's still working but I'm seeing people having troubles using it and Facebook is forcing developers to use the Like Plugin.
Now:
Most likely your visitors will have the Facebook JS Library cached on their browsers
Facebook uses CDNs and their servers are super fast
Even if it doesn't fit in your design, don't forget that users are used to it
You can create a Facebook Application and use the Graph API but it's way more complicated
Don't use their services!
Actually, Facebook share is the simplest and most natural solution to share content on your FB profile.
You may want to read this article.