I was wonder if this would be possible and how to do it. I have a personal website. I wanted to have it so that in order for the visitor to gain access to a specific page,the website checks to see if that visitor is a fan of our page on facebook. If they are not, they must become one to advance to the page content on my website. I thought perhaps there is a code that would do this? Maybe some kind of token/cookie combo? Any help would be great. Iv been searching for a solution to this. The page on my personal site gets a lot of traffic so I want to require all visitors to that page to become a facebook fan and the site verifies this before letting them into the page.
Outside of Facebook you can only check if a user likes your page if you have the user login to your site first.
So you’d need to set up an app, have the user login, ask for their permission to read their likes, read the info if they like your particular page – and then either let them see the content, or present them with a like button.
How it’s done in detail is all in the docs – so please have a look around there if you think it’s worth the cost.
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I am a PHP developer, but completely new to this Facebook stuff and am getting all confused. The whole Apps vs Pages vs Fan Pages terminology is driving me nuts. Please help!
My client's requirements:
1) Display Like button on a single web page
2) When Like button is clicked, content on the page is unlocked and displayed (PHP)
3) Future visits to the page detects that visitor already likes the page, and content remains unlocked (PHP)
4) All updates to web page profile on FB will show on Likers' news feed
My understanding is that the cleanest way of doing (3) above is to use the PHP SDK. But to do this, I need to create an app (to get the App ID). So I created an App. I 'liked' the App from my FB profile. Updates to my app are posted to my news feed. So far, so good.
However when I try and implement the PHP SDK, it only works if I authorize the App to my account first. Is there a way of avoiding this authorization step just for a simple "Like" (I ask because I didn't have to authorize anything when liking the app within FB)? If this authorization is unavoidable, are there any alternatives to Apps that would allow me to achieve the above requirements?
Ideally, I'd like to use just "Pages" to do this, and not Apps, but I believe I cannot achieve (2) and (3) with pages, correct (remembering everything needs to be server side, so no JavaScript showing and hiding layers etc)?
I would be grateful for any guidance.
Thanks.
So I'm assuming what we are talking about here is a Facebook tab - the 520 pixel wide applications that can go in Fan pages?
If not, you will not be able to make this happen without permissions. It sounds like that is what you're talking about, though.
Here's an example of an Facebook tab on the Coca Cola fan page:
In a tab, the PHP SDK will tell you if the user is a fan of the page (not of the app, of the page). You'll need to read the signed request - there will be a parameter there called Page, which tells you if the user is already a fan (see https://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/signed_request/). You get this without having to authorize.
I usually read all this and store whether the user is a fan in a boolean variable. Then later in my page I'll do something like this:
<?php if ($isFan):?>
Content for fans here
<?php else:?>
Content for non-fans here
<?php endif;?>
Keep in mind that it is only telling you if the user is a fan OF THAT PAGE - if you set up your app on a test page, for instance, it'll tell you if the user is a fan of that test page or not, NOT if the user is a fan of your app.
In order to read what a facebook user likes using the PHP SDK, you will need the user_likes permission. You may however, be able to hack something together by rendering a like button on your page somewhere and detecting the color of the button, meaning the user has liked the page. This may be problematic because of cross domain issues considering the like button is rendered as an iframe.
Best of luck!
For some things, you need an app. Like restricting access to content if the user has "Liked" something. You need custom code to do that. You don't need an app for a basic "Like" button, but you really can't get any stats on the Likes. You can link an app to a website, so that you can report on the content and referrals. If you go to http://www.facebook.com/insights/ you can link the app with a website so the insights/reporting are combined. Just click on the "Insights for your Website" button. It does require validation.
That said, your confusion is the norm. Apps, Pages and Fan Pages are almost the same thing. They are all referenced through numerical ID. There are subtle feature differences between Pages and App Pages. An app can be added to any Page if it is configured to do so. But you can't add a Page to another Page.
You can use FQL to query if a user is a fan of your app, instead of the Page you are currently on.
Facebook controls what gets shown in the news feed. Just because you post to the feed, doesn't mean it will show. However, if you are an admin of the Page and/or App, posts will always show in your feed.
I'm a web developer and i'm having problems using the "like it" button
I put the buttom on my site as a counter of votes of a special contest. People can only click the like buttom if they are fan of my Facebook page.
The problem is that people can't vote if they haven't public permissions on his facebook, cause i can't know if they are or not fans of my page.
Is there a solution?
if you rely on information that you are not certain that you can obtain then sadly there is no solution.
Since what you are doing is beyond a simple like button What you may want to try is open a facebook application and request from your users the user_likes permission. You can read more about it here. I have photo albums on the "highest privacy setting" - only me. Yet when I request a list of my photo albums through one of my applications (with the required permissions of course) I get back ALL of my albums.. This might have been a temporary issue that was solved - but in any case - I saw this behavior and I thought it might be relevant to this post :)
Additionally you should look at the Promotions Guidelines specifically this point :
You must not use Facebook features or functionality as a promotion’s registration or entry mechanism. For example, the act of liking a Page or checking in to a Place cannot automatically register or enter a promotion participant.
I had some problems with facebook on this issue - you are not allowed to require someone to "like" a page in order to participate in an activity that is not directly connected to that page.
From what I understand you are requireing people to like your page on facebook beofore voting on your site... If this IS the case then facebook might very well start taking action and closing your page/app.
I have a website serving free mp3-downloads and I would like them to be only available for facebook fans of the fb-page of the website. The links are thus hidden unless the user is a fan.
I have reached partial functionality by subscribing to the 'edge.create' event, but this event is not fired when the like box is loaded and the page has already been liked.
I don't really know what the best way to do this is, or whether it's possible at all without user permission. Most information on facebook forums is horribly outdated and a lot of it is related to on-facebook facebook apps/tabs, which is not my case.
To clarify: my facebook like button is on my own domain, in my own code.
This is not possible without user permission. You need to ask the user for the user_likes permission as documented here.
I'd like to know if there is a possibility to check (using Graph API or any other way) whether given user likes / shares a specific link. Probably I'll have this user's facebook ID or facebook login, but my site is non-Facebook application. Actually it's Dot Net Nuke portal (target: .NET with MS SQL Server) with part of it being avaliable as Facebook app, but certainly not greater part of it, so the solution should be out of Facebook Connect, although it's not a showstopper if it's necessary.
We'll be giving points to users who share/like most of links that we serve in our portal and such possibility would be a great help to make a ranking.
Another option we consider is making some kind of "wrapper" or proxy for FB like / share buttons which will at first save some data in our database (probably - this user clicked on like for this link) and then go on with standard FB like / share route. Did anybody of You tried such solution?
If You have any other suggestion on the subject, please, post them, we'll be really thankful.
It is possible to know if a user has LIKED a site or not. You can get all user's likes with Graph API (you need user_likes permission). Take a look at the docs: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/user/
I'm not sure if you can know if he has shared your site, but you could try by parsing his wall with the read_stream permission and then look for your site name/URL post by post.
For just general liking of items on your site, you can use a Facebook Social Plugin. However, you won't be able to associate (or really even access) user activity with users on your site without integrating Facebook Connect and creating a Facebook application for your site. At that point you can design with greater control all the possible user activity and interleave with your facebook calls other calls that affect users' accounts on your site.
I can't seem to find exactly what I'm looking for. We're trying to build an app to run solely on a Facebook Page. We want to show a landing page if they don't Like the page, and the contest entry form if they do. This functionality works.
Before showing the contest entry form, we'd like to authenticate the user viewing the app so that they can just hit "Enter the contest!" and we can automatically pull a name/email address.
Any of the methods of authentication I've seen described, including through the Facebook Developer docs, don't work at all.
I saw something that said they need to interact with the app first, then you can get the id, but that doesn't work either. I also don't get the page id passed with the signed request.
Its also pretty unclear whether I should be using an iframe or just FBML.
Could anyone point me in the right direction, please? Thanks!
You need to create a fan page and add the FBML plugin to that page, then you will need to insert a short code that will determine if a facebook user has clicked 'Like' or not and by determining that you will decide weather to display the content of the landing page or not (using an iframe). You will probably like to also set the FBML box that you create as the default view for members who didn't press the 'Like' button yet, you can change the default view in your fan page settings.
On the iframe, you will need to use the Facebook API if you want to retrieve any user information from Facebook, for that, you will need to register a new application with Facebook. Go to developers.facebook.com for the API integration and app registration.
Also, what do you mean when you say:
Any of the methods of authentication
I've seen described, including through
the Facebook Developer docs, don't
work at all.
Well, it appears you can't do it that way. The client was very specific in wanting that functionality but we ended up convincing them to go for a redirect to the canvas page to have the app authorized and the contest entered instead.