Sorry for this basic question but all attempts at Googling and using facebook help only provide out of date information.
I am attempting to make my first fb app. Just an html page saying hello. From what I understand the app (or webpage) is stored on my server and I set up a facebook app that basically points to the URL of the app (or webpage) on my server.
Is this basically correct.
Where do I enter this URL information in my edit app screen. I have followed the latest fb instructions and all I see when I view the app is the admin page in fb for the app.
Does it take a long time for the page to appear.
Is there a current idiots guide. The app design is not a problem for me loading it in to facebook is the problem.
Unfortunately this wasn't very helpful, not because of what you posted but due to the fact that it appears that Facebook has updated the way in which pages are linked to again.
The pages you suggested I look at were well laid out with lots of information on them but they are already out of date and do not seem to correspond with the layout of the Facebook 'dev app' and even the fields in the form seem to have been either dropped added to renamed.
Thanks for trying to help me and I hope that FB may produce some up to date information soon and not keep changing the interface.
I can completely understand your confusion - the Facebook docs give very little information for the complete beginner. The 'Getting Started' section makes some massive assumptions and completely ignores huge key areas you need to know to get your first application up and running.
So to address your points:
Yes, this is basically correct. Apps on Facebook are served up to the user in one of two ways. Either as a 'Canvas App' or a 'Tab App'. A Tab App is an application you can install as a tab on a profile page. A Canvas App can operate on it's own page and has more room as there's no left menu as you would have on a profile page. You can configure a single app to work in both ways.
To edit your application settings, go to your own Facebook home page. Use the search bar to search for the 'Developer App'. Typing in 'developer' should do it - it should be the first result in the App section with around 830,000 monthly users. This Developer app is the window into your own app settings. You need to install it if you haven't already. It's a hub where all the apps you create will be available for you to edit. Whenever you want to edit one of your app settings in future, you click the Developer bookmark that will now be in the left menu on your own Facebook home page.
No. Apps are basically an iframe onto your code. There should be very little if any wait at all. Start with something very simple like spitting out some straight html so you can easily tell if things are set up correctly.
Yes. I found thinkdiff.net to be massively useful in the early days to get my head round the basics and then more advanced concepts. There's tons of examples ranging from very simple to quite advanced. I've just had a quick look around and found this page which should give you a decent head start in getting things moving. Note: I have no affiliation with thinkdiff.net at all - I just found them helpful in the past.
Finally, a request from me; this whole stack overflow thing is new for Facebook developers and very few people are voting up answers they consider helpful. This means new users to SO but experienced FB developers can't vote up good answers and vote down bad ones as we need enough Reputation Points to do so. If this has helped you, please ensure you vote up the answer. Of course if it was rubbish and you're just as lost, dont :D
Hope I've helped in some small way; I know I was completely lost for the first few weeks with FB development and even now there are things that make me tear my hair out! In the end it's very rewarding, but you have to put in the time. Good luck :)
Related
Facebook recently announced the introduction of messenger codes which can be used to add new contacts and, more importantly, communicate directly with businesses and business pages (which is why I'm interested in it).
It took me ages to find it but on the bottom left of the messages tab on my Facebook page I have the option to download my code in three different sizes - clicking the disc will open a modal window where you can click the Download button and choose from 300, 600 or 1000px PNG file downloads.
NOTE: While they are PNG files the background is not transparent which seems like a bit of an oversight to me but hey ho that's what Photoshop is for I guess.
The problem is that while I can download my code I can't find any way to test it on printed materials (or even electronically at the moment!). The scanning feature doesn't seem to have been rolled out for me yet (I tried re-installing the Messenger app to see if I got a newer version but that didn't work) and nor for anyone I know (I'm in the UK). The codes are bespoke to Messenger so can't be scanned or tested using any other app.
I'm probably too far ahead of the game but is there any way I can test to see if my code scans correctly, or anywhere I can go to find out? I would like to use it on some promotional material which is likely to be long term materials that I don't want to have to update in the near future (several years, by which time it's likely these codes will be more commonplace).
I also need to know what the redundancy is like. For example the high redundancy QR codes I generate can have up to 30% of the code covered while still being usable, which is great for design purposes. I can't find any official documentation as yet for these codes at all, let alone what is required, what the spec. is etc.
I know the most likely option is 'sit and wait' but I really would rather not if possible. I've never been very patient...
Thanks
UPDATE: My Messenger app has now been updated so I can test, but I'm leaving this here in case anyone knows of another way to test perhaps? If someone doesn't have Messenger on their phone for example.
I am going insane with this. It used to just work! I'm a programmer but not up to date with all this modern languages stuff and have no desire to learn it - too darn old, just want an easy life.
Okay, so here's the thing... I used to have these "like boxes" on my websites. Then they stopped working. I looked in the dev docs and fixed the absolute URL and they worked ok on IE browsers but not on Chrome.
It looks like I need an App Id.
So I created an App Id on a test website - I have no idea what it is or why I need one. All I want to do is show on the website it has n likes and the button for Facebook lovers to like it too.
But do I need to create an App Id for every single clients website? How do other CMS systems handle it? My sites are not html 5 - I'd be happy with just an iframe solution.
I'm not a fan of Facebook at all, and this is driving me further away. I'm willing to be dragged back but all I see is lots of overly complex code to achieve nothing really useful.
You can do whatever you want with your app ID, but if you use the same one for all your sites, you won't be able to separate those in your "Insights"
https://www.facebook.com/insights/
This is going to sound like a really dumb question, but we had a developer who created a Facebook web application for us.
He has left the company and is not being very co operative. We have the log in details of the account he used to created the app, but when we log in and try to view the app, it does not appear in our list of custom apps.
In the graph explorer, when trying to debug the key and URL, the app does appear in the drop down though, but we need to change some other custom settings.
Can anyone direct me in which direction I need to go to look for this?
Thanks
Finally. got him to let us log in and that is where it was. All that time wasted for nothing.
How do you implement custom css on a Facebook activity feed plugin? This related post does not fully answer the question. Is this the right way?
Where does the
<fb:tag name='link'></fb:tag>
go? Inside of of the
<fb:activity site="..." app_id="..." ></fb:activity>
outside of it, before or after? I'm sort of confused...
the only way i use activity feed is when its in a widget that will generically upate in all posts. Anyone who inserts these snippets into blog posts or other 'hard to find and edit later' posts and pages, will regret it
Why?
Because Facebook changes their script every month or so and the script snippet you inserted wont work anymore
I have hundreds of blank areas in blog posts where i inserted an activity feed and the script always stops working after some weeks when fb adds some code or changes the location of some script or renames a file and the old script has no canonical or generic way of readjusting.
There is no point in using a script which gets made obsolete every month and you then need to find all posts where you inserted the snippet and change it for the new working code.
Im always having to reinsert new code into my fb social widgets because they cease to function...
Not viable unless you take it into consideration. Only insert in spaces where oyu wil notice it when it stops working
As Facebook Answers answered, you cannot really style it with a custom CSS, nor via JS, as the activity feed widget creates an iframe.
The info from martincarlin87 is useful, but that is not exactly what you get with the Activity Plugin, which is what you meant I guess:
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/activity/
For using this you cannot really interact with the Facebook API, it is a little world apart. By now... (July 12th 2012)
Facebook PHP SDK: https://github.com/facebook/php-sdk
Comes with some simple examples, I would suggest uploading it to your server and tinkering with it, Facebook has a steep learning curve but here at Stack Overflow there is even a Facebook section: facebook.stackoverflow.com so just take each step at a time and if you can't get it by reading the facebook docs: developers.facebook.com then you can always ask here and I'm sure someone will be able to help you.
Getting Started: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/php/
Once you have made an app, you add it to your fan page and then you will be abel to test what information you can get using the Graph API Explorer: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer
That post you refer to is a red herring I'm afraid. If you put any HTML between the activity tags it gets rendered BEFORE the iframe is added. So its a no starter, from what I can see. However, I eventually found a solution, which I gave on that thread. I am repeating it here in case somebody searching doesn't see the other thread.
I managed to customise an Activity plugin, after a great deal of effort.
You can see the result here:
http://www.quniverse.co.uk/shopdata/about_us.php
Feel free to post a comment on that site, it exists purely for test purposes so I'm not fussed what goes up there provided its clean.
I explain how I achieved this in the blog article posted here:
http://facebookanswers.co.uk/?p=302
To summarise briefly:
You cannot insert CSS into the activity plugin.
Rely on the fact it has a transparent background, and supply your own.
Turn off the header and supply your own.
You can specify a light or a dark font, a few fontfaces and a border colour.
If you read the blog article you will get a full explanation.
can you tell me, how does the Google Ad sense works?
please explain me in brief..
There's quite a bit of information available from Google on the subject.
You want to know how to "use" it? or its algorithms? For the first one, they have a page for that, for the later one, I don't think you will even be able to figure it out:)
You place a javascript code in your site, and whenever someone visits your site, Google puts an ad in place. If the user clicks the add, you get money for it.
I assume your question is orientated around Google's contextual targeting.
In brief: Google sends a bot to read each page of your website. It looks at all the terms on the page and discards common words and instead tries to understand themes. Google also looks at adgroups of AdWords advertisers and looks to build an understanding of the themes of the keywords. Another algorithm pairs the two together so that relevant ads appear on a webpage.