Facebook login

I have the FB mod installed and it is working fine. But I would like to move it further down the login page. right now, it sits between the user/pass and the login button. i think that this is confusing.

so i am using firebug to track down where this placement is occurring. this is a great exercise for me and when i accomplish it i’ll post how i did it.

this is that I have so far. the login block comes from the core user module. specifically, the user.module file. look for the user_login_block function.

then the fbconnect.module file appends it code to the user_login_block function. I can change the weight of the output and move the login stuff above the regular login, but not below it completely, which is where i would rather have it. i have a post on drupal. i’ll update again tomorrow.

well, after i finished up some PHP stuff, i decided to have another go at the weight of that element. I didn’t think it would work. but, when i made it a negative number, it rose to the top. I had made it a 10 but it stayed in the same place. so, i made it 100. still the same. i thought, what the hell, and i made it 1000. and it went right where i wanted it to go. i don’t know what to say. i’m a little annoyed with myself over that. but i learned a few things about drupal architecture and inheritance. and i think that if you know those thing really well in drupal, you’ll be in a good position to do real customization work.

This is now working properly. and after the trials and tribulations of categorization and views, being able to implement module’s features in one afternoon was very refreshing.

and this is a good module. account creation is something that is becoming something that people are less and less willing to deal with. the login process for most non-commercial sites (very different if you take CCs, and consumers accept this) has been pared down to almost nothing. just a simple email and password usually. and i think that even this is becoming too much for many people. who wants to remember another account? the singe sign on concept has been around for a long time and i think that facebook is going to own it. everybody wins.

the setup from the drupal side was pretty straightforward. just remember to get the entire fb code library from git. here is a high level procedure.

install the facebook connect module from – http://drupal.org/project/fbconnect
install the facebook sdk for php from https://github.com/facebook/facebook-php-sdk
create an app at facebook. you’ll need a fb account to do this.
make sure to get the correct urls in place and don’t fall for the hosting switch and bait crap. this page will give you the two keys that you’ll need to configure the drupal module for fb.
once you have all the correct settings in place you will see something like this on the app settings page in drupal

Home » Administration » Configuration » People » Facebook Connect

Base Domain Url xxxssswww.com

Use this to enable your Facebook Connect implementation to span multiple subdomains (e.g., using example.com would enable http://www.example.com, foo.example.com or bar.example.com,).

Connect Url xxxssswww.com

Your site’s main URL. xxxssswww.com

Post-Remove Callback Url xxxssswww.com

Facebook pings this URL when a user removes your application.

you will then have a login with facebook option at the beginning. enable the fast login option in drupal (in the mod’s settings) to get the fastest login process setup for your users.