facebook

Facebook login – read only access

There is no two ways about the fact that FB login is critical for me. No body wants more creds to remember on the internet. But I also want to take steps not to make it too easy for people to post when they might not really need to. and that will also help keep spammers away.

A FB user is an authenticated user by default. So what I have done is create a Role callled Content Creator (or whatever you want) that has more access. I have changed permissions on the four main content types that can be created by users on the site to reflect this.

Forums
Blogs
Research (a custom type)
Member Galleries (another custom type)

with the new Role, users can add to these types. But they have to apply for this additional status. There are many ways to do this and using Rules, I believe that it can be automated. I may do that eventually, but for now I am just allowing folks to send me a system message via Drupal asking for access. But this was a really easy way to grant a graduated level of access.

Drupal to Twitter – Complete (and to Facebook too!)

Wow, I am finally done with this. I now have my categorized RSS feed going straight to a Twitter account and a Facebook account. Both of these accounts are specific to my web site but that doesn’t really matter. And the real key to getting this to work is Twitterfeed.com. This is a free service that will take RSS feeds and consolidate them into Twitter, FB, Linkedin, there are a couple others too, I believe. But Twitter and FB are enough for me.

The Twitterfeed part wasn’t too bad to connect but it did require some tweaking to get it to work with what I have properly. If you decide to use Twitterfeed.com, be aware that the advanced options are more likely to need tweaking than advanced options usually are.

And what do I have?

50+ RSS Sources from all over the state of TN in the USA.
15 Categories configured in the Drupal Core Aggregator module. I am not using Feeds at all; it isn’t flexible enough for this case.
1000 individual news stories that come in every day from these RSS Sources.
A Drupal View that displays the News items that I categorize as they come in.
An RSS “Feed” of that View that is available via http://docresource.org/news/24-twitter. This is a part of Views. Click Add, and click Feed.
A twitter feed – @docresource and FB account – DOCResource that need to get the same info that the View displays

The Twitter module was not needed to do this. Just Views and the Core Aggregator module. There are good reasons to use the Twitter mod; they just don’t apply here.

Facebook Login and Drupal

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.

Facebook Login from Drupal

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.

Facebook Sign on Module

Today I am going to install and configure the FB integration module. You know, where you can “sign in using facebook”. honestly, why anyone wouldn’t do this is beyond me. i believe that fb has become the de facto single sign on for the web. openid and other systems have tried this but fb has near %100 ubiquity with one billion + members. i mean. a billion members. that is nuts. one out of every seven people on earth have fb accounts?

so, i consider the regular login account registration to be a fallback. i’ve already installed this in sand and it looks ok. since there are things that have to be done on the fb side i’m running most of the setup from prod.