JFacebook Registration, Integration & Display



** New com_jfacebook for Registration Social Plugin. To be used specifically for a custom username. **
JFacebook has been released for Joomla!2.5 for Facebook Registration Functionality
HIGLIGHTS:
NEW: Add Facebook Like & Facebook Comments to Every Page
Facebook Registration Plugin
Facebook One Click Single Sign On
Username Scheme Selection based of Facebook Creds
Post to Facebook on Registration
Facebook OpenGraph configuration
Facebook Like Button
Facebook Like Box
Facebook Recommendations
Facebook Activity Stream
Facebook Comments
Properly configure your Facebook OpenGraph meta tags to make sure your user's Facebook Likes and Comments SHOW UP PROPERLY on their Facebook Profile and in their Facebook Feeds. Make sure your pages are Integrated Properly into the OpenGraph.
Post directly to the Facebook user's Profile and News Feed when they register on your site using their Facebook credentials.
For those Joomla Administrators who want to add the ability for users to login to their sites with Facebook credentials and provide for registration with their Facebook credentials. Do this in as little as 5 MINUTES!
You can configure the system to ask for specific Facebook user permissions above and beyond the default if you wan't or need more information.
The most important thing is that once installed you have access to "Extensible Facebook Mark Up Language" (XFBML) social plugins. That mean you can just drop the following tag pairs into a custom module or article:
fb:like (Facebook Like Button)
fb:comments (Add Facebook Comments to Any Page)
fb:recommendations (a summary of Facebook Likes for your domain )
fb:recommendations (a summary of Facebook Likes for your domain )
fb:activity (Facebook Activity Feed for another Page)
fb:live-stream (Facebook users can share activiy comments in Realtime for your Facebook App)
fb:facepile (Facebook users friends photos)
Choose your Redirection after Facebook Login & Facebook Logout
For Developers:
With JFacebook you have direct access to a nice Facebook PHP API singleton
Add custom Facebook Javascript (FB object) to the xfbml/javascript folder and it will be automatically loaded into your pages. Perfect for Facebook Tabs and Facebook Canvas Iframe Apps.
Language Support
JFacebook checks your currently loaded language and attempts to load that version of the Facebook Javascript SDK to parse the elements in your user's language!
The support is quick and helpful in fact the support is absolutely fantastic. A feature we needed didn't exist so they developed it over night at no extra fee.
This genuinely a fantastic plugin with perfect support.
Thanks Cameron.
Kudos for quick and courteous customer service. I would use MMI again...
If a problem comes, the support is great and help nomatter What the problem is. Mine eas NOT with the extension but with another extension and support found the problem and fixed it fast.
Only Best best for me, and This is it!
Nice job Cam.
The installation was without problems. I've had a little troubles to set a language (I use on my web) inside the login form. The support (Cameron) responded very quicky and within couple of hours everything was set up and worked just WONDERFULLY!
Hi Coccos,
Thanks so much for the review. JFacebook is evolving with the needs of its users, and the VirtueMart module is one such example.
Good Luck with your endeavors.
Cameron @ MMI
Best facebook product, as I've tried probably all the facebook integration products. a fully packaged worthwhile investment.
Ken
Hi Gorazd,
I was happy to help. Doing so let me view an issue that may come up in the future with some server configurations and the use of curl which is at the heart of the PHP SDK on Github.
Cheers and good luck with the site!
Cameron @ MMI
The support is second to none and is *very* fast. Cameron was extremely helpful in which he went out of his way to personally get JFacebook working on my website.
I would highly recommend this product to anyone needing a facebook login (and more) on their Joomla site.
Thanks Cameron!
That's Great pierre23.
I was happy to be of assistance, it was no problem at all.
All the best,
Cameron @ MMI
When I questioned the developer about this obviously gross limitation, his response was to simply suggest that I change the logon module display from username to **real name**. So any Facebook member who uses this extension to log into your site will either have his real name (or whatever name he used to create the Facebook account with) or full email address exposed to public view. For any developer using social networking components, such as JomSocial, Community Builder, any Joomla forum component, OR a bridged registration system for phpBB3 (such as myself), this extension is TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY USELESS.
Aside from that, configuring this extension takes some doing as well as first creating a developer application from within Facebook. Those new to Joomla and/or Facebook will need a lot of handholding through this process. Finally, this extension does not integrate properly with RocketTheme’s Rokbox login option, i.e., you will either have to spend a good deal of time playing with the CSS stylesheets for the Rokbox module or completely disable it and simply use the extension’s login module or the developer’s alternate HTML mod login option (available as a separate download).
This idea cannot be properly implemented with the use of plugins alone that simply copy data from one field to another. The developer needs to embellish this idea into a component that takes the Facebook registration data and then writes a calculated Joomla username field based on some combination of first name + last name + number. For example, when John Smith users his Facebook account to log into a new Joomla site for the first time, his new username becomes, for instance, something like johnsm01.
Those developing Joomla sites for specific interest groups on Facebook may not consider the display of either the real user name or full e-mail address to be a major problem in limited instances where all Joomla users might be “Facebook friends” anyway. However, for any other type of site where anonymity is preferred or even necessary (such as mine where Western teachers in China are asking very sensitive questions about work contracts and culture), you will not be able to use this extension.
The developer needs to find a much better solution to generating the Joomla username field from a value OTHER than the Facebook member’s full e-mail address or you can plan on spending a lot of time responding to user complaints and manually changing everyone’s username from their full email address to something else.
If future versions were to incorporate a different method for generating the Joomla username other than from the Facebook email address, you could accurately change the rating from poor (i.e., virtually useless) to either very good or excellent.
Hi Oldtimer55,
We have tried to keep JFacebook as simple as humanly possible for users/admins, and we will continue to do so. We use the email as the username because that a guaranteed unique key that Facebook uses.
In spite of this (and as Oldtimer55 is aware and even admitted prematurely posted this review) we have made available to all who want it the updated package which has provision for 'username' scheme selection.
Three choices are now available:
email (default)
first_name.lastname (as in Cameron.Barr)
three.three (as in Cam.Bar, wrote this as a special favor to Oldtimer).
AND We have made it easy to add your own! Just look in the /username_strategies folder and away you go.
Regarding the Rocket Theme login popup, its not really a JFacebook issue, its more to do with the attempt to load a new Popup from the Lightbox popup. This would happen with any attempt to put a Facebook login button in that popup from any other Extension.
So as we definitely appreciate any constructive criticism, MMI must disagree content of this post and submit that it was done to Damage and not to give a reasonable opinion.
Kind regards,
Cameron @ MMI
I had just secured my sites with the OSE security suite and that caused some minor cosmetic problems with this extension, but my emails were answered very quickly (even on the weekend) and Cameron really went the extra mile trying to make sure I was working correctly and explained the basics in his support emails while solving every issue.
You can pay much more for FB integration, but I really doubt you can better support at any price.
This extension gets my highest recommendation.
Leon Smith





