218. Implemented Facebook Connect!
Uncategorized — By Dmitry Podolsky on January 31, 2009 at 9:03 pm
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Maybe, some weeks ago some of you have noticed a frame in the sidebar of NEQNET that looked like
The frame then suddenly disappeared again 
It actually contained the implementation of Facebook Connect on NEQNET, and the buggy piece of junk did not want to work as it supposed to.
It took about three weeks of my time before I finally figured out how to make it work, and as it turns out, Facebook Connect is not as useless as it seems at first sight Actually, I am a kind of proud – even ScienceBlogs and many other large blog portals or popular blogs were yet unable to implement this technology.
1. Facebook Connect – what is it and what is it for?
This is a fresh (a couple of months old) technology developed by the Facebook team in order to allow you to login to different sites and blogs using your Facebook account as well as to seamlessly integrate Facebook with these sites, that is, to support multiple Facebook features on these sites.
For example, let us consider NEQNET. If you want to leave a comment on NEQNET, you can now login to the site pressing the 
button instead of putting your name and email in the comment form. The technology is actually very convenient: instead of creating many different profiles on multiple websites, you can use your single FB profile where it is supported.
2. How exactly does it work on NEQNET?
The following video will explain you how to login to the site using Facebook Connect, how to edit your profile, take a look at profiles of other members of the site’s community and invite friends to the site through the Facebook. Sorry that the video is really for Sociable, I am yet to learn how to do my own videos, but I am in the process of learning currently
3. How can one implement it on a WordPress blog?
There are two parts – simple and complicated The simple part is to download Facebook Connect plugin for WordPress and follow this simple video tutorial:
The complicated part is related to the absence of documentation that is supposed to come with the plugin. If something in the tutorial above does not work at all or does not work as it is supposed to, you get stuck. In particular, in some cases (there are several similar complaints in comments to Sociable.es), after logging in with Facebook Connect you may enjoy watching the blank screen instead of getting back to the site. You’ll enjoy watching it every time coming back to the site until you clean the cache and cookies of the browser.
As I have found out, one reason why you may see the blank screen is that your host does not support curl and simplexml php extensions, that Facebook Connect really requires to work properly. Once you install them and/or turn on their support on the host, everything starts to work smoothly.
4. What about Google Friends Connect? I am not ready yet
Not so long time ago, Google has also released somewhat similar technology called Google Friends Connect. Although it is much simpler to implement on any site (not just a blog), the functionality that Google Friends Connect offers on a WordPress blog so far really sucks. Basically, the only thing people can do right now is to join the community of the site – one cannot post comments on a WordPress using her Google Friends Connect identity.
The situation will probably change in the near future, if somebody decides to write a really nice plugin for the WordPress supporting the crossposting of comments between the Google Friends Connect wall and WordPress blog posts. Another reason why you might be potentially interested in implementing Google Friends Connect on your site (if you are a webmaster) is that it also supports gadgets from the Open Social Directory (though, there are not so many interesting or useful gadgets right now).
5 Comments
Privet, Dmitry, certain things are too high-tech for me, an old-fashioned guy grown by Web 1.0, Web 0.0, and Web -1.0. I am simply not getting anything about these “social” services.
Like twitter. Are the twitter updates on NEQNET supposed to be read by humans or robots?
With all my respect, they look like some computer-generated abstracts from random SMS text messages on cell phones.
Are you writing them yourself, or partly yourself, or are others sending you these messages, and do you have to write the blog post by hand or does it spam your blog automatically?
As you can see, I have no clue! Twitter seems as the most diluted form of internetism that is reducing the depth of everything written anywhere to an infinitesimal number – and I thought that such things are only designed for rings of good friends who only do sex & alcohol & drugs instead of physics thoughts.
Or do I misunderstand everything?
Dear Mighty Czechmeister of all Russians,
Both, my Lord, and they actually do their job pretty well. But above all, I participate in rather large number of discussions on twitter, so I wanted to acknowledge people who take part in these discussions.
It is of no surprise since a message on Twitter is supposed to be maximally 140 characters long. As far as I understand, this is made exactly in order to allow easy twitting using mobile phones.
Myself, o Mighty One.
It spams my blog automatically pulling messages from my Twitter account, o Darth Motl. I do edit them afterwards, though.
Somewhat true, however, I’ve got about 400 followers in two weeks just discussing physics and putting links on physics related staff, my Lord. They are good people, some of them even want to learn some physics.
Recently, I was asked to explain
and GUTs in less than 140 characters. This was fun and quite a challenge.
Cheers,
Dmitry.
Dear comrade Dmitry,
thanks a lot for your explanations. Otherwise, your verbal servility may sound excessive but it can’t hurt to live through 45 years in which the role of the two nations will be slightly reverted, can it?
E8 and GUT in 140 chars is easy peasy. You can borrow it from my Xmas carol “Single Vevs”.
Landscape now is gone,
so let’s have some fun
Take Witten along
And sing predictive song.
Starting from the state
Two-forty-eight E-eight,
Numbers you can calculate
and crack! You won’t be late.
Single set of single vevs, single all the way!
…
At any rate, I am sure that the communication in 140-byte packets must be very helpful for the level of depth and detail in your thoughts.
Best wishes
Lubo?
Dear Lubos,
I hope you liked it and it eased your pain a bit. To conclude, I am afraid I cannot carry personal responsibility for Prague 1968.
Sometimes it is good to stay focused
Cheers,
Dmitry.
I prefer FB Connect to Google Friends Conenct.
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