Integration with vBulletin - Facebook Connect - Allow your users to login with their Facebook account (for 3.8)

Staff Note: Moved to Graveyard - this will never work now that the old style facebook authentication is no longer available.


Facebook Connect
This add-on allows your guests and existing users to login with their Facebook account through Facebook Connect.

There is NO NEED to upgrade or reinstall if you already installed this mod for 3.7

Upgrade to 2.0.6 so that users with the new super long IDs will be able to login.


This mod conflicts with PhotoPost vBGallery!
Quick fix:
Disable the following PhotoPost vBGallery plugins:

• Userinfo Merge
• Integrate Postbit Showthread

Benefits of Facebook Connect

• Users can simply login with their Facebook account without going through the registration process.
• Increase user interaction and your traffic through Facebook notifications and news-feeds!

Features
Facebook users will be able to receive Facebook notifications when:

• There is a reply to their thread or a thread that they're subscribing to
• They receive a new PM

News-Feed will be published on to the user's wall when the user:

• Logs in for the first time
• Replies to a thread
• Creates a new thread

Fetch user data from Facebook
Fetch data like name, location, profile picture and use it on your forums! (NOTE: Some data may not be available for some users)

Automatically befriend user's friends
If any of the user's friends are also registered on the forum, they will automatically be friends!

Professional Install/Upgrade/Support Services
Want this mod professionally installed? It's guaranteed to work on your forum! Download the archive and see INSTALL.html/UPGRADE.html for more details!

Troubleshooting
Server Requirements:
PHP 5

If you get an error:

The Facebook Connect cross-domain receiver URL http://www.SITEURL.com/xd_receiver.h...%220.699%22%7D must have the application's callback URL http://www.SITEURL.com/forums/ as a prefix. You can configure the callback URL in the application's settings.

Means that there is something wrong with your callback URL. Your callback URL must be where xd_receiver.htm is; so when you enter [callbackurl]/xd_receiver.htm into your browser you should see a blank page (not a 404 page not found error or anything else).

If you get a continues this means there is a javascript error. Make sure you've done all the template edits correctly (especially footer & navbar). Clear your cache and reload the page.

If nothing happens when you click the Facebook Connect button make sure your callback url domain is the same as you forum domain (the one set in your forum settings) - more specifically make sure that there is a www (or isn't) in both domains.


Many more features may be implemented in the future so keep checking for updates.

[Digital Jedi]

Originally Posted by skylab

Had to keep it. We'll see where this goes. Hopefully it goes well.

Looking over some of those issues mentioned in that post, I don't know if I totally agree with all of them.

1) Changes to Facebook or vBulletin in the future may render this mod incompatible, relying then on support from the developer to bring this mod back in line; if hundreds of administrators are relying on support from a sole developer who decides they are no longer bothered to upgrade for future facebook/vBulletin releases, this will have huge implications for incorrect login functions for potentially millions of registered members across the vBulletin communities.

Well, this much I can agree with. However, this is nothing unique to this mod. Every mod on this site suffers from that one drawback of free thrid-party modifications.

2) Facebook partially holds registration details of members, eg. email addresses and passwords. If this mod was ever ditched, I could in theory have thousands of members unable to log in to my forum unless each account was manually altered in admincp. Registered members are unable to do this themselves as changes to email addys or passwords would not be possible as vBulletin would not recognise their original/old details. A logistical nightmare for administrators of large vB communities.

I think the only issue here is if the proxy email address no longer functions, which if I'm not mistaken, is soley the process of the Facebook Developer application. I'm just guessing here, but I would think as long you keep the application active in your Facebook Developer account, this should still always work.

3) It appears that facebook Connect users cannot be contacted via mass email or mass PM add-ons as such users are not found within the database. This effectively renders the use of these important functions useless in the long-term. Especially important should the need arise above where they must take action to continue to log in to the messageboard.

I don't understand this one. How are the users able to post, or even exist, if they're not in the database?

[fulviods]

Can someone tell me where i've done wrong in my settings (just a few post above) ?

[fulviods]

Please please please Just tell me if my settings are ok because I press on the facebook button and nothing happened.

[VanDaMe]

works so great... thank's

[yossie3660]

My forum use this too.....GREAT!!! but i have a question about the image "F Connect with Facebook" and i have customize at fbconnect_button function and put some image that exactly size at my forum login box, but when its reload, its go back to the image original, and i have customize about this too <span class="fbconnect" style="height:21px"> to <span class="fbconnect" style="height:16px"> so the height of image size is fit in, but same the problem. the picture is load from the first time is fit, but in a second is revert back to the original image size, how does it comes? can i change the image so that button is fit for my login box?

thanks
yossie3660


Sorry...i answer my question again...i have found...i changes the image from that function and in file fbconnect.js so the image still in size that i want.

thanks to TS, its great hack!!!

[tldagent]

One thing I'd like to ask, and I haven't installed this mod yet because of this announcement:

Starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, you'll be able to choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and the Facebook Pages that you administer by visiting www.facebook.com/username/. You'll also see a notice on your home page with instructions for obtaining your username at that time.

My question is, once this new facebook username comes into effect, will this mod be updated to use the username of the facebook Member and if I decided to install this prior to the new facebook username addition, what will it use? What information will be displayed on the forum currently as their username?

Thanks for this mod, I look forward to installing it on our forum.

[scottjonesqpr]

Sorry, how do people log in?

i've a connect with facebook logo/button but it doesnt do anything?

www.wearetherangersboys.com/forum

cheers for your help - sorry im a bit green

[scottjonesqpr]

sorry i actually get this

The requested URL /forum/xd_receiver.htm was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

[TNCclubman]

you might want to uninstall this before that date until a fix comes out. wouldnt want to risk all kinds of errors come saturday morning.

[Digital Jedi]

I kind of doubt there will be any errors. You'll still be able access your account using your user ID number.