Facebook Connect Checklist – What to not overlook

I have been implementing Facebook Connect on our website for a few weeks now and am about to deploy it.  There are a couple things that one should remember when implementing Facebook Connect.

I will list here a few things that I have realised along the way that I needed to consider.  Things that weren’t apparent at the start of the development process and have affected the time spent on it.

My implementation has been total integration.  Once a user connects to our website with Facebook Connect, they are a ‘user’ on the website with persistent actions and can produce content on the website.  A Facebook Connect user can do anything a native user can, one extension to that is they must give permission for emails to be sent if they add content (in the form of a business, also ownership of that business) to our website.

  1. What information will you show about a user to other users of the site?
    • Can you keep it, or do you have to cache it and refresh every 24h?
    • Do you need the User to be logged in (with a current session) when you want to update your cache?
    • Will your server update the cache in real-time with a request or as a background process?
  2. Can a user exist purely as a Facebook account, or must they have a ‘Native’ account with you, supplemented by Facebook Connect.
    • In our case three accounts can exist, pure FB, FB and native combined, native.
  3. What happens when a native user is logged in, then they Facebook Connect? (can they do that?)
    • In my case the accounts merge, all relationships are updated and the old(FB) account is put on ice.
    • This is important because otherwise you have a person with two similar identities on your site creating the same content.
  4. Do you need to send your users email?
    • You must ask for permission via the FB JS Api
    • The user can remove that permission later via Facebook.  Without notification to you, the server.  If you require this permission, you must check and ask for permission again, or restrict features.
  5. What will you show about a user to others on the site?  For example, is there a listing of each user somewhere.
    • Will you show a profile picture?
    • What other information is shown in the listing for each user?

That’s just a few things you will want to consider before adding Facebook Connect to your website.  Think about the reason‘s you want to implement Facebook Connect, is there another way to implement the feature you want?

In our example I found out later it was possible to implement the feature we wanted, without actually integrating Facebook Connect into our website.  We wanted to allow users to post back content to their wall.  That is possible without actually integrating Facebook with your website.

There are other reason’s we are using it tho, and it has worked out to be the best solution for the moment.

Posted on April 5, 2009 at 4:24 pm by Jordan Carter · Permalink
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: ,

2 Responses

  1. Written by Mayuri
    on August 20, 2009 at 10:41 pm
    Permalink

    Hey
    I needed some help with fb connect. I have a site which is running fine with fb connect implemented thru facebooker plugin. I am working on rendering it on iphone.
    The popup that opens on clicking the button doesnt redirect me back to the site. just stays there. I wonder why. Can you pls tell me of some std way of implementing fb connect so iphone can render it properly? Wll implementing thru js instead of facebooker help??
    I am doing this for the first time and felling a little lost. Thanks for any help in advance!
    Mayuri

  2. Written by admin
    on August 21, 2009 at 11:30 am
    Permalink

    I’m not too sure on how the iPhone handles it but I have noticed that with the bank I use. When you login online it sends you initially to a sign in page (in a different window) which requires the opening of another page within iPhones Safari. Once you have logged inm you then need to change pages back to the inital page so that the page can load. It is a bit strange but you can give it a go.

    So log into facebook when it prompts, then change back to your websites page through iPhone Safaris page switcher thingy ma bob. Hope that helps.

    In regards to making it work out of the box, I am not sure. When you do figure it out, please do post back here how you went.

    Kind Regards,
    Jordan.

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