The Drupal CMS (Content Management System) is a powerful choice for developing websites with online communities, amongst other features, so it’s an ideal target for a Facebook Connect option. Last year, AllFacebook reported on an FBConnect Drupal module developed by La Netscouade. A similar Drupal module, FConnect, is now available in Beta 4 by developer Vishal Sood.
Vishal points out that his module, FConnect, is definitely different than FBConnect:
Drupal does not allow two modules that do the same thing so this cannot be on Drupal. When I originally did this module the one on Drupal wasn’t doing the right things technically. In my mind atleast
. I haven’t looked at it recently but the module I have offers share button, a more advanced drupal block to show friends and so on.
As reported by Vishal, the Beta 4 release of his FConnect has several new features over the previous version:
- Use of Facebook profile pic for user’s Drupal account, with configurable size.
- Uses Drupal’s default registration process.
- Linking of friend pictures to either Drupal or a user’s Facebook profile.
Vishal Sood’s FConnect module can be seen in action on his site, but his implementation seems a little unusual. The whole point of using Facebook Connect on a website is so that an end user does not have to create yet another profile and/or username/ password combo. Vishal’s implementation might simply be due to his own design choices, but after you click the “F Connect” button, you get asked to enter a username, your email, and some optional info about yourself. Then you get sent a password to the site (one-time activation). This, to me, defeats the purpose of Facebook Connect.
I’ve emailed Vishal about this implementation and I’ll update this post when he responds. If you want to use his FConnect for Drupal, you have to register (from any page on his site). You can also compare FConnect to the earlier FBConnect module, available from the Drupal.org site.
Hey Raj
Thanks for blogging about this module.
You raise a valid point about not asking user for any informaiton and here is the why I did that.
The information is requested from the user once to create a Drupal account and is one time only. From then onwards, users can login using their Facebook Creds and this won't come up again. The drupal account you create is used only in case you wish to dis-associate the Facebook account later.
I was using Facebook username to create Drupal user accounts earlier but then Facebook terms dont' allow using that. Details here – http://developers.facebook.com/policy/ (Section III – 5). So, I have to prompt the user.
Cheers
Vishal
Comment by Vishal Sood — March 1, 2010 @ 6:06 pm
After reading you post, Your site is very useful for me .I bookmarked your site!, I get lot of information from your blog.
I am been engaged 3 years on the Facebook Applications Development If you have some questions, please get in touch with me.
Comment by Facebook Guru — March 1, 2010 @ 8:44 pm
Any idea whether this will also be developed for the Joomla open source CMS?
Comment by Callum Rowley — March 2, 2010 @ 12:22 am
@Facebook Guru – thanks, sure we should connect
. You have a great site yourself
@Callum – I am just a hobbyist developer and work on the Drupal platform. I have no plans to extend this to Joomla. However, I am pretty sure if one does not exist someone is working on it. Joomla is pretty popular
Comment by Vishal Sood — March 2, 2010 @ 7:42 pm
This is interesting – I hope I will have time to check it out. As a brief clarification on the statement about the modules location, it’s actually not the case that Drupal disallows modules that do the same thing. There are many overlapping and duplicate function modules on Drupal. But it is discouraged by the Community, and instead it is encouraged to collaborate, avoid duplicated efforts, etc. for the benefit of the Drupal Community as a whole.
- Matt, Kinaba, WebNewCastle.com
Comment by Matthew Winters — March 6, 2010 @ 5:51 am
I am unable to enable fbconnect in my drupal site.. please help.
Comment by Noirita Bera — March 25, 2010 @ 5:11 am
dsg
Comment by Mohan Murugesan — May 5, 2010 @ 3:23 am
Hey Raj!
Is there any easy tutorial how to implement such a facebook connect login just at the end of a drupal article to do some comments?
I have found different modules with drupal but it seems that they all go for a full integration with a the need of a user site etc. I'm just looking for the login to comment that's it
.
Thanks for any help !
Comment by Markus Thierer — May 23, 2010 @ 1:47 pm
asd
Comment by asd — October 13, 2011 @ 10:17 pm