Deeper integration with Facebook and Twitter

[imthebest]

Many people claim that Facebook and Twitter are killing forums. There is a huge debate around this idea and it's not the point of this thread to discuss about that.

Instead of allowing these social sites to drain your member's activity we need to be more smart and "use" these sites to our own benefit. It would be awesome if the Facebook and Twitter integration that XenForo offers could do this by default:

1. Allow people to post on their Facebook wall about a new thread that they are creating so when they are creating a thread a checkbox labeled "Post on Facebook" should be displayed.
2. Allow people to also post their status on Twitter.
3. Allow people to share on Facebook/Twitter whenever they get a new trophy!

At least one of these (#2 specifically) was considered by @Kier since the first days:

We're keeping it at 140 chars so it can be automatically sent to Twitter when we get around to coding that particular implementation.

http://xenforo.com/community/thread...limit-for-update-your-status.3732/#post-57650

There is currently an add-on by @Chris D that does everything described here: Social Connect. However his add-on requires a second association with Facebook/Twitter in order to work (see my question and the answer by Chris). Why? Long history short because XF's Facebook/Twitter integration doesn't asks for the required permissions.

And because of the limitation explained above I think that this should be a core feature, a must have!

Please don't forget to LIKE this suggestion to show your support so @Kier and @Mike can have it in account!

Thanks,
Super120

 

[Max]

+ pulling stuff from facebook.

1. If you have a friend in facebook and he is also in your XF forum then show them you have the same friend in this forum with some other username.
You can do that using the people who linked their facebook account to the XF account.

2. When registering through facebook connect pull his profile picture and show it as avatar in forum. Suggest him a username based on his fb name.

3. when user change profile picture it automatically change his picture in forum, pulling text like status from fb etc..

4. Let people use FB chat within the forum and allow people to load fb friendlist in chat etc..

 

[Mike]

1. If you have a friend in facebook and he is also in your XF forum then show them you have the same friend in this forum with some other username.
You can do that using the people who linked their facebook account to the XF account.

It does do this when you go to register or look at associating. ("Enable Facebook Registered Friends Feature" option)

Suggest him a username based on his fb name.

It did this originally but it was very common that people would just leave the name as is and then ask for it to be changed later. It was removed based on feedback.

 

[rdn]

@xfrocks already did this, Hope fully will be core feature of XenForo.

 

[xfrocks]

Thanks @RoldanLT for the mention, I post the link to [bd] Social Share here for @Super120 http://xenforo.com/community/resources/bd-social-share.2182/, the add-on does all the 3 things in the first post and way more. And it uses existing XenForo Facebook/Twitter association and only asks for extra permissions as needed.

 

[Max]

@Mike Thanks, Is there any way to get atleast this feature

3. when user change profile picture it automatically change his picture in forum, pulling text like status from fb etc..

 

[Digital Doctor]

By default, it doesn't seem like Xenforo allows embedding of Tweets in a post.

Do the Twitter types in this thread want to enable embedding tweets in posts ?

By default, you can use these sites:



Should Twitter be on this list ?

 

[RichardGaspa]

By default, it doesn't seem like Xenforo allows embedding of Tweets in a post.

Do the Twitter types in this thread want to enable embedding tweets in posts ?

By default, you can use these sites:

View attachment 97356

Should Twitter be on this list ?

Please add Twitter.

 

[CMGDevel]

And while we are at it have Xenforo meta tag images contained in a thread (other than the forum logo or a user avatar) for better sharability on FB.

 

[RichardGaspa]

And while we are at it have Xenforo meta tag images contained in a thread (other than the forum logo or a user avatar) for better sharability on FB.

This I like .....

 

[digitalpoint]

There is additional backend trickery you ca do with Facebook integration...



https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/guides/og.likes

Publishing Likes
An app can publish a like action, on behalf of the user, as long as the following conditions are true:

1. The viewer of the in-app content is a Facebook user who has Facebook-authed and granted the app publish_actions permission
2. The in-app content has an Open Graph object page that is properly marked-up using Open Graph metatags
3. The viewer has intentionally clicked on a custom in-app “like button” associated with the in-app content

So as an example, a user can click the normal XF "Like" button on my site, and if they have their settings as shown above, it automatically likes that page as if they clicked a Facebook like button as well.

 

[Mike Edge]

There is additional backend trickery you ca do with Facebook integration...

View attachment 99416

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/guides/og.likes


So as an example, a user can click the normal XF "Like" button on my site, and if they have their settings as shown above, it automatically likes that page as if they clicked a Facebook like button as well.

I would buy this as a premium add-on if you released it. Esp for the trophy posts!

 

[digitalpoint]

The problem is it's just one tiny part of a much bigger addon that would be of little use to other sites as a whole... There are 9 types of accounts that users can link to their account, and each does various things for them... most of which is specific to digitalpoint.com.

To be honest, I'd be surprised if someone didn't already make something that does exactly that in the resource manager here.

 

[Kevin]

To be honest, I'd be surprised if someone didn't already make something that does exactly that in the resource manager here.

I don't recall seeing anybody else doing it yet.



(I wonder if @Daniel Hood would be interested.... )

 

[digitalpoint]

I don't recall seeing anybody else doing it yet.

(I wonder if @Daniel Hood would be interested.... )

I'll look around when I have some time... if that's the case, I'll see about stripping my existing addon down to be more for any site.

Either way, it would be nice to have it as a core feature... it definitely brings us a lot of traffic. More than 70% of the third party social interactions we have on our site are from auto-posting to Facebook and Twitter feeds.



For that same period, we got 6,316 referrals from Facebook/Twitter, so it seems to bring about 4 direct visitors per auto-post.

 

[Daniel Hood]

I've thought about making an add on that integrates with Tiwtter and Facebook a little more. Not sure how much interest there is though and I have a full plate as is.

[Edit]

There is an add on that I recall seeing a long time ago which posts status updates and maybe some other stuff to facebook and twitter.

 

[Mike Edge]

The problem is it's just one tiny part of a much bigger addon that would be of little use to other sites as a whole... There are 9 types of accounts that users can link to their account, and each does various things for them... most of which is specific to digitalpoint.com.

To be honest, I'd be surprised if someone didn't already make something that does exactly that in the resource manager here.

There is https://xenforo.com/community/resources/bd-social-share.2182/ but it doesn't post trophies, status updates or likes

 

[rdn]

There is https://xenforo.com/community/resources/bd-social-share.2182/ but it doesn't post trophies, status updates or likes

It support both of them except LIKES.
Trophies and Status updates is already supported.
I hope @xfrocks extend it and also support Likes.

 

[imthebest]

A similar suggestion has been posted by @Daniel Hood. Those of you who liked my suggestion might also be interested in reading Dan's input here: Tighter Facebook Integration