Facebook Connect Plugin for aMember now available

I just got this plugin a couple of hours ago. And after what was a really easy installation, I ran into some login issues. I emailed Rob in hopes he was awake at 5am and he was!!!

He worked with me until it was resolved.

Rob, thanks sooo much for your patience and your keen eyeballs.

I am really excited b/c I have some campaigns I want to based off of the option to signup with their FB account!

Glad we got you sorted out - and even more pleased the issue was nothing to do with the plugin

Facebook? Great! I've been looking for this!

Rob, I just came across this announcement. I've been using aMemeber for years and about a year ago I inquired aMember team if they had any plans to integrate with Social Networks. Am going to give this plugin a whirl in my new project.

Do you have any plans for other networks? I'd love t have Twitter and LinkedIn added! Not sure if you are aware of this project, which has been on hold for a year and a half but it's a great one: http://hybridauth.tumblr.com/

Thanks.

Rob,

Just purchase Facebook plugin along with OpenID one. Couple questions:

FB plugin requires:
- aMember 3.1.2 or later
- PHP Version 5.2.0 or later
- CURL and JSON support

I have
- aMember 3.1.7 PRO
- PHP Version 5.1.6 on Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS), which apparently is the latest available for that setup
- CURL -- don't see JSON. Do I need both?

Would there be a problem with my setup?

Thanks

Hi - yes, both CURL and JSON extension to PHP are required by the Facebook API. The specific JSON function required is json_decode which is available in PHP v5.2.0 onwards...

So you really need to talk to your host - PHP 5.1.6 may be the highest available version on your CentOS server, but google shows plenty of tutorials on upgrading CentOS to the latest versions of PHP, so they can presumably help you out there (and if not, I can recommend you a good host ... ).

I've no plans currently to do plugins for any of the other proprietary AUTHs like Twitter, but never say never

Cheers
Rob

Lots of OpneID links but ...

Hi Rob,

I have the error code enabled for both the Facebook and the OpenID plugin. I haven't seen a facebook entry yet with this same behavior but I have seen several OpenID auth entries that appear to be validated .

Yet these people are not registered with aMember. I do NOT have the automatic member creation enabled (I just checked one more time).

So what does this mean that these people have these entries in the error log:

url: /amember/signup.php?oid=manual
remote ip: xx.xxx.xx.xxx
message: openid: Prefilled Signup form for OpenID account () - Array ( [oid] => manual [openid_provider] => yahoo [PHPSESSID] => ....

and then immediately following that, this message:

openid: Prefilled Signup form for OpenID account () - Array ( [oid] => manual => xxxx@yahoo.com [name_l] => xxxx [name_f] => xxxx )

Should I email these people and thank them for their interest in joining our community but advise them that they must complete the registration form on the aMember side?

Thanks,

Brian

Hi Brian

Yes, these are indeed people who have started the signup process using OpenID but then abandoned it when they got to your amember signup form.

OpenID people tend to favour single click signon, so to reduce the number of dropouts use auto account creation (and don't make any items mandatory in opened configuration) - that way you avoid them hitting the amember signup page.

You could also contact them and get feedback as to why the dropped out

Cheers
Rob

Rob,

What happens if the same user logs in with Facebook first and the system is set to create an account and then they login with one of the openID options and the system will create another account? Would it be easy to merge those or do you recommend not to create a new account on login with one of those third-party logins?

Thanks.

Hi

If they use the SIGNUP page buttons again and you have auto account creation on, they will end up with two separate accounts - however, if they use the buttons on the LOGIN page it will simply link their existing account with the new provider, allowing them to use either Facebook or OpenID to login.

In cases where a member uses signup a second time, aMember makes it easy for you to merge the accounts - see the option in the action tab of a member account.

Cheers
Rob

Rob,

Is there some sort of cookie that keeps logged in state? I have been using aMember for years and never witnessed the following behavior until now:

After I log out and close browser window I reopen it and go back to protected folder -- I am instantly logged in.

Thanks.

Rob,

I really like the idea of the script creating account automatically when user logs in using third-party identities. However I don't like the idea of having multiple profiles for the same user if they log in with different providers and the system still creates duplicate accounts. So, I thought that perhaps you could add a simple tool that will allow users with multiple accounts merge them. Possibly a user can provide an email for another account and a unique URL can be created and sent to that address. When user clicks on that URL the accounts, identifiers of which could be encrypted in the URL, could be then merged. aMember does have merge accounts functionality already built-in.

What do you think?

Err, yes, that's how it is supposed to work. Any time a person is logged into Facebook and has an active subscription to your site they get logged straight in. Its single signon.

Cheers
Rob

Duplicate account issues can happen at any time, eg if a person orders a second product or subscription from signup page. The Facebook/openid plugins don't make this any more likely, as a duplicate account will ONLY occur if they use the buttons on the Signup Page instead of the login page - in fact the Facebook plugin reduces the chance of this happening because it will automatically log the member in to their account if they visit your signup page.

So in practice it's not an issue and the regular amember tools for admins let you resolve any difficulties - and letting customers merge accounts could be a security problem.

Cheers
Rob

Would this work if you have a 21 day free trial?

What would happen after 21 days when you try to log-in with facebook?

Also how do you get to the user agreement? Is there a way of forcing the customers to agree to the terms and conditions with a tick box?

Thanks,
Nik

Hi Nik,

The facebook plugin only overrides the standard aMember account login process, it doesn't affect folder protection or subscriptions.

So when their subscription expires after 21 days they will still be able to login to their aMember ACCOUNT using Facebook, but they won't have access to the protected content any more.

The way to force a user agreement for Facebook signups is to turn off auto-account creation so that they drop back to the standard aMember signup form after authentication with Facebook.

Cheers
Rob

Rob,

If I sign in and then close the browser and open it next day, I am still signed in. Is there a way to change that? Perhaps unset all cookies if the session is destroyed?..

Thanks.

You seem to be misunderstanding how the plugin is supposed to work - Ie when you are signed in to Facebook you get automatically signed in to all your amember accounts too.

I'd you want to force a Facebook logout when they sign out from your site, you can set this option in the plugin preferences.

Just be aware that this may annoy your members and when they log back into Facebook they will automatically log in at your site.

Cheers
Rob

I've installed the facebook plugin on one of my sites and it works great. However, when I run the W3C validator (http://validator.w3.org), I only get 1 error and it is associated with the Facebook plugin, and says:

The question is: why is that smarty attribute there? Also, what can I do to change this so that when I run the validator I don't get this 1 error?

Hi - the reason it is there is because aMember currently uses an older version of Smarty templating and the configuration used by amember means that unless this custom tag is present, the javascript is not parsed for smarty variables (which we need to customise it with your application id etc).

Unless Alex knows another way to do it in the aMember environment, then it's unfortunately a minor validation issue which we have to live with.

It's not a structural validation issue, so has negligible impact in real situations.

Cheers
Rob

New version 1.5 now available

I've just released version 1.5 of the aMember Facebook plugin - this update is free to previous customers so just use the link in your receipt email to download.

This new version is a minor update:

• Plugin now fully W3 validator compliant
• Fixed bug with auto facebook signups

Cheers
Rob