Facebook Platform Updates, SSL, and WPBook

Road to nowhere (Photo by Matthew Connor, cc-by-nc license)

Back in January, I got an unexpected flurry of WPBook support requests, and ultimately discovered they were the result of Facebook’s decision to allow people to browse Facebook in HTTPS mode.

As part of that change, Facebook introduced some new settings: “Secure Canvas URL” and “Secure Tab URL,” which would enable https connections throughout your Facebook application.

WPBook mostly worked with these two variables properly set (thanks to cshiflet for this patch).

Now, however, Facebook has announced they will require ALL apps to support https:

Today, we are announcing an update to our Developer Roadmap that outlines a plan requiring all sites and apps to migrate to OAuth 2.0, process the signed_request parameter, and obtain an SSL certificate by October 1.

What will this mean for WPBook users?

Unfortunately, my guess is that many WPBook users are not prepared to install an SSL certificate and accept https traffic on their blogs. (SSL certificates typically require that your blog have a unique IP address and cost extra at shared hosting facilities).

If you are unable to install an SSL certificate for your blog, and enable https based browsing of it, you may be unable to use WPBook after October 1, 2011 (or whenever Facebook decides to actually enforce this migration step).

More to come as we get closer to that date.

WPBook 2.2.1

Try Again (Photo by Samantha Marx, cc-by license, http://www.flickr.com/photos/spam/3355834452/)

Spent some quality time this weekend with WPBook. As a result, I just released version 2.2.1. (There was briefly a 2.2 release, but something was corrupted in that version of the SVN repo, so use 2.2.1 instead).

Included in 2.2.1:

• Read More is back. Re-enabled the “Read More” action link. Unfortunately, because of a Facebook API bug wpbook can’t add more than one action link to a post, so no “share” button on wall posts until that is fixed. (Facebook doesn’t add the Share link automatically to posts from the Graph API and there’s currently no way to make that happen other than manually adding it as a link, but I think the “Read More” link is more important.)
• Post to Group Walls. Added posting options for Group walls, and comment import form Group walls. Because of the way the Facebook API has changed, posting to a Group feed is distinct from posting to a Page’s feed, and requires different syntax.
• Controlled debugging. Limit the size of debug files created to 500k, so that users who enable debugging and then forget won’t have an unlimited file growing every hour. Also made the debug constant more specific to WPBook so as not to interfere with other plugins potentially using DEBUG as a constant
• Fopen errors. Clean up DEBUG for cases where permissions fail or file is not writeable
• Facebook::$CURL_OPTS . Made “disable ssl verification” an option so that only users who need it will have it and others won’t get conflict
• Required fields are required. Cleanup to the admin screens in general, more clarity around what is required and better language on the admin screens about what is being checked. (Thanks BandonRandon for patches)
• Better check permissions. Improved “Check permissions” page, to show what options mean and enable links to view profiles, pages, links to validate IDs are correct.
• Added wpbook logo which had been missing
• Fix for get_themes() issues with WordPress 3.0.1 through 3.0.5

I realize from the activity in the forums that many users are having trouble with the 2.1 and later WPBook – but I believe all the known errors have been fixed, and most are due to misconfiguration.

A few configuration notes that might help:

1. Your application ID, secret, canvas URL, and Profile ID must be correct or nothing else is going to work. If you load your application canvas page and you don’t see the WPBook theme, but see just your blog in an iframe (unchanged), then something is wrong in your Facebook Application setup, your WPBook setup, or in a plugin conflict.
2. Your personal FB profile is absolutely required, even if you don’t plan to publish to your profile’s wall. It is through the FB profile that the access_token for publishing to pages is retrieved. If your FB profile ID is wrong, nothing else is going to work.
3. Any time you change the Profile ID, the Page ID, or the Group ID to which you are trying to publish, you must visit the Check Permissions page and will most likely need to regrant permissions. Again, if permissions aren’t working, nothing else is going to work.

If you’re stuck, please open a new thread in the wordpress forums and provide the following debugging info:

• The URLs of your Facebook Application and your blog outside FB
• The contents of your check permissions page – verbatim
• What you are trying to publish to – profile, page, group – by ID and by URL
• What error messages you are seeing, in the WordPress interface and/or in the PHP error log

With the right information, we will be able to get it working.

Thanks

WPBook 2.1.4 Released

Code Bug (Photo by Guilherme Tavares, cc-by license, http://www.flickr.com/photos/guitavares/1703252007/)

Just released WPBook 2.1.4.

Two key bugfixes in this release:

1. Comment Imports. In changing to the Graph API I needed to add an access_token to the FQL calls I’m using to retrieve comments from non-public streams.
2. Facebook Avatars for Pages. Given that you can now comment on wall posts as a page (by using the “use Facebook as page” option if you are the admin of a page) some of your comment authors in FB might be pages themselves. This fix will get the right FB avatar for them, eliminating what was otherwise a broken link image.

There should not be any need to regrant permissions or change any Facebook settings in this release.

Thanks to all the users who’ve provided feedback (and debug files!) in the forums.

WPBook 2.1.2 Release

Quick update – just tagged and released WPBook 2.1.2 – should show up in the repository shortly.

Note that if you’ve already made the changes described in upgrading from 2.0.x to 2.1 you do not have to redo them, though you will have to regrant permissions (in order to fix #s 1 and 2 below).

Three significant bug fixes:

Read more…

WPBook 2.1 Released

Just tagged release for 2.1.

Upgrading: be sure to read the release notes from 2.1b1, which outline steps you will need to take after upgrading from 2.0.x to 2.1. (If you previously used 2.1b1 or 2.1b2 you should already have done these steps).

See:

1. 2.1 beta one release notes
2. 2.1 beta two release notes

2.1 also incorporates a fix for Facebook’s recent shift to _POST rather than _GET, which flz discusses at the end of this thread.