FaceBook is the second most-trafficked site in the world after Google and is the no 1 social media website. This makes FaceBook an attractive advertising platform for many business owners.
FaceBook integration makes your store promotion between FaceBook users and their friends quick and easy. No need to send emails. Posts would automatically appear on the user’s wall.
You can see the FaceBook Share in action on this very page. Click on the f-share button to see how you can share this product on your FaceBook wall. (This has been replaced with
Facebook Like Widget)
The accompanying
FaceBook Login control allows the users on your store to login and logout of FaceBook without them ever leaving your store.
Using the FaceBook Share and Login Controls
To use the FaceBook Share and FaceBook Login controls you need an
API key of your FaceBook application that will be used for this integration. We assume that you already know how to setup a FaceBook application and where to get its API key, but if you don’t know you can simply login to your FaceBook account and then go to
http://www.facebook.com/developers/createapp.php and create an application.
After creating the FaceBook application, you will need to set its
Connect URL property to the URL of your AbleCommerce store. Connect URL property is found on the “Connect” tab of your FaceBook application and the API key can be found on the “Basic” tab.
After creating the FaceBook application, setting its Connect URL, and getting its API key you are ready to use FaceBook Login and FaceBook Share controls on your store.
To enable FaceBook Connect login/logout option for your store you can simply use the FBLogin control in your store header scriptlets as follows.
[[ConLib: FBIntegrator/FBLogin ApiKey=”e921a63039b9ea3458de45a07f6f1fa1”]]
The Api Key used above is just for example. You should replace it with the ApiKey of your own FaceBook application.
To enable FaceBook Share button on your product pages, use the following in the product content scriptlets.
[[ConLib: FBIntegrator/FBShare ApiKey=”e921a63039b9ea3458de45a07f6f1fa1”]]
Note that FBShare will work on product pages only.
Note:
You do not necessarily have to use both FBLogin and FBShare controls at the same time. If you only want the FaceBook Share functionality you can just use the FBShare control in your scriptlets and leave out the FBLogin control.