A few months ago I discussed the Future of WPBook in this space, specifically what to do about Facebook’s new requirement that all applications providing canvas pages or page tabs had to be accessible via SSL. As I outlined it then, I saw the options as:
- Eliminate the canvas page and tab altogether – make WPBook just focus on cross-posting and comment import, thus potentially eliminating the SSL requirement?
- Make it optional – keep the canvas page and tab, but make them optional – only for users who want them and have the necessary SSL certificate
- Fork the plugin – make a version of the plugin which works like the current model, but also a second (WPBook Lite?) that only does cross posting and comment import? That way we could have separate directions for each to simplify setup confusion
- Stop developing WPBook – There are a number of other plugins which do Facebook posting, and at least one which does Facebook comment importing (probably more). Is it worth continuing to develop WPBook if better alternatives exist?
Ultimately, I settled on Option 3: Fork the plugin, and create a lighter-weight version which did not include the canvas page or tab. The result is WPBook Lite, available now in the WordPress Plugin Repository.
Should I use WPBook, or WPBook Lite?
I suspect this will be the main question folks will face, so here’s a quick comparison table:
| Feature | WPBook | WPBook Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Cross Post WordPress Blog Posts to Facebook | X | X |
| Post WordPress Blog Posts to Facebook Profiles (Walls), Pages, and Groups | X | X |
| Import comments made against Facebook Excerpt Posts to WordPress as native comments | X | X |
| View WordPress Blog inside Facebook as Canvas Page Application | X | |
| Add WordPress blog as a tab to a Facebook Page | X | |
| Requires WordPress blog be accessible via SSL (HTTPS) | X |
Basically, if you are able to access your blog via HTTPS, and you WANT the view of the blog inside Facebook as a canvas application, or you want the page tab feature, you should use WPBook.
If your blog is not accessible via HTTPS, or you don’t want the view of the blog inside Facebook / page tab, then you should be happier with WPBook lite.
I’ll be updating the instructions over at WPBook.net shortly to reflect Facebook’s new look for developer settings shortly, and will also differentiate between WPBook and WPBook Lite. In theory, configuring WPBook Lite should be significantly simpler for most users.
If you’re already using WPBook and shift to WPBook Lite, you will need to regrant permissions.
Migrating from WPBook to WPBook Lite:
- View your WPBook settings page, and write down your profile ID as well as the IDs of any pages/groups to which you want to cross publish.
- Deactivate WPBook (but don’t delete it yet)
- Install and Activate WPBook Lite
- Set up a new Application for WPBook Lite – this time you should only need the “Website” settings under Integration, not any of the “App on Facebook” section settings
- Visit the WPBook Lite settings page in WordPress, fill out the required fields (APP ID, Secret, your profile ID), and save the form
- Re-visit the WPBook Lite settings page, where you should now see an opportunity to grant appropriate permissions
If done correctly, WPBook Lite should pick up right where WPBook left off.
If you run into problems, please comment in the appropriate WordPress Support Forums: WPBook or WPBook Lite.
The Future of WPBook
By John Eckman on October 4, 2011
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the future of WPBook, and wanted to give a quick update. There are two key factors making me rethink the whole approach.
Pittsfield in the Near Future (from Cameo Wood on flickr, cc-by-nc license)
The first is a change Facebook has made, requiring SSL certificates for “all Canvas and Page tab applications.” (They announced this change earlier this summer, as part of the bizarrely Orwellian “Operation Developer Love” but it went into effect as of October 1st).
This is a problem because many WPBook users’ blogs are not available via https connections (including my own), and with this new Facebook change their WPBook implementation will fail, though how exactly that will be manifest isn’t clear to me yet (see below). Getting an SSL certificate for your blog isn’t an insurmountable task, but if you run your blog on cheap shared hosting, the costs of an SSL certificate (and the dedicated IP it requires) can be nearly as much as you’re paying for hosting! It’s also a task that the non-technical user will find horribly confusing.
The second is a recent report showing that:
The study results suggest that one of WPBook’s core functions – posting automatically to your wall (or the wall of a fan page, group, or application) whenever new blog posts are published – might not even be a good idea to begin with.
Facebook posts direct versus via 3rd party APIs (Edgeranker study)
If third-party automated postings get de-prioritized by Facebook, you might be better off using a Facebook share button and manually cross posting to Facebook each time you publish. On the other hand, maybe the reason third-party automated postings get less attention is because people post more
crapweak content that way. (If what the 10 most popular third-party apps post is lots of nonsense about games, thinly veiled ads, and self-promotion, maybe that is what the study results show people are ignoring – not that good relevant content posted by automated applications gets ignored).So, what’s the way forward?
The scenario I’m imaging is to split apart the functions of the current WPBook and make some portions optional.
WPBook currently does four main things:
I believe that the Facebook requirement of SSL only affects numbers 1 and 2 of this list. Even in the current WPBook, if you set “use external permalinks” then users never need know your application canvas page exists – they will just click on the links in wall posts and be taken to your (external) blog. Users without SSL certificate capability (or interest) could still get the benefits of 3 and 4 without having to worry about 1 and 2.
(It’s not clear to me right now how this would impact setup of WPBook-based applications. Facebook’s developer blog clearly indicates that canvas and page-tab applications will require SSL, but that would seem to imply other kinds of applications will not. Is it just a question of choosing a different application type during setup in Facebook? The whole app creation flow has changed so many times it is hard to keep track – maybe it is a question of unchecking some of the boxes in the dialog below?)
New Facebook App Creation Options
So the question becomes, is it worth it to keep WPBook trying to do 1 & 2 above?
Originally this was all WPBook did, and it seemed to me quite useful and distinct from any other Facebook related plugin. In essence you could use WPBook this way to drive a whole in-Facebook experience and never require (or even let!) users go to the blog outside of Facebook (though preventing them from accessing the blog outside Facebook would require some extra work on your part).
Open Parenthesis, as seen outside Facebook (left) and inside Facebook (right) – click for full size
But most users, it seems to me, were confused by this “Facebook view of my blog” approach. They wanted cross posting, and comments import, but didn’t like the application view of the blog (which required all users viewing blog content to consent to application permissions) or worried about it taking traffic away from their external blog.
Should I:
My concern with option 2 (“make it optional”) is just that configuring WPBook is already too complex for many users, given the variety of ways Facebook can be used and the variety of ways WPBook can be configured. Adding yet another set of variants (which would change not just what you have to set inside WordPress but also what choices you make when setting up the corresponding Facebook application) will only increase complexity and therefore support requests, which I honestly just don’t have the time to answer as quickly or extensively as I’d like.
My concern with option 3 (“fork the plugin”) is similar – more work for me, when I’ve had difficulty keeping up with plugin maintenance and maintenance of the instructions as Facebook constantly changes their application settings pages. If maintaining one plugin is difficult, maintaining two will be more so, even if they share some segment of the code base.
So option 1 (“eliminate”) is perhaps the simplest. (I say “perhaps” because I haven’t looked into it in depth yet – how hard will it be to untangle all the permission setting and checking logic, which is currently using a canvas page to display the current permissions? How will that change existing applications built using WPBook?).
But once that’s gone, what distinguishes WPBook from all the other Facebook posting plugins?
The fourth option would be to just declare WPBook obsolete. Existing WPBook installations work, if the user’s blog supports SSL. Currently if users browse Facebook in https mode, my own WPBook-powered applications just don’t work, because I don’t have SSL certificates for any of my blogs – just not worth the effort. But I’m ok with that.
It
may beseems that new WPBook users will find they can’t set up a Facebook application (necessary to use WPBook) without an SSL certificate, and if they want to have cross-posting and comment import they’ll need to use an alternative approach, but a quick search of the plugin repository suggests other options are plentiful.I’d love to hear from you all – especially if you are WPBook users (it’s had over 100,000 downloads, but I’ve no idea how many are in active use).
As always, comments (and patches!) welcome.
Posted in comments, facebook, import, Open Source, Plugin, Post, Syndicated, WordPress, WPBook | Tagged openparenthesis.org