CUNY Academic Commons

First af all, not only does the official Facebook plugin have some bad reviews, it's page on the plugin repo says that it doesn't work with 3.4.2. So I don't suggest we go with that solution.

Out of the other three, my gut says we go with the second: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/social-networks-auto-poster-facebook-twitter-g/

On a site as large as the commons, we want to try and provide plugins that benefit the maximum amount of users as possible. I assume that if one person wants to auto publish to Facebook, that user (as well as others) will also want to publish to other social sites. The second plugin will allow this in a single plugin.

However, I looked through the code, and I have to say, I'm a little put off by the lack of organization and adherence to WP coding standards. This doesn't mean that the plugin won't work - or work well - I just wanted to bring it up. Although I've never tried to write up a solution that integrates with so many OAuth providers, so I may not be the best critic in this instance. :-)

I'm wondering if we should add the Social Networks Auto Poster and then punt this to 1.4.7 or 1.4.8 so we can test it out on cdev. Testing a plugin that integrates with so many external APIs is a little difficult and requires more attention than just me looking at the source. Being able to test this with our (The Commons) Twitter account and Facebook page will give us a much better idea of whether or not it's going to work for the rest of our users.

we already have a bunch of plugins that do similar things for Twitter (and possibly other sites)

Do you mean to say that we have existing plugins already installed that will auto post to Facebook and Twitter? I believe that's what Keith is really after here. Facebook and Twitter integration into a page is one thing. It's much easier to display social content on a site than it is to send your content out to one of your social networks. I think if we have plugins that will auto post content Keith and I should be looking at those before we add a new one.

We do, in fact, have several plugins that allow posting content to Twitter. I don't know of an installed plugin that does the same for FB.

Boone,

I've created a new topic branch called facebook-plugin where I've added the Social Networks Auto Poster plugin and pushed it to the repo. Is cdev available to start testing this plugin?

Is cdev available to start testing this plugin?

Yep, all yours.

The recent CAC update of the Twitter Tools plugin to version 3+ now requires the installation of the "Social" plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/social/) for it to continue working. The Social plugin appears to have the functionality requested in this ticket. I haven't tried it out on my test site, but that might be a viable solution without overlapping existing functionality.

Since Dominic has already begun testing the SNAP plugin, I have no objections to using that instead of Twitter Tools+Social if it seems like that would be a better solution, but this is potentially an alternative solution.

Keith,

I've added Social so Twitter Tools will begin working again on Sunday night after the 1.4.10 release. I haven't been able to dedicate as much time as I would have liked to testing SNAP (as evidenced by the number of times I've bumped this issue from milestone to milestone). Because Twitter Tools now relies on Social and Social appears to provide the functionality requested in this issue, I think we should give it a chance and see if it can provide the features you're looking for. It wouldn't make sense to add Social because it's needed by another plugin and then add SNAP to get Facebook posting when we could get it from Social. Two birds...one stone.

If you wouldn't mind, could you test Social for me this coming week when you have some time and let me know if it does what you need? If it doesn't, I'll pick SNAP testing back up and we'll add it if you need it.

Boone,

We currently have 26 sites using Twitter Tools. Do we need to go to each of those sites to enable Social after the 1.4.10 release? If so, I don't mind taking care of that, I just want to put a reminder on ACTION_REQUIRED so we don't forget. I'm wondering if the simple existence of Social will satisfy Twitter Tools or if the actual activation is necessary. I wouldn't want to activate another plugin on those sites if we don't need to.

thanks, boone. I completely agree with your assessment. I'll give it a go this week and report back.

Thanks, and it's Dom by the way, but no worries. :-)

If I'm gonna be mistaken for someone, I'd like it to be Boone! LOL

sorry Dom! I'm on my phone and the email chain had Boones name in there somewhere so I didn't look twice.

also, I do believe the social plugin will need to be activated on all of the sites because I believe that twitter tools is now dependent on social being active before it will even load.

I was thinking the same thing about activating Social, if it's not active Twitter Tools has no was of knowing it's there.

Boone or I will make sure that happens after the release.

Keith,

We'll be releasing 1.4.12 later today; have you had a chance to check out Social? Does it provide the features you originally requested in this ticket?

I just used Social for the first time today and it seems to work for our needs. Thanks!