FriendConnect Login Plugin

Introduction

Google Friend Connect

Google Friend Connect (GFC) allows users to become members of your site community using their Google, Yahoo!, AIM or OpenID accounts and do lots of stuff like interacting with other visitors by making friends, sharing media, posting comments, playing games, and more. To find more information about Google Friend Connect you may go here.

Unfortunately users logged using GFC still have to enter their name, email address and website to post comment via WordPress (or even register and login via WordPress in case “Users must be registered and logged in to comment” option is turned on). Fortunately there are several plugins (official one and FriendConnect commenting plugin by Joost de Valk) which fix this problem.

ALSO there is FriendConnect Login Plugin which I wrote myself :-).

I’m not going to tell you how first two plugins work. Instead of that I will briefly explain how my plugin works.

How it works?

For each GFC account plugin creates exactly one WordPress (WP) user which is then used to interact with the site. When GFC user signs in - corresponding WP user is logged in, when GFC user signs out - corresponding WP user is logged out. By default plugin allows to sign in using either WP or GFC account, but you may also configure it to allow sign in using GFC account only. That’s very simple.

Installation and configuration

  1. First of all set up you site with Google Friend Connect.
  2. Download plugin.
  3. Unzip it and upload to your plugins folder.
  4. Activate (Plugins->Installed) and configure (Settings->FriendConnect Login) plugin from Admin panel.
  5. Adjust you theme:

    If you allow only Google Friend Connect users to login WordPress then:

    1) Remove all logout links or replace them with the following one:

    <a onclick="google.friendconnect.requestSignOut()" href="#"><?php _e('Sign out'); ?></a>

    2) Remove all links to user profile. In case Google Friend Connect user will change his password plugin won’t log him in after that.

    If you allow both WordPress and Google Friend Connect users to login WordPress then your code should distinguish user type and generate logout and profile links appropriately. Here is an example:

    <?php
_e('Logged in as ');
// Do not add link to profile and logout link in case of GFC user
global $gfc_userdata;
if ( ! isset($gfc_userdata) ) {
echo '<a href="' . get_option('siteurl') . '/wp-admin/profile.php">' . $user_identity . '</a>. ';
echo '<a href="' . wp_logout_url(get_permalink()) . '" title="' . __('Log out of this account') . '">' . __('Logout ') . '&raquo;</a>';
} else {
echo $user_identity . '. ';
echo '<a href="#" onClick="google.friendconnect.requestSignOut()" title="' . __('Log out of this account') . '">' . __('Logout ') . '&raquo;</a>';
}
?>

    By default plugin adds Sign In button (or user’s profile data in case he/she is already signed in) under comment form. Alternatively you may use following template tag to do this:

    <?php if (function_exists('gfc_profile')) {gfc_profile();} ?>

    Best place to put it is under comment form or “You must be logged in…” line in your comments.php.

Compatability

PHP 4 >= 4.0.6, PHP 5
At the moment plugin was tested with WordPress v 2.7.1 and seems to be fully compatible :).

History

Version 1.0.3

Version 1.0.2

Version 1.0.1

Added setting page to admin side to allow user to:

Version 1.0

Created. Main differences (improvements) over official plugin:

Downloads

Last versions of plugin and all available documentation you can download here.

P.S.

Don’t be very strict critisithing my plugin. It’s my first WordPress plugin experience. Moreover it is my first PHP/Java/OpenSocial API experience :-). Do not hesitate to contact me: your comments, proposals, thanks etc are highly appreciated.

If you think this plugin is useful, please consider donating some appropriate amount. Thank you.


COMMENTS

 

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57 Responses to “FriendConnect Login Plugin”

  1. Shahin | April 27, 2009 14:52

    WP user test comment…

  2. Shahin | April 27, 2009 14:53

    GFC user test comment…

  3. Shahin | April 27, 2009 14:54

    Non-registered user comment…

  4. baron | April 30, 2009 18:59

    Works great, thank you

  5. Webservant | May 1, 2009 17:22

    Thanks for the great job.
    I am totally new to Wordpress and I do not know what file to edit or settings to change when you write “Adjust you theme” What needs to be done?
    Thanks!

  6. Shahin | May 1, 2009 18:10

    One comment won’t be enough to answer your question. Check http://codex.wordpress.org/ . This link may be a good start http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes . In case you still have questions, please submit them here: http://wordpress.org/tags/friendconnect-login
    Thanks

  7. Webservant | May 1, 2009 19:54

    Thanks for the advise! There are some great resources.

  8. Mr. Mayne | May 3, 2009 08:19

    I have installed your plugin but I am getting the following under all comment areas on the site:

    [:en]Settings[:ru]Настройки
    [:en]Invite friend[:ru]Пригласить друга
    [:en]Sign out[:ru]Выйти

  9. Shahin | May 3, 2009 09:16

    Thanks for reporting. My mistake. Thing is that I use qTranslate plugin to blog in two languages and I didn’t clean those strings before submitting plugin.
    Now it is fixed. Please re-download and re-install plugin.
    Thanks!

  10. Qi | May 3, 2009 14:28

    I get this error when I try to activate plugin

    Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_CONST, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or ‘}’ in /nfs/c03/h04/mnt/57115/domains/chinahush.com/html/wp-content/plugins/gfc_plugin.php on line 70

  11. Shahin | May 3, 2009 20:31

    Most probably you have PHP4 and plugin requires PHP5 due to the class constants used.
    You may edit plugin yourself and fix this or you can wait a few days and I will fix this myself and update plugin. :-)

  12. Qi | May 4, 2009 00:03

    I am running php 5, also i have tried the official plug-in and the other one. but I get a problem when I sign in, the page will keeps on refreshing. Have you seen this problem?

  13. Shahin | May 4, 2009 17:42

    1. Please update to plugin version 1.0.3. This may solve your problem.
    2. Official plugin uses GFC user displayName as username. In case user with the same username is already in WP DB plugin may act as you described. But this may be not the only reason.

  14. 5 Tips on Getting Started with the Thesis WordPress Theme — THE NEW 24100.NET | May 27, 2009 11:43

    [...] specific are (for the sake of completeness):  Audio player, Broken Link Checker, External Links, FriendConnectLogin, Login LockDown, Referrer Detector, Samsarin PHP Widget, WordPress Database Backup and WPtouch [...]

  15. Mike | May 29, 2009 18:02

    How well does this work with WP Super Cache?

  16. Shahin | May 29, 2009 20:57

    Hmmm… Actually I don’t know :) If it is not difficult for you please check that and tell us about results :)

  17. Omar | May 29, 2009 20:58

    Is there a way to just add the button and not the two lines above and below the Sign In button?

  18. Shahin | May 29, 2009 21:01

    Yes, there is. Follow these steps:
    1. Uncheck “Use default CSS” at plugin options page;
    2. Sign In button is enclosed in <div id="gfc_profile">. You may style it the way you want;

  19. Kate | June 3, 2009 07:58

    First, thanks for the great plugin Shahin. I just installed it without a problem. (Well, I did have one issue with my spam filter, but that seemed to rectify itself by enabling the back-up reCaptcha. I’m using the TanTanNoodles plugin.) Anyways, I noticed that Mike mentioned WP Super Cache above. That’s actually what I was coming to post about! :) Personally, I did notice some issues with signing in on pages I had already “visited”. I’m assuming it’s a WP Super Cache and not a browser cache issue. On pages I visited for the first time, signing in and/or commenting seemed absolutely fine. Perhaps it was more problematic because I was testing it, but I could see it potentially being an issue for normal users also.

  20. Shahin | June 3, 2009 18:06

    Thanks for a comment, Kate. Can you please provide me with detailed description of issue you faced?
    Unfortunately at the moment I don’t have enough time to test/resolve it myself. Hope I will have a chance to do that after 25th of June :)

  21. bowlkhin | June 4, 2009 21:11

    hi,

    I successfully installed this plugin but, I got a problem in submitting a comment for a specific entry (post), hope you can help me :(

    1. I used the plugin “iF AJAX Comments For WordPress” (AjaxComment) to validate and submit the comment. Everything works fine.

    2. Then I installed this plugin FriendConnect Login. I could sign in, but when I submitted the comment for a specific post, plugin AjaxComment reported “the comment is submitted”, but when I check the Dashboard, there’s no new comment. I did check it in Spam, but there’s nothing.

    I’m stucking in this mess …

    plz help :|

    bowlkhin

  22. Shahin | June 4, 2009 22:37

    1. FriendConnect Login does not deal with comment posting. So I’m 99% sure that it’s not its fault. :)
    2. Because of 1% I tested plugin you mentioned. And I have two news for you:
    - GOOD ONE: during the tests I didn’t lose any comment;
    - BAD ONE: when comment is posted iFAC updates page for a second time and because of that my plugin reloads it. This means that there is no sense to use iFAC this way :(

    When I will have free time I will think about solution, but for now that is all.

    Good luck!

  23. ilanettin.com | June 15, 2009 19:12

    Great plugin. Thank you very much.

  24. smsBabu | June 27, 2009 06:07

    What if one don’t want to create WP-Users but still want comments to be posted from friendconnect user ?

  25. Shahin | July 3, 2009 10:45

    If you won’t create corresponding WP User for GFC user how will you log him in?
    I guess there is no way to do that.

  26. Otto | July 7, 2009 21:31

    I was looking for FriendConnect plugins to allow people using it to join and follow my site as well as comment, but I can’t see to find any that don’t add WP Users.

    My site has one user: Me. That’s the way I want it, that’s the way I’m keeping it. If somebody wants to comment more easily using GFC, then I’m all for that. But why on earth do you have to create a user specifically for them? Why can’t you simply use the Google API’s to get their information and put it in the proper places in the anonymous commenting form?

    I don’t want people logging into my site. I want people to be able to more easily comment. That’s it. If you have to make a WP user for them, then I can’t use your plugin.

  27. Shahin | July 12, 2009 22:42

    Interesting idea. I will think about adding such an option. Thanks.

  28. Matteo | July 13, 2009 21:32

    This is a good template

  29. CodingGuru | July 16, 2009 08:14

    This is awesome. I don’t really understand the technology. It just lets people login with other accounts so they don’t need to create another one. Pretty useful considering some people have hundreds of passwords.

  30. Furins | July 31, 2009 01:20

    Thank you for this plugin!
    Just I’d like to let you -and the reaedrs- know that WP Super Cache and Friend Connect plugins work well together, as everybody guessed ;-)

  31. noam ben david | July 31, 2009 17:16

    Warning: Missing argument 5 for gfc_wp_get_avatar() in in /home/… line 366

    the plugin works great but the comments are messed
    up by this error all over for each gravatar

    the gravatars are showing up

    google shows some other sites with this error
    any idea how to solve this ?

  32. noam ben david | August 1, 2009 15:35

    wpmu 2.71 the error Missing argument 5 for gfc_wp_get_avatar is related to
    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/add-local-avatar/
    whice is not comapatble with your plugin
    i’v disabled that plugin and all work fine

    my biggest problem now is fixing facebook connect
    compatability
    your plugin disables fbconnect avatars
    any idea how to solve this ?

  33. Ade | August 13, 2009 09:16

    Oh hey, this looks good!

  34. Wouter - Test | August 14, 2009 12:54

    tEST

  35. rayuyi | August 15, 2009 08:48

    Sorry I just comment to comfirm the effect of this plugin

  36. Nena | August 18, 2009 07:06

    My problem is I installed and activated it however when GF logs in and post their avatar does not display. Please help.

    I have it set to show avatars. I was formerly using profile pic plug in but the two created errors so once I removed profile pic and just had gfc log in the errors were gone, but I still do not get their avatar image with their post. Please help!

  37. Nena | August 18, 2009 07:07

    also i noticed it was not compatible with commentluv

  38. fou xian | August 24, 2009 04:14

    thanks

  39. Gualhanone | August 28, 2009 17:38

    The plugin is working fine, but I can´t get user avatar being displayed in comments.

    Am I missing something?
    Could you please show your comments code?

    Thanks in advance!

  40. PokerGob | September 1, 2009 14:07

    Cool plug in

  41. Zé | September 19, 2009 16:29

    rttrry

  42. Jin-Hee | October 10, 2009 09:36

    thanks

  43. 07595396657386510306 | October 11, 2009 19:28

    cool

  44. Pedro León | October 13, 2009 18:18

    Very Good FRIEND!!!!!!!!!!

  45. JaguarNac | October 18, 2009 20:55

    thanks

  46. Jure | October 23, 2009 06:00

    Jejeje

  47. Adonai Canez | October 26, 2009 19:34

    Thank you

  48. adonai | October 26, 2009 20:43

    teste

  49. WebzBlog | November 17, 2009 01:59

    so thank!

  50. cthisi | November 26, 2009 17:11

    test

  51. Cui – On My Way » Google Friend Connect Enabled Here | November 27, 2009 06:40

    [...] add the support to the Google Friend Connect here in this blog yesterday by the fantastic WP plugin FriendConnect Login [...]

  52. w | December 31, 2009 17:39

    Great plugin, but avatars don’t show up in the comments :(

  53. t | January 14, 2010 09:11

    test

  54. 麦迪文 | January 20, 2010 15:32

    I want to test…

  55. lepikon | January 30, 2010 16:08

    Hello,

    I feel stupid but after setting up the id in the plugin option, what am I suppose to see on my blog: a toolbar ?

    Thanks.

  56. Shahin | January 31, 2010 12:08

    Nothing actually :) unless you add piece of code to your template.

  57. John | February 6, 2010 03:19

    Just testing to see if you need to be logged in with gfc to make a comment.

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