Easily integrate your Miva Merchant into Facebook

[wajake41]

Re: Easily integrate your Miva Merchant into Facebook

Hi Dan: Just tried you FB app. Tried to like it, but am unsure if my like took. Tried you first app and saw no results. Tried the next one down & got a security error on IE8.

After we get our PHP upgrade & I finish a few of our own treaks, maybe you'd like to see our latest FB app.

Our first one is working now, just needs a little cleanup. Check it out via our site at:

http://www.orange-traffic-cones.com/

or directly at:

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=168414289883725

Maybe you'll "like it"?
Regards, Larry

[Datagg]

Re: Easily integrate your Miva Merchant into Facebook

Hi Dan: Just tried you FB app. Tried to like it, but am unsure if my like took. Tried you first app and saw no results. Tried the next one down & got a security error on IE8.

After we get our PHP upgrade & I finish a few of our own treaks, maybe you'd like to see our latest FB app.

Our first one is working now, just needs a little cleanup. Check it out via our site at:

http://www.orange-traffic-cones.com/

or directly at:

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=168414289883725

Maybe you'll "like it"?
Regards, Larry

Thank ya Larry, ill take a look..Would love to compare notes down the road. As for mine, im tweaking, messing with stuff, probably making it worse.... My mind is fried on this stuff and im sure I am driving Mr Bill up the wall by now... He is a great sport and deals with my tweaking abilities with grace. Thanks Bill...

[wcw]

Re: Easily integrate your Miva Merchant into Facebook

I noticed you have a button "go to app". You are not making the app available to anybody because it is written for your store. There was a setting when you created the app that asked if you wanted it published in the directory or something like that. You should have said no (or whatever the answer was to decline that). That must be what is making that button show at the top.

[wajake41]

Re: Easily integrate your Miva Merchant into Facebook

Hi Dan: Yes, Bill's the man! He's helped me a bunch on this too.

Regarding our broken FB app, I'll just "cool my jets" on it for now, not really important at this time, I am just frustrated by all the running in circles I did yesterday & early this morning.

Let me know when your app is finished and I'll check it out.

Larry

[wcw]

Re: Easily integrate your Miva Merchant into Facebook

I changed the "how to" to reflect PHP 5.3.6. We still don't know the exact number required. It is probably 5.3. I found some blog posts about JSON support being added in that version. If you did not want the fangating you could remove all the php code and simply start with the html stuff below it. You would hard code the iframe source url. But the fangating is an important feature. I expect to see more tips in the future on things that can be done with these iframes and they will need the PHP code.

[wajake41]

Re: Easily integrate your Miva Merchant into Facebook

Hello fellow FB app developers:
Indeed, PHP 5.3 is required for Bill's FB tutorial and solution.

Hostasaurus upgraded our site to 5.3 & now our app is running and ready? for prime time.
If anyone has the time, I'd appreciate it if some of you looked it over for any problems I might have overlooked.

You can view (and maybe "like it") by visiting our web site at:

http://www.xlerator-hand-dryer.com/

and clicking the "Find us on Facebook" button in the NAV bar
or directly view the app by using this link:

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=119165054830792&sk=app_119165054830792

I'd appreciate any constructive feedback anyone might offer.

Thanks, Larry

[wajake41]

Re: Easily integrate your Miva Merchant into Facebook

Hello forum: I would like to create a FB app for our www.rvparksupplies.com site. This site already has a FB page. Can I add an app to this page via my FB developer interface or do I need to create the app in a new FB page? If I do that, it appears that I will lose the "recommends/likes" that I have accumulated on the existing FB page.

Or should I keep our existing FB page and create a new page for the app?
Were any of these FB questions covered during the 2011 Miva conference and would it benefit me to purchase the DVD from the conference?

Thanks, Larry

[wcw]

Re: Easily integrate your Miva Merchant into Facebook

You can add as many apps to an existing page as you want. It should not affect your likes of the existing page. You are simply adding content. I've added several apps (menu items) to my page and the likes have not gone back to 0. Rather, they have continually risen as people find the new content and "like" it. On the other hand, if you create a new page, that page would start with 0 likes.

The most I heard related to Facebook were the three different breakout sessions that Dennis Yu gave. I don't recall him talking about maintaining multiple pages for the same business. I think you would dilute your likes.

[wajake41]

Re: Easily integrate your Miva Merchant into Facebook

Hi Bill: Thanks for your reply.
So, how can I create the FB miva2fb app on an existing page?
Last night, I was navigating in our FB page and couldn't find a way to create and add your miva2fb.php app to our page.

I have created the FB app for our other 2 sites as new FB pages with the idea that I had to replaced the existing FB pages with the new app pages. Which we have done by changing the find us button. I don't want to do that for our third site.

Another question. How does the "recommend" button on our site interface with our FB app? Or does it? What exactly is that button doing?

Thanks again, Larry

[wajake41]

Re: Easily integrate your Miva Merchant into Facebook

Hi Bill:
More dumb questions and probably misunderstandings about how to use FB.

I've read your last reply with comprehension finally and I think I now understand what you mean. I think that you're suggesting we create 1 FB page for our business and then add the apps for our 3 web sites to it. Looking at you FB page, I see that is what you've done. Makes sense.

However, you company is a known entity, so people doing a FB search will search for Emporium Plus and will find your FB page. Our LLC is unknown, and it's name doesn't reflect any of the disparate line of products we sell at our 3 web sites.

I also noticed that doing a FB search for Miva toolkit, returns a Bing result that links to your web site & not your FB page. It appears that FB is not indexing any app products but only using Bing to screen scrape links.

I remain confused about how to use FB to benefit our business.

Hope someone can help me understand a practical and successful approach to utilizing FB to promote our business.

Thanks, Larry

[wcw]

Re: Easily integrate your Miva Merchant into Facebook

If you go to your page and put in http://www.facebook.com/developers you can create an app. You do that. Then following the hyperarts instructions you assign that app to a page. You'll get a list of pages you are admin to. You will also see all your apps. You assign the app to the page you want it to appear on.

As I said in one of the threads, the FB search is terrible. Google will find your facebook page but it does not index the pages past your initial page. So it won't spider your products. I have not tested to see if Google picks up everything on your initial page or not. If Facebook wants to take over the world, I'm sure they'll develop a better indexing system.

[wajake41]

Re: Easily integrate your Miva Merchant into Facebook

Hello Bill: Seeking your help/advice again. I am using your FB example as a model for what we want to do on FB. I now have completed 2 FB apps and am now wondering how to utilize them.
Can you tell me what you have done?
Did you create a personal FB page and add your apps to it or
did you create a FB business page and add your apps to it or
did you create a fan page and add your apps to it or
did you do something else?

The bottom line is that now that I have created my FB apps, what is the best way to utilize them?

Thanks, Larry

[wcw]

Re: Easily integrate your Miva Merchant into Facebook

I had a personal page. From there I created a business (fan) page of which I am the admin. So I am the admin on my personal and business page. Then I added the app to the business page. Per FB rules, you cannot do business on a personal page. That has to be on your business page.

[wajake41]

Re: Easily integrate your Miva Merchant into Facebook

Hello Bill: I was having a problem getting the shipping calculation in my FB app, displayed on the BASKFB page. The problem was, when I calculated shipping on that page, the site's SFNT page was being displayed.
I looked at the SHIPCALC module and have modified the following 2 conditionals there by adding BASKFB:

conditional before:
<mvt:if expr="g.Screen CIN 'PLST|SRCH|MINI|BASK|SHIPCALC'">

conditional after:
<mvt:if expr="g.Screen CIN 'PLST|SRCH|MINI|BASK|SHIPCALC|BASKFB'">.

This appears to have fixed the problem I was having with the display of shipping on my BASKFB page. Does this look like the proper solution?

Regards, Larry

[wcw]

Re: Easily integrate your Miva Merchant into Facebook

Yes, that would be the solution.