This is a plugin configuration guide for the Elgg plugin – “galliFBinvite” which will allow your site users to invite their Facebook friends to join the site.

Download Elgg pluginDemo

Requirements

1. An Elgg 1.8.X site.
2. Filezilla
3. A google account (optional)
4. and basic knowledge to create a Facebook app.

Installation

1. Download the plugin from elgg’s plugin repo.
2. Unzip it > Upload it to mod directory.
3. Enable it in the admin panel.
4. Enter your Facebook AppID.
5. Now a link to notify the facebook friends will appear on the invitation page at http://your-elgg-site.com/invite/
6. Don’t forget to clear your Elgg site’s cache after saving / changing the AppID

How to create a Facebook App ID?

1. To create an app, visit https://developers.facebook.com/
2. Login with your facebook ID and go to https://developers.facebook.com/apps
3. Once you are there, click on the “Create new app” button.
4. On the popup window that appears, fill in the App name and other details and save it.
5. Now you will be redirected to a page where you can fill in the remaining details.  (See the attached image)
6. Fill in all the details.
   Make sure you don’t add “http://” or “https://” prefix when you  save App domains
   Make sure to use “https://” when you enter Secure canvas URL. If you don’t have “https://” see the google drive trick.
   

Why we are using googledrive URL for Canvas URL?

• For the secure canvas URL parameter, it is mandatory that you have to use a URL with https://. If you dont have an SSL certificate installed in your server, you can use the service of google drive for this purpose. Google Drive will allow you to host your own website and resource files.

How to host website files in Google drive?

1. You need to upload your website file to a folder inside Google Drive.
2. Set the sharing permissions of that folder as public.
3. Open the file that you uploaded in the Google Docs viewer and then click the “Preview” link to get the URL of your website.

You can also do this easily with help of a small script.

1. Download the zip file attached here.
2. Extract it to your desktop.
3. Open the index.html file with help of notepad or any text editor and replace “http://www.yoursiteurl.com/” with the address of your domain.
4. Zip that html file again.
5. Then use this small script here to upload that zip file to your Google Drive.
6. Once the file has uploaded, the tool will generate the public URL of your website in the same step.
7. Copy this URL and paste it in the Secure canvas URL field.

How to use this for other softwares?

If you want to use the same functionality for other softwares like wordpress, blogger etc.. copy the following code and paste it in your widget. Dont forget to replace “YOUR_APPID” with the App Id from facebook.

<script type="text/javascript">
jQuery(document).ready(function(d, s, id) {
    var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
    if (d.getElementById(id)) {
		return;
	}
	js = d.createElement(s); 
	js.id = id;
	js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=11&appId=YOUR_APPID";
	js.async = "async";
	fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, 'script'));
window.fbAsyncInit = function(){
	FB.init({
		appId: 'YOUR_APPID',
		frictionlessRequests: true,
		cookie:true,
		status:true,
		xfbml:true
	});
};			
function sendRequestViaMultiFriendSelector() {
	FB.ui({
		method: "apprequests",
		title: "Visit my SITE_NAME",
		message: "Hi, Visit my site"		
	});
}  
if (top.location!= self.location){
	top.location = self.location
}
</script>
<div id="fb-root"></div>
<a href='#' onclick="sendRequestViaMultiFriendSelector();">Invite facebook friends</a>

You can see a demo of this at http://www.cheenachatti.com/. Click on the “Tell friends” link on the sidebar and invite your friends.

Tags: facebook friends invite, facebook invite, facebook notification, invite facebook friends