Goals of the Project :-
- Automatically copy content (text, images, videos, events, and comments) from a Facebook profile or wall and integrate it into a SilverStripe site
- This one is tricky as it will require a cron job to pick up the data from Facebook and post it in the form of articles.
- Provide a similar functionality for the other direction -- content posted on a SilverStripe site should automatically be pushed to Facebook
- This one is relatively easy as the POST button will trigger a content push onto Facebook using the Open Graph (publish_stream)
- Integrate Facebook photo albums into a SilverStripe site
- This one can be achieved in a similar visual manner as the Flickr one. Open Graph(user_photos) can be used to pick up photos and make a carousel album viewer.
- Use Facebook comments on a SilverStripe page (including the avatar)
- This one is probably the easiest one as it will require addition of only a small script as a module in the bottom of articles & then things like Comment number can be be pushed( in a similar manner as sites like techcrunch do it).
- Possibly extend Will’s module for profile management in SilverStripe (trying to reuse as much information from Facebook as possible), only in this direction
- This one is also relatively easy and can be achieved using the PHP-SDK.
Now the Comment system can be implemented as a standalone module so as to keep the whole integration modular and make it easy to turn ON/OFF commenting.
Facebook Photo albums also be separated to give a module like the Flickr one.while the second one can be attached as a Push to the post script or can be added as a button to the users who have enabled the module so as to give them choice over what content to push or not.I am still working on the details of how to implement the first one as a cron job(doing it in a manner like where user can selectively push will be easier but more cumbersome)I think we can begin by first implementing the comment system followed by the Photo album/Post to FB and then can follow with the rest.
@Philipp Sir : While we are at it we can also integrate Twitter so that when the blogger publishes a post it's title and a link to it is pushed to the Twitter Feed(in a manner similar to Tumblr does it) of the publisher. Bloggers will love this tool as most of them have a good and active reader following on Twitter . This can be achieved by using the Oauth system that Twitter uses.
Concerning the cron job, you might want to take a look at http://deadlytechnology.com/silverstripe/scheduled-tasks/
However, this assumes users can set up a cron job, which might not be possible on shared hosts.
Drupal has a module called Poormanscron, which replaces this requirement and triggers jobs by requests to the website. However, this is rather a standalone module and beyond the scale of your project - just to point out an alternative.
How you want to approach this is up to you.
Here's a tricky question: You'll get an endless stream of activities from FB - how do you want to add them to your site? Keep the last X entries and remove the others, post everything to the blog module where every entry is a dedicated blog entry,...?
Another tricky question: How do you handle updates to your site? If it's new content, you'll probably want to post it to FB, if it's a minor correction you probably won't (as there are no updates to FB entries). Do you want to handle this automatically, provide a checkbox ("post to FB"),...?
Ok - some more details in the final application would be nice. If you already know how you'll do that, we don't need to discuss it here right away. I'd only want you to have a good understanding of each task, so that we can establish sensible estimates for the implementation.
What's the scope here - can we only comment on pages or also on DataObjects? You might want to take a look at SilverStripe's comment module (which has been part of core, but has now been moved into a dedicated module) for possible solutions.
P.S. In the spreadsheet no mentor has shown interest in this project so wouldn't pursuing it be futile. Also, is there a preferential treatment to early application submitter.
i am still unclear on the selective post thing, is the feature of Facebook -> SS Site intended for Pages profiles more than person profiles? If it is intended for personal profiles then wouldn't we need to make a system to separate out the personal content from the content fit to be in the public site.
and also is the commenting system is to be replaced/enhanced(login functions) by the facebook one or should the facebook commenting system be implemented in the form of a widget so as to selectively allow the page admin to switch between the tow systems.
Do i have to give a timeline here also as few have done?
How much time should i leave for writing documentation, unit testing etc(things that are not core to the functionality)?
You're welcome to lodge multiple applications, although
as Philipp said, we'd appreciate if you give us some indication on your preferences.
Thanks!
Ingo