I'm looking for a talented developer to help with the Drupal for Facebook project. This is cool project, making Drupal a world-class platform for building facebook apps!

In addition to Drupal for Facebook, we'll build an application showcasing what can be done when Drupal is the back end. Sponsorship by the Knight Foundation makes this work possible.

drupalforfacebook.org has been overrun with spam recently. Because I was on vacation, I didn't catch it as it was happening. And man, a lot of spam content a comments were posted to this server.

I named this project "Drupal for Facebook" imagining an install profile or distribution of Drupal with all the extras needed to host a Facebook Application. While I like the name, it has two problems, namely the two trademarked terms "Drupal" and "Facebook".

The owner of the Drupal trademark (Dries) is reasonable. He understands that non-profit projects will use the term and generally Drupal is better off for it. The pit bulls in Facebook's legal department... let's just say they don't see things the same way. They are hassling me about the name. Rather than fight the power, I'm going to rename the project. But to what, I don't know.

Maybe you're thinking, "what took you so long?" At long last this site is upgraded to Drupal 6.x. We're running a recent version of Acquia Drupal, with the Drupal for Facebook modules installed.

Wouldn't surprise me if the upgrade has broken or changed things unexpectedly. So let me know if you encounter any problems.

I just wrote up some goals for the Drupal for Facebook project. Rather than duplicate the information here, please see the original blog post.

I'm asking for help, both financial and otherwise. Please contribute if you can. This will speed development along, and the community will shower you with love and affection.

My most recent check-in changes the hook_fb API. I have a feeling not many users are implementing their own hook_fb, so I don't expect this to inconvenience anyone.

If you are, the new parameters are:

hook_fb($op, $data, &$return)

$op will tell your hook what is expected of it. See fb.module for the list of ops.

$data is an array containins a variety of things, depending on the $op. Most importantly, $data['fb_app'] and $data[$fb] will be set when these are known.

$return is a data structure which your app can set, for those ops which expect a returned value.

I've checked in some features specific to Facebook Connect. In order for any of it to work, the theme must be "facebook-aware". As intimidating as this sounds, it's no big deal.

As an example, I've modified Drupal's default theme, garland, to support the XFBML login button. All it took was minor modifications to the page.tpl.php file. I'm attaching a diff, for your convenience.

I plan to attend the upcoming Bay Area Drupal Camp. For those interested in learning about Drupal for Facebook, I've proposed a session. If you might attend, please vote for it now. Without votes, it will not be included in the program.

I'm also going to hold a smaller session there for developers who want to get Drupal for Facebook up and running. If you've run into problems and would like to ask me in person or if you're new to DFF and want a jump start, that may be the session for you: http://badcamp.net/session/drupal-facebook-hackathon

As you probably know, Facebook recently introduced a number of changes to their API. To use the new API, you need a new PHP library from Facebook, which adds several functions as well as changing and removing others. To support the new API I've had to make the same sort of changes to the Drupal for Facebook modules. With so many changes, I'm calling the new code version 2.

The new facebook profile comes with an updated API for writing feed messages. As of now, this site is using that new API. So please let me know if you see anything looking wrong, or error messages.

The new API includes templates for one-line, short, and longer feed messages. So after you post a topic to these forums you'll see a link to the topic written to your feed. And you can choose the longer feed format to include the teaser of your post right on your facebook wall.