There seems to be quite a few different social media modules?
Which ones work best for you and why?
Here are the ones I've found with stable releases:
- Social Field
- This one seems to have a pretty major bug that makes it difficult to use.
- Easy Social
- This module seems to be focused on allowing users to like and share your content.
- Ridiculously Responsive Social Share Buttons
- Share This
- On the Web
- A pretty easy module to create a block with social media icons that link to your social media accounts. Does not provide "share this" functionality.
- Instagram Feed
- Instagram Block
- Facebook Page
Am I missing any?
EDIT: I've added suggestions from others to my original list.
Comments
I think I tried out on the web, but decided instead to just do links with font awesome icons as that fitted better into my design. I haven't tried any for liking or sharing to social media.
I've generally used this one in Drupal and Wordpress. We don't have it yet. https://www.drupal.org/project/addtoany
I never found anything good for Drupal. But perhaps my clients aren't generally big on social media. I am using "on the Web" for Backdrop and I really like it. It would be nice to be able to link to Font Awesome to use their icons and get more options.
On The Web does support FontAwesome: https://github.com/backdrop-contrib/on_the_web/issues/6
I usually use Ridiculously Responsive Social Share Buttons, but was never 100% happy with the module.
I thought there was a social media module for Backdrop that put the social icons on the side of the page, floating, like this:
Anyone, know what this is or if there is a module for this?
Should there be?
No need to run around for modules, everything is much simpler. Set up your widget, get the code, paste it into a custom block, and display this block on the desired pages. https://sharethis.com/platform/share-buttons/
Or, if you want to make links to your social media pages (not share buttons), then this is easy to do using icons, HTML and CSS. Get creative, it’s interesting and simplifies your work, forget about ready-made modules.
Our site only has a "private, members only" presence on Facebook. Do any of the social media modules allow linking to private pages? The block would only be shown to logged-in members.
Also, I need a way to capture Facebook posts to place on the website. Several members post their field trip photos and comments there, because the Facebook app makes it so easy. Some are Facebook addicts, and are always logged into and monitoring Facebook. Members rarely log into the website, and only a few help with content. Facebook has made looking at actual websites almost obsolete, and satisfies that need for immediate gratification. However, Facebook posts age off to the point they are difficult to find later.
I log onto Facebook periodically, copy photos and comments, then create or update pages on the website. Is there an easier way to do this?
I would assume that most of these modules will allow you to link to a private Facebook group. It's just that anyone following the link will get some kind of access denied message, when they arrive.
@Viki - Backdrop doesn't know if a user has access to your specific Facebook group. But, as you suggested, you could create a social media block (or Facebook only block) that is only visible to authenticated users. Or you could create a role for people who are members of the Facebook group and only show the block to them.
Are you encouraging others to join the Facebook group? Do you want to show the Facebook block to everyone with a note that indicates that new users will need to apply to join the group?
@Viki - I don't have a good answer for this. However, if it is something you have to do a lot, I would think you MIGHT be able to get someone to write a custom script for you that would scrape the content from a specific Facebook post and upload it to a node in Backdrop CMS.
But, this would require custom code and may or may not be worth the effort. Again, if you are doing this a lot, a script could make the job eaiser, but would come at a price.
Hopefully someone else has a better idea for you.
Facebook makes it really quite difficult to do that sort of thing. I've used this for Drupal because I needed to embed videos from Facebook. It was a challenge to get setup. https://www.drupal.org/project/media_entity_facebook
I don't exactly know how it would work in Backdrop because we don't do media in the same way.
Why is everyone running for modules? Ask your users to add a link to their Facebook in their profile on the site (make the link field “My Facebook”) and display it in a block using Views - Name, avatar, link, anywhere, taking into account the role, in any quantity.
Why copy photos and comments? Facebook allows you to quickly share a post by copying an <iframe>. Make the content type “Posts from Facebook”, make an insertion field <iframe>, make a field to connect content with the site User (author of the post), use Views for pages, lists, blocks, carousels. People will see the posts and go to Facebook if they want to read the comments. Make it possible to have a conversation on your site under every post https://developers.facebook.com/products/social-plugins/comments/
This sounds like it might be useful, though some of it is over my head because I'm an admin, not a programmer. The group's Facebook book is private, and is not open to the public. Members are somewhat "vetted" before being allowed to join, because we volunteer with paleontologists on their private digs that can't be shared with the public. If we put out a public dig notice, we'd have 50+ people showing up who had no clue how to conduct themselves on a researchers dig site. We have to meet them, and see how they fit with the needs and ethics of the group. It's not a "come one, come all" kind of group.
So it wouldn't be "tell everyone to put their Facebook name on their user page". It would be only connecting to the private Facebook page in order to capture those postings to the website.
As I was looking through the modules, I remember one specifically said it couldn't link to private Facebook pages, but don't remember which one. Most didn't mention this at all.
You've given me some food for thought, thank you!
You're not going to be able to embed private posts. I don't think anything will make that work.
Facebook permissions are a separate issue. But certainly no module can bypass them. It may be worth reconsidering how to separate the private and public sides of the process, it's up to you to decide.
I worked with public pages of companies that need maximum publicity, and based on this I described my experience.