Intro
Facebook is more recognizable than the letters "NFL." Much of today's gold standard of networking coincides with Facebook and it's entities - Even politicians are trying to get activists to "fan" them on Facebook (or follow them on Twitter). With over 500 million active users, website developers couldn't go wrong by integrating the social media monopoly onto their own pages.
If you're a dumb blonde like me, I decided to write up this tutorial in hopes to inspire new developers out there to get with it and start Facebooking! I'll leave it all short and sweet, but if you want the more in-depth instructions and how-to's (but who wants to read all of that!?), click here to proceed to the official Facebook Developers page.
Creating Your App
First things first, you must create your application in order to receive the App ID/API Key and the secret App Key. This goes for pretty much every shared media website that will allow developers to work in the backend, which ties into what an API key is: API stands for "application programming interface," and allows different softwares to communicate with each other. In this case, Facebook specifications will be communicating with your commands, and Facebook will serve as the main host for your content that will be shared.
Click here to open up where to create your app.
- Click the link above. On that page, select "Create New App."
- Fill in all required fields (app name & app namespace; obviously if you have your own web host, you do not need Heroku).
- Fill in the security check.
- Fill in your information within the Basic Settings.
- Congratulations, you own an app.
Super simple, right? Keep in mind that your App ID and App Secret ID are the codes you need for integrating Facebook into your website. Keep them handy for the next few tutorials.
Ok, Cool... Now What?
Now that you have an application to put to work, you can successfully proceed on to bigger and better things, like:
- Integrating Photo Albums
- Integrating Videos
