Father time has not treated the SourceCoast website well. Originally launched as a 'brochure-ware' site for pitching Joomla consulting services, it morphed into the home of the best extensions for Facebook integration with Joomla and LinkedIn integration with Joomla. Because of the large shift in focus, and the drastic shift in web technology and design, the old site had become a bit of a mess as content sprawled in different areas and wasn't as easy to find as we'd have liked.

So, late last year, we began the migration process to move from Joomla 1.5 to Joomla 2.5 and got in touch with our good friend Cory Webb and Manos Crafted. Cory and his lead designer, Brendan Pittman, put together this amazing site design you see here. I can't describe how excited we were when we saw the first mockups, and I hope you find the new design just as exciting.

Goals of the New Site

The new design had one goal: Be clean and easy to navigate. It is completely focused on our social networking extensions and is meant to make answers to common questions easy to find. There was a ton of work done to make things simpler, from subscription management to improved HTML emails to a responsive, mobile design for getting information anywhere.

Improved Subscription Management

We're very excited to now be using Akeeba Subscriptions to manage our subscriptions. WIth the new system, we're able to offer a lot more flexibility in subscriptions, pricing, and general management. A few of the big changes AkeebaSubs has allowed for are:

• Automatic Invoicing - Always a pain when required, and never timely, now it's a cinch to immediately get an invoice.
• Upgrade Pricing - Did you buy JFBConnect? Now you can upgrade to the SocialBundle and get an automatic discount based on your JFBConnect subscription time remaining. 
• Renewal Discounts - For our loyal customers with active subscriptions, we're now providing a 25% discount when you renew.
• Easier Management - See all your subscriptions in one easy to manage location

It's worth noting that we also evaluated PayPlans. Although we didn't choose it, they are a great subscriptions extension that is well worth mentioning. Akeeba Subscriptions simply already worked with some of the features we had and wanted to continue using going forward.

What Else Changed?

New Affiliate Program

We have moved to a new Joomla affiliate program. SourceCoast now uses ShareASale to track and payout all referal purchases. The previous affiliate software we were using was outdated, cumbersome, and more hands-on than using a 3rd party service like ShareASale.

Our affiliate program commission remains at 20%, and we hope you'll join up to be a part of this great new launch.

6 Month Subscriptions are Standard

Previously, we offered both 6 and 12 month subscriptions. With the move to Akeeba Subscriptions, the 12 month offering was no longer necessary. With the ability to automatically provide discounts for renewals, the 12 month subscription option simply complicates things. The goal of the new site is simplicity, and halving the number of subscription offerings while still providing discounts to our loyal users was an easy choice.

Going Forward

We have a lot more content and minor tweaks to make. Expect more tutorial videos, more documentation, and more images of features and configuration settings throughout the site. The goal of simplicity will always be our mantra going forward and we hope to always make finding what you're looking for a cinch.

If you're interested in what's under the hood on our website, including all the extensions we've chosen, make sure you subscribe to our Joomla Extensions Blog Feed. We're planning an detailed post outlining each of our extension choices. We put a lot of thought into every facet of the new site and can't wait to share all the choices with you!

Hopefully, everything will go smoothly with the new launch. We've done extensive testing, but issues will always arise. If you run into problems, please post it in our Joomla Support Forums or Contact Us about the problem.

 

Facebook recently began sending notices to many users of JFBConnect, the Facebook integration suite for Joomla, notifying them of upcoming changes to the Facebook platform. This email, referencing the "July 2013 Breaking Changes", contains some information on Facebook integration features that your site may use.

Please rest assured that the current releases of JFBConnect fully supports the upcoming changes. In almost all cases, you should experience no altered behavior, but there are a few things to watch depending on how you may have implemented your Facebook Like buttons or Facebook Comment boxes in Joomla.

Background

Facebook periodically makes changes to their application platform that can change the behavior of existing features. When they do this, they create a 'migration' setting in your application. This allows you to enable the upcoming breaking change early and ensure that the features you are using are ready for the upcoming changes.

The primary changes in the July 2013 Breaking Changes update are:

Social Plugins (Like Button, Like Box) without absolute URL's in their `href` parameter:

This change simply means that you can no longer use a Like button that refers to a URL by using a relative link, like "/page/your-page.html". Instead, the URL should be a full, absolute, URL, like "http://yoursite.com/page/your-page.html".

JFBConnect always creates absolute links for Like buttons, Like-Box (JFBCFan), Comment boxes, or any other feature. The only way your site may be affected by this change is if you have created an instance of any of the above modules (or are using the {JFBCxxx} tag) and have used a relative link in the HREF parameter. If so, you should update any such instances to include your full website URL.

Non-threaded comments. Please see the developer roadmap for more details about this change:

In the future, the comment box will allow for replies to replies, generating much more engagement and an overall better commenting experience. If your notice showed this message, it simply means that you are using comment boxes on your site, but have not enabled the migration yet.

JFBConnect Handles It All For You

One of the huge benefits of using JFBConnect for Joomla is that you don't have to worry about these things. By using the Autotune utility built-in to JFBConnect, your migration settings are always kept up-to-date. If you haven't run the Autotune wizard recently, we recommend doing so. This will automatically enable the upcoming July 2013 Breaking Changes migration setting.

If you enable the migration setting and find that any of your Facebook integration features for Joomla start misbehaving, just let us know. We have excellent Joomla support so you can focus on your site and not the nuances of Facebook integration.

We're very excited to announce a new SCLogin module freely available to any users of Joomla 3.1, Joomla 3.0 and Joomla 2.5. This module is based off the Joomla 3.x login module, with improvements like a horizontal mode, streamlined looks, and a modal popup view for login and registration. Additionally, the new module seamlessly integrates with JFBConnect for Joomla Facebook integration or JLinked for LinkedIn integration with Joomla, letting you easily let users login using 2 of the most popular social networks in a slick looking login module.

Horizontal or Vertical. You Choose.

With our social extensions, we get the question all the time: How can I make the login module horizontal? Previously, this took lots of CSS or overrides to get the standard Joomla login module to play nice. With our improved SCLogin module, it's an easily set parameter.

Streamlined Looks

Joomla 3.x users are familiar with the new Login module's looks. While not a drastic change from Joomla 2.5, the newer login module is definitely an improvement. With the SCLogin module, we've made additional tweaks based on feedback from our users and testing to make things more clear and easy to use. If you're on Joomla 3.0 or Joomla 3.1, you should be familiar with the overall looks. For Joomla 2.5 users, get ready for a great looking login module.

Modal Popup Option

Tight on space? Looking for something a little more fancy? Use the Modal popup option for a slick looking login form that fits on any page.

 

Social Network Integration

If you're using JFBConnect, for the best Facebook Joomla integration, or JLinked, for Joomla LinkedIn integration, the SCLogin module will automatically include your social login buttons. For maximum flexibility, you can choose the type of social buttons (icon, icon + text, custom image, or Javascript social network default) and location (under or on the side of the login form).

Get it now

The SC Login module is a completely free download for all Joomla 2.5 and Joomla 3.1 users. To get the enhanced login module and get started, please visit the SCLogin Download Page. You will need to be logged in to download.

The newest release of JFBConnect, v5.0, is available now. This release of the most popular Facebook for Joomla integration extension has been vastly improved with new features, faster load times, and sets the foundation for adding Twitter and Google+ authentication and integration over the next few releases.

After more than 5 years of development, JFBConnect has constantly been improved with new features, such as Open Graph Actions, Facebook Requests, and constantly changing and updated social widgets from Facebook. This new release focuses more on the roots of what made, and has kept us so popular over all this time: profile integration, excellent Joomla support and an eye on the ever-evolving Facebook capabilities.

Joomla 3.0 Social Networking

JFBConnect now officially supports Joomla 3.0 for Facebook integration. This release is every bit as powerful, yet easy to configure, as our previous releases. We're happy to say that we've done more testing with this version of JFBConnect than on any previous release, and it shows. After more than a week of being available, our support requests have gone down significantly and there's no 5.0.1 version in sight.

Profile import from Facebook for JomSocial, Community Builder, Kunena, and more

This new release has a completely new profile integration system, built from the ground up. This new plugin system will allow a much easier creation of profile plugins to let you import profile information from your social network of choice into any Joomla extension.

Right now, we have plugins for JomSocial, Community Builder, K2, Kunena, and Virtuemart. The same social profile plugins also work for both JFBConnect and JLinked, our LinkedIn for Joomla integration extension, making configuration and integration of both social networks into Joomla simple.

Rounding things out

This release has many other improvements as well:

• Like, Comment, Fanbox, and other social widgets now use HTML5 tags, which load faster and have improved HTML validation. 
• Speed improvements in the login process to minimize requests sent to Facebook and fewer overall database queries. 
• New social widgets from Facebook, like the "Follow" module and added new parameters to all the other modules to make sure they offer all the features available from Facebook.
• Lots of other enhancements and bug-fixes. For more information, see the full JFBConnect changelog.

The Future

We know very well what's made us so popular for the last 5 years, and we know what our users our looking for from us now. In the coming months and the remainder of this year, we have a lot of improvements planned. Here's the short-list, though this just scratches the surface:

• An overhauled Login module, with new designs, AJAX functionality, and much better looks
• Twitter Authentication and Profile import
• Google+ Authentication and Profile import
• New Google+ "Interactive Posts", similar to Open Graph Actions
• Automatic posting of articles to your favorite Social Networks
• Lots more of that good ole' Facebook integration

Thank you!

We love all of our users, and are so happy to see the amazing Joomla sites that have been made with Facebook integration. We're so excited to work for you over the next 5 years developing the best social networking integration extension for Joomla!

After more than a month of waiting on the premiere Joomla Facebook extension, Joomla 1.5 administrators can now add Facebook Open Graph Actions to their websites.

This new Joomla 1.5 compatible release follows our extremely successful launch of Facebook's Open Graph Action integration for Joomla 2.5 in late November. With the new JFBConnect v4.3 release for Joomla 1.5 Facebook integration, you'll be able to register and log users in with their Facebook accounts, automatically post 'actions' to their Facebook Timeline as they read your content or otherwise interact with your site, let your users send invitations for your site, specify the Joomla Open Graph tags, integrate Joomla with your Facebook Page, and so much more.

This release will be the final feature release for Joomla 1.5 Facebook integration. But don't worry, it's been packed with features over it's 4 years of development. Additionally, we will be fully supporting it for the foreseeable future with bug-fixes and technical support for all of our users.

With JFBConnect, you'll be able to easily manage your Facebook Joomla 1.5 features, and be ready to move to Joomla 2.5 and Joomla 3.0 when you're ready.

Joomla Facebook Feature List

The partial feature list available for Joomla 1.5 Facebook integration includes:

• Facebook Login for Joomla
• Facebook Invites for Joomla
• Profile integration with JomSocial, Kunena, K2, Community Builder, and more
• Facebook Open Graph for Joomla (Describe your content to Facebook for wall posts)
• Open Graph Actions for Joomla (Automatically post user activity to Facebook)
• Facebook Page Tab and Canvas integration

Joomla 1.5 is still a very popular platform, and your website deserves the best and most fully featured Facebook functionality. It deserves the Facebook integration that Joomla.org and 10,000+ other websites use. It deserves JFBConnect!

To start integrating Facebook for Joomla 1.5, subscribe below and you'll be up and running in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee:

New Releases & Support for 6 Months - $59.99

Facebook for Joomla 3.0

It's coming! With our final Joomla 1.5 feature release out the door, we're in the final stages of our Facebook for Joomla 3.x release. The updated version which fully supports Facebook for Joomla 2.5 and 3.0+ will be out in January, 2013.

We're as excited as you to see the best Joomla Facebook integration for the 2 most recent versions of Joomla.

Remember last month when we told you how our new version JFBConnect, the premier Joomla Facebook extension for Joomla, would support Facebook Open Graph Actions? Remember how excited you were? How you imagined how much traction your Joomla site would get, if only those crazy SourceCoast folks would finally release their new product? Well, it’s here. And it’s awesome. Your Facebook efforts are about to get easier and more powerful. Open Graph Actions can be implemented on your site today. No more waiting. No more hoping your users will share your stuff. JFBConnect eases people into action. Call it a bit passive aggressive. Or call it smart. Set it up and watch as your website gets the kind of promotion it deserves.

How will JFBConnect help my Joomla site gain Facebook exposure?

Your site design grabs the eye. Your content intrigues. Your users should share your stuff. But they don’t always. Maybe they get excited and click on your next page. Maybe they just forget to share. Maybe they don’t know how to share. Now, Open Graph Actions shares it for them. Once they login with Facebook, JFBConnect kicks in and describes your page to Facebook using Open Graph tags and then pushes their actions to their Facebook Timeline.

Watch the short video below. It starts by showing the power of Facebook's Open Graph Actions on your Joomla site, and quickly shows how easy it is to setup.

{youtube}xswMcK5zkQA{/youtube}

How easy is it to set up?

We said zen. And we mean it. Unlike most efforts to increase your social media presence, JFBConnect is simple. This four minute video takes you through the basics uses and the initial setup. Once you get it going, you may decide to tweak the setting here or there. But Open Graph Actions are like the conveyor belt of social media marketing. Once you set it up, it will automatically pass your info on down the line with no extra effort on your part. And JFBConnect monitors what your users are passing along from Joomla to Facebook and when. So, you can see what areas of your site are reaping the most social media benefits using the Activity Log area.

How soon can I start monitoring the effects of JFBConnect?

Ummmm…About fifteen minutes from right now. Is that soon enough? Ok, you may not have anyone login in that time. But you can have the intial setup done in that time. The video is four minutes. And we’ll give you five minutes to putz around, drink a few sips of coffee, and log in.

What about Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 3.0?

We're planning to release the Open Graph Actions compatible version of JFBConnect for Joomla 1.5 by the middle of December. The Joomla 3.0 compatible version will be released in January.

How do I start?

If you already have an active subscription to JFBConnect, simply go to your My Downloads area and get it now or automatically update from the JFBConnect Overview section in the admin area of your site. If you don't have a subscription, go ahead and get one now. You can be up and running today!

New Releases & Support for 6 Months - $59.99

In anticipation of our upcoming v4.3 release of JFBConnect later this month and our excitement to speak at the Joomla World Conference, we're offering our first ever special offer on our extensions!

Joomla World Conference

The first Joomla World Conference has been a long time in the planning and we're so excited that it's almost here. Next week, from November 16th-18th in San Jose California, the largest Joomla Conference will be underway.

SourceCoast is proud to be presenting on Facebook Integration for your Joomla site using JFBConnect, the best Facebook integration extension used on tens of thousands of websites, including the Joomla Extension Directory itself.

If you don't already have your tickets, get them now. We'd love to meet all of our users.

Special Offer - 2 Months Extra for All Subscriptions

From now thru Sunday, November 18th (the last day of the JWC), all subscriptions will be for an extra 2 months! No coupon codes necessary.

Thinking about JFBConnect? Now is the perfect time to subscribe for 6 months and get 8 months of product updates, support, documentation access and more! Love JFBConnect already, purchase the year-long subscription at the standard 20% discount and get all benefits for 14 months!

Already have an active subscription? Not to worry! If you re-subscribe now, we'll extend your current subscription by 8 or 14 months. You'll also receive the automatic renewal discount of about 20% on our normal subscription prices! (Please be patient though, it may take a day or so to merge your subscriptions.. our system won't do this automatically).

This offer works for our Social Bundles as well, in case you've been wanting to add LinkedIn integration to your site!

One of the most requested features we've received for JFBConnect over the last year has been for support for Facebook Timeline events based on Open Graph Actions. With the upcoming release, these actions can be posted automatically and there will be integration with many other extensions. It's all coming in our biggest update to JFBConnect ever, and it's coming soon.

If you don't know anything about Open Graph Actions or Timeline events, or want to learn more about our support, read on for how you can use what Facebook says can have highest click-thru rate of any of their organic promotional tools and how you'll be able to implement them in Joomla.

Timeline? What It Is and How To Use It.

So what is a Timeline event? Simply put, they are entries in a user's Facebook Timeline that occur when a user does something on your site. Instead of a wall post for the user, a Timeline event doesn't require the user's explicit approval for each post. They are intentionally meant for many 'small' actions on your site, which can post regularly as a user reads your content, reviews a product, writes a comment, or does anything else of note on your page.

If you or your friends have used Spotify and see the updates of what you're friends are listening too, you've see Timeline actions.

These Timeline entries (below) appear in the friends 'Timeline Ticker' which immediately promotes the action the user has taken. Additionally, a wall post (above) may be generated which will show to the user's friends.

How Will JFBConnect Let Me Create Open Graph Actions?

With the upcoming release of JFBConnect, there will be an easy system for marking each page of your Joomla site as a type of Joomla Facebook Open Graph Object. Then, you'll be able to create unlimited Actions that can interact with these Objects. So, for example, you can mark all Joomla articles in a specific category as an object of "Article" (see image below). Then, you just need to create a "Read" action and anytime a Facebook user logs into your site and reads your content, an entry will be made in their timeline with a link to that article.

Additionally, you can create "Recommend", "Enjoy", "Commented" or other Actions a user can take on that page by clicking a button or through some interaction on the page. These actions can automatically create more Timeline events for the user about the page, indicating that the user is really enjoying interacting with your Joomla content.

Open Graph Actions in Joomla will still take some configuration to get everything right, but JFBConnect is going to make the process as simple and automated as possible. In addition, you can be assured that all the options are available to you to make sure you strictly adhere to the Facebook Platform Terms of Service which have different restrictions on specific types of actions.

3rd Party Extension Support

With the new release of JFBConnect, we're adding a new plugin group specifically for Open Graph support. With these plugins, you'll be able to easily add support for multiple 3rd party extensions. We'll initially be creating plugins for some of the most popular 3rd party extensions. If yours isn't supported, our plugin system has been designed from the ground up to be simple. With as little as a dozen lines of code, you'll be able to add Open Graph Action support to any extension or feature you want on your site.

Check back next week for information on some of the 3rd party extensions we'll initially be supporting.

We Want to Hear From You

We'd love to hear from you! What are you looking for in Open Graph Actions? How are you planning to use this new promotional tool? What questions or comments do you have? What other extensions would you like to see support Open Graph Actions through our plugin system? Are you an extension developer.. get in touch.

And if you want to stay up-to-date, make sure you follow our Facebook Page and sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of this page.

The newest version of JFBConnect, v4.2.5, was just released. This update fixes some minor bugs that certain configurations of JFBConnect may run into.

Bugs fixed include:

• Enabling auto-login can prevent email notifications or Alpha User Point rewards on new Facebook Likes or Facebook Comments.
• Permission requests on login can be incorrect for certain fields imported from Facebook.
• Password length was not properly checked during registration, allowing users to register with very short passwords.

For all of the changes, see the full JFBConnect changelog. While the update is not required and may not affect all users, we always recommended you use the latest version to ensure the smoothest operation for your Facebook integration.

Great news! In August, LinkedIn added the ability to fetch a user's email address. We updated our LinkedIn for Joomla extension, JLinked (JED Listing), to take advantage of this and added other new features as well! The new release, v1.3, is available now and allows for pulling of a user's email address into the registration form automatically. Additionally, we've added the auto-username feature of JFBConnect to automatically select an available username for your new visitors.

This will be the final feature release of the v1.x series of JLinked. The next release, v2.0, will be out later this year and support a fully automatic, 1-click, registration process. That has been one of the major requests for JLinked, and has been awesome for users of JFBConnect for years now. With the new email address ability, we can finally implement that with JLinked, and we're excited to do so!

If you haven't already seen it, we highly recommend checking out our Roadmap to Joomla 3.0 blog post. This release will also the last feature release available for Joomla 1.5. Bug fix releases (v1.3.x) and support will be still be available for Joomla 1.5 if issues arise.

As always, we offer a 20% discount on JLinked if you are already a subscriber to JFBConnect, the Facebook for Joomla integration extension. There are also discounts for the social bundle package for both JLinked and JFBConnect available now! For more information, see all extension options.