phpFox and AITOC Inc. would like to introduce Googles' OpenSocial API support for phpFox v1.6.x.
This allows your phpFox site the ability to become a member of the large OpenSocial family, include some of the well-known and popular communities such as MySpace, Hi5, Orkut, Friendster, Ning, Yahoo! and many others.
Our Open Social Module will give you the opportunity to enjoy all the benefits of the API, like using OpenSocial Gadgets and sharing data between different OpenSocial communities by the means of Gadgets.
The peculiarity of phpFox is that it is not a single community like those, mentioned above. It is a platform to build your own social networking community. This means your phpFox site with Open Social support will become an OpenSocial Container with its own collection of Gadgets and its own Gadget access policies.
But you don't just get the plain functionality for running OpenSocial Gadgets, you also get a set of features to manage it all.
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As an Administrator you will be able to add any OpenSocial Gadgets to your site by direct URL. So basically you are not limited to any fixed list of Gadgets. |
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- PHP version: 5.2.x
- PHP extensions: 'json', 'SimpleXML', 'libxml', 'curl', 'openssl', 'mcrypt'
- PHP INI values: always_populate_raw_post_data = On (recommended),
safe_mode = Off - PHP functions avalibility: ini_set, ini_get
You can download a test script here.
Unpack it in the /plugins/ folder on your server and point to it on your favorite web browser.
i.e. http://www.yoursite.com/plugins/requirements_teste...
If you are a developer and would like to release your OpenSocial Gadget to our community or discuss on how to create a new OpenSocial Gadget for phpFox we welcome you to join our OpenSocial community.
Our OpenSocial community is open to everyone wheter they are a client of ours or not.
If you would like to get a hold of our product to create your OpenSocial gadget we have a Developers Program, which grants developers a special license to use our product free of charge.
Near the end of last year we announced that soon phpFox will have support for Google's OpenSocial API's. That time is soon here and our partners AITOC, INC have setup a live demo for all of us to publicly test this new module. The current ETA is that it will be released publicly next week at the earliest.
To test the OpenSocial module you can setup your own personal live demo here.
Once your personal demo is setup simply visit the "Gadget" and "My Gadgets" sections to test the module.
If you run into any problems or would like to provide some feedback feel free to let us know here or join our community and visit our OpenSocial discussion.
We are pleased to announce that phpFox 1.6 will soon have OpenSocial support. We had initially intended to add support with phpFox2, however after following up on a thread and with our recent partnership with AITOC, INC. that brought forth new modules to our product gave us the opportunity to look into developing support for OpenSocial with phpFox v1.6.
Aitoc will be in charge of the project and developing the module thus allowing us the time to continue development of phpFox2, which we had considered postponing if we were to release an OpenSocial module.
Aitoc is currently working on the project model, which should take 3 weeks. At that time we should have more information to release on when the module will be completed, the price tag, features and its requirements.
For those that are not familiar with OpenSocial and its capabilities I will try to explain in more detail what it is and what it can do for your community. You can of course find out this information directly from OpenSocial and the developers of the API; Google here.
Google has created an API that works on many popular social networking sites such as MySpace, Friendster, Hi5, Orkut etc...
Since developers have to work with one API provided by OpenSocial developing Apps is rather easy as the same App can be spread onto several if not all social networking sites that support OpenSocial. Since many of these large communities have recently opened their doors to support OpenSocial there are hundreds upon thousands of applications out there and many more being developed each day. By adding support for OpenSocial this will open your site to this very large development community and the ability to use Apps that you see on major sites like MySpace on your phpFox website instantly. By instantly I really do mean instantly, since installing Apps is simple as pointing to where the XML (which is where the code for the App is located) file is located.
Applications are not stored on your server, they usually connect via a container which gets and caches the source code that runs the App from the developers. The container that will be used is Apache Shindig. They have a PHP container, which has a set of classes that will allow phpFox sites the ability to setup an App server.
Upgrading OpenSocial Apps to work with phpFox2 will not cause any problems. Why? Since Apps are developed using the same OpenSocial API the same API will still be used with phpFox2 and any future version, all that needs to be done is for us to update the class files that return the correct information. So you as phpFox community owners will have nothing to worry about. Such Apps are great as you don't have to worry about what files were overwritten and if its supported with the current version you have installed.
There are a lot of benefits for phpFox community owners as you can imagine. There is also a lot of benefits for those that develop mods for the phpFox community as well. Not only will your Apps work on a phpFox community, your Apps will work on any community the supports and follows the OpenSocial API.
More information regarding the module will follow in 3 weeks once Aitoc has completed the project model and prototype.
If you have any ideas of how you would like this module to function please let us know by adding your comments here or via our forum.
Thanks!
