waynealumni.org Facebook Page

http://www.facebook.com/p…119455231403719

After experimenting off and on for several months and investigating whether to create a Facebook App, integrate Facebook Connect into this site, or just create a “Fan Page” on Facebook, I opted for the latter for one very good reason, it was the easiest. Not to say I might not work those angles again, but this is much quicker. The others involve a fair amount of work, once I understand how it’s supposed to work. I find some of Facebook’s documentation for developers confusing, and they’ve just revamped their systems.

Once one becomes a fan or “Likes” the Facebook page, you will see its Wall Posts in your News Feed, unless you block it. You are also able to Post, create and participate in discussions, add photos, etc. I will attempt to moderate if it gets overwhelming, but I doubt it will.

We’ll see how it goes.

Website Updates

Some rather minor changes to the Registration system have been completed, mostly for my own amusement. What was formerly a single field on the form “Location”, has now been broken up into “City”, “State”, and “Country”. For the most part, existing locations were transferred as they were. For consistency and space savings sake, US states and Canadian provinces will have the official USPS abbreviations.

These fields are still optional. You can leave City empty, and just include a State. Since 99% of our alumni are located in the U.S. or Canada, the Country field is only for alumni living out of the U.S. (or Canada).

When the Alumni Directory is displayed, it essentially looks the same. City, State, and Country still make up Location. Consistency and flexibility are the only reason for the change.

Also, the ability to link directly to your Facebook profile has been removed, at least temporarily. The process of determining your Facebook ID and name was often completed unsuccessfully, and Facebook complicated things by coming up with a new method for more recent Facebook users. If I get time, I’ll look at this again and see if it makes sense to try and make this feature available again.