Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Make Facebook application or page without purchasing SSL

Facebook has put restrictions over developers to make Facebook pages and apps secure. Now the question is how to secure our pages and apps on Facebook. To secure your pages and apps, you need to purchase SSL license for the domain on which your app or page is hosted. There are different companies out there who sell SSL license online. The price of SSL license start from $9 and goes on.

Although price of a SSL license is cheap but it not FREE. Lot of developers are seeing this restriction really annoying. Due to new restrictions the old Facebook apps and pages have stopped working.

But no worries my dear developer friends. If your Facebook page and app is not dynamic and consist of Javascript and HTML you guys can host them on Dropbox.

Dropbox is a file hosting/sharing service. Dropbox allows you to upload files and then you can get links for each file for web browsing.

HOW TO DO.
GO to Dropbox website.
Download their application for Windows/Mac. Whatever OS you are using. INSTALL IT.
[For Windows]
After installing Dropbox application will ask to make new account. Fill the form and you are done with Dropbox setup.
Go inside My Document -> Dropbox->Public.
make a folder naming your Facebook app/page. Like mine is 'myfacebookapp'
copy all your app/page files inside your folder.
If you have index.html as default file to run. Right click on it and Select Dropbox->copy public link.
You will get a link like.

http://dl.dropbox.com/someletter/somenumbers/yourfacebookappfoldername/index.html

Now go to your app/page settings in Facebook developer account.
Edit your app settings.

[For App]
Canvas URL: http://dl.dropbox.com/someletter/somenumbers/yourfacebookappfoldername/index.html/
Secure Canvas URL: https://dl.dropbox.com/someletter/somenumbers/yourfacebookappfoldername/index.html/

[For Page]
Page Tab URL: http://dl.dropbox.com/someletter/somenumbers/yourfacebookappfoldername/index.html/
Secure Page Tab URL: https://dl.dropbox.com/someletter/somenumbers/yourfacebookappfoldername/index.html/

P.S: Don't forget to put trailing slash '/' at the end of each URL, otherwise you will get an error.

And here you go.
Tadaaaaa.......