Google Friend Connect Now Available for Joomla and Drupal
Popular open source CMS platforms Joomla and Drupal now have the added benefit of the Google Friend Connect plugin on their open source CMS platforms. Google Friend Connect allows website owners to make the registration process for their users even easier (which means more registered visitors) while offering them a set of social features. What's so great about Friend Connect is that it allows users to sign into applications that have the plugin using their Open I.D., Yahoo I.D., Google I.D. or AIM I.D. And for webmasters and website owners, there is no complicated code to write; in fact, there's no code to write at all, which means that even those with little or no programming expertise are able to add the Friend Connect plugin without any hassle.
Features Offered
Whether using Friend Connect as a plugin with Drupal or Joomla, the features of Friend Connect are the same, including featured content, newsletter subscriptions, AdSense, interest polls, and various gadgets like comments, recommendations, members, social bar, reviews and activities. So when a visitor joints a site that has the Friend Connect plugin, an account is created that is associated with the email, messaging, or social networking site of their choice (for example, Yahoo, Google, Twitter and more). Webmasters can place these social gadgets anywhere on a site that has a standard Joomla or Drupal interface, and maintain the ability to moderate comments and reviews, create polls to gather information about members, and use those stats to better advertise. Some applications of the Friend Connect feature for Joomla and Drupal users have bigger implications; for example, the newsletter feature will allow webmasters to create and send out newsletters using the Friend Connect interface – which is can potentially be a huge marketing tool.
Biggest Advantage for Your Website
The most obvious advantage of using the Friend Connect plugin as a Drupal or Joomla site operator is that your visitors can create an account with you without jumping through any "hoops", which means that they are more likely to do so. Without filling in another long, boring profile form on your site, the visitor can simply connect their existing profiles (including pictures) to your website – which makes logging in easier and connecting to the same identity a breeze. Most webmasters using the Friend Connect plugin are reporting an increase in the activity on their site, including activity that keeps the visitor engaged – which is a huge plus.
Two modules
There are two different modules currently available, one is from code.google and one originates from drupal.org. The one from Drupal site is more usable. It's apitty those projects weren't merged into one.
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