JomSocial Front Page & JFBConnect fatal error

Shawn,
That message is indicating that your site is running out of memory. I'm assuming you're just seeing this when you enable JFBConnect, but I don't think JFBConnect is necessarily the cause.. just what's exposing the problem.

Some information you could provide would be very helpful:
1) Let us know how much memory your website is allocated. If you go to Help->System Info and then "PHP Information", search for memory_limit. A good minimum number is about 16M. More is always better. If it's less, that's really low for running a Joomla site with multiple 'powerful' extensions on it.
2) Enable Debug Reporting. You can do this in Global Configuration -> System Tab. Enable "Debug System". At the bottom of each page, you'll see a report on how much memory is being used, as long as how many queries are on a page and how long it took to render. Lower numbers in all these areas is good. If you can, disable whatever is necessary to just make the site work, and let us know those numbers. If you're bumping up close to the memory number above, then enabling any other 'big' extension would cause the memory issue.
3) Try seeing if there are any plugins/modules/components you're not using on your site, but are still installed. While many, if unused won't 'do' anything and use memory.. some do, and it also just helps with the cleanliness of the site.

Hope this helps get you started, but if you can answer the above, I think we can help you diagnose the problem further and hopefully come up with a good resolution. If you're on a very cheap hosting plan, this may simply be an indication that you need to upgrade.

Good luck!

I'm not sure that memory size they're mentioning is correct. Can you check it in the PHP Information area.. look for "memory_limit" and let me know what that value is set to. There are other settings with similar names, but that's the specific one that it will help to know.

As for the 500 error, it could easily be related to the same thing.. if the page runs out of memory, random things can happen. However, was there anything you changed or did that changed the error from the memory problem above to the 500 error you're getting now?

No worries about being new to this. Joomla can be confusing. We want to help get you set up!

Obviously, first try removing that file and see if the error goes away. Also, above, you mention that the setting is "max upload size". That's not the setting you should be changing. It shouldn't have any effect, good or bad though. The main setting we want to look at is "memory_limit" which is how much memory can be used to generate each page.

Can you let me know what value that is set to in the PHP Information section, either before or after you update that php.ini file?

Thanks!

Ah.. yes, 8MB is just on the shy side of what we'd recommend. If you can contact your hosting provider to get information on how to increase this to 12MB, you should be fine what you're trying to do. More is definitely better, if you can get it to about 16, which should cover you for adding just about anything to your site.

As for logging in, that's basically JFBConnect doing it's job. At some point, the site is crashing out due to not enough memory.. but it's doing it after the user's been logged in. That's why, when you refresh, the previous process appears to have worked fine. However, of course, it didn't fully work as expected.

Hope this helps. Many service providers have FAQs or instruction guides on how to increase the memory limit in step-by-step details. Unfortunately, it's different for every host, so I can't just say "Go here, do this".

Best of luck to you, and let us know how it goes!