Like buton

Mike,
Sure, you can use the JFBCLike module to add the Like button to any page of your site. If you leave the URL parameter blank in the module, then the Like button will be for whatever page the button is displayed on, so it will work on a lot of pages.

For more flexibility, you can add the {JFBCLike} tag to your gallery's template file, which will allow you to place the button exactly where you want on just the pages you want.

Hope that helps, but if you need anything else, just let us know.

Thanks,
Alex

The Fan module is just for your Fan Page on Facebook. You're correct that you'll want to use the Like button for specific pages on your site.

When any Like button is clicked (for your Fan Page or for pages on your site), it will be entered into their Facebook Activity Log. From there, Facebook chooses how to show it in the Ticker, News Feed, or that user's Timeline based on different social factors. So, it's not guaranteed to show up in any of those, but the more clicks you get, the better the chances of your page(s) being seen.

As for a specific image, no, users can Like a specific image. What they can do is Like a specific page from your Gallery and then, you can set the Open Graph image tag for that page to be the image. Then, when a news feed is created for it, the link will go to that page, and the thumbnail image will be the gallery image. Facebook doesn't really like linking directly to an image only for various reasons.

To set the og:image tag, you can simply add the following tag in the gallery template:You may need to add some PHP to that to dynamically set the image, but hope that gives you the idea and gets you started. Obviously, let us know if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Alex

Sorry, there was one typo in that sentence:
As for a specific image, no, users can not Like a specific image. What they can do is Like a specific page from your Gallery and then, you can set the Open Graph image tag for that page to be the image. Then, when a news feed is created for it, the link will go to that page, and the thumbnail image will be the gallery image.

What I meant by that, is that you can't have a Like button go directly to an image, like a jpg file. You can have the Like button be for a page on your site which contains one image of a gallery. For something like a Gallery, you can have a Like button for the entire gallery, but when the Like button is clicked, it will only be for one image (mainly, the 'home page' or featured image of the gallery). You can still have Like buttons on each page of the Gallery for each individual image, as long as those images each have their own unique URL on your site.

If you're using an AJAX slider, then a lot of the time the URL won't change. The contents of the current page are simply being updated through Javascript. When Facebook scans your pages, it does not execute Javascript, which is why it needs a unique URL per image page from your gallery. Otherwise, it will only ever see the home/landing page of your gallery.

I hope that helps explain some more. I don't know your gallery extension, but it may be a question to pose to them: "Is there a way to link directly to an image within a gallery?"

Thanks,
Alex

Facebook uses tons of parameters to decide what's posted to your news feed and what goes out to other social areas (Ticker, friends news feed, etc). When someone leaves a comment, for instance, that's a great sign to Facebook that they want that Like to show up in their news feed since they commented.

Without a comment, it's less likely to show up in your own news feed, though still possible. For instance, if a lot of people Like the page, or friends of that user have also Like'd that page, it's much more likely to show up in similar channels between those users.

Hope that makes sense. There was a time when anything people did always showed up in their Feed. That's not been the case for a few years as Facebook has taken a much more direct role in picking and choosing what appears based on the social factors (briefly) mentioned above.

So, not much for you to do other than grow your site organically and that will have a positive feedback on how your site is socially promoted (both through more Like's and more prominent displaying of those Like's).

Thanks,
Alex

The Open Graph tags are what you use to tell Facebook the image to be used on the page. If you're using a standard Joomla article, K2 article, or one of the other components we integrate with, you should just need to install and publish the Open Graph plugin (from the main zip file you downloaded from here) for that extension.

Once enabled, those plugins will automatically insert what it thinks is the best image for the page.

Alternatively, on any page, you can add the following tag, which JFBConnect will use to create the right Open Graph tag:
{SCOpenGraph image=http://yoursite.com/link-to-your-image-for-page.jpg}

Finally, in the Open Graph -> Configuration area of JFBConnect, you can set a default image to use on all of your pages. That's great for a logo or something to be used when no other image has been set. To do so, in the 'defaults' box, simply add:
image=http://yoursite.com/link-to-logo.jpg

Hope that all helps,
Alex