struggling and very confused

I'm using jomsocial with socialize template and trying to set up open graph so my member posts go to facebook etc

Let's start from the beginning on what you're trying to accomplish. It's possible that some of the things that you are trying to do may not be necessary. When a user posts a status update on their JomSocial feed, are you trying to also push that to Facebook? If so, have you tried enabling the 'Push Social Network Status' option in our 'Social Profiles - JomSocial' plugin. It sounds as if you're trying to set up Open Graph Actions, which is definitely more advanced, and possibly even overkill for what you're trying to do. If you are wanting to push more than JomSocial status updates, please give more of a detailed description so we can provide help.

-Melissa

I am trying to set up open graph - I though it was required to get the site name and images and the actual posts content on facebook with images and links

You're correct that Open Graph tags do what you're looking for. They are hidden tags on your page that set the title, description and image to be used when sharing your content to a few social networks.

Generally though, you only need to enable the Open Graph plugins for any extensions you have installed and JFBConnect will take care of the rest. For example, the Open Graph - Content plugin will detect when a Joomla article is being shown and set the Open Graph Image tag that's best for your page based on an image set for the article or the first image you've set in the article. Other Open Graph plugin work in a similar way for each extension we support. For extensions that we don't have an Open Graph plugin for, JFBConnect will automatically set the title and description based on the meta title and description for the page. We can't set the image automatically though in that case.

On any page, you can alway set a specific image to use for that page by adding the following tag:You can also set a default image to be used throughout your site by going to the Open Graph -> Configuration -> Defaults area and adding a line like:That image will be used on any page where an automatic image (from a plugin) or a specific image (from a tag) isn't set.

There are ways to configure Open Graph Objects, which let you customize your pages even more (and are necessary for Open Graph Actions). More info is below.

With all that said:

push posts on my site to facebook, and as many jomsocial actions as I can

We support Open Graph Actions, which automatically post to a user's Facebook Timeline, for uploading a photo or joining a group in JomSocial. For more information, see our Open Graph setup guide . The Examples area has info specifically on setting up the Photo Upload action in JomSocial.

push notifications to facebook on jgive donations and campaign creation (techjoomla)

We don't have specific integration for jGive. You can add sharing buttongs (Like, Share, Tweet, etc) to that content or you'd need to have a developer help with integrating more customized functionality.

and push group joins to facebook if possible

We support JomSocial Group joins, as noted above.

The other thing you can do easily with JFBConnect is enable the "Push status to Social Networks" in the JFBConnect -> Profiles -> JomSocial area, which will post any user's public status in the JomSocial stream back to Facebook.

I hope that helps explain and get you going, but please let me know if you have any issues.

Thanks,
Alex