Drupal 7: The Social Media Module

The “Social Media” module for the Drupal 7 platform is a great tool for website admins to take full advantage of social network integration. It helps connect your website with social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, digg, Linked In, and Google+, just to name a few. Lending you total control over commanding your centralized hub of profile information as well as powerful options for utilizing widgets and plug-ins such as follow, like, and share buttons, it is easy to see why it has its advantages.

Below is a quick walkthrough on how to install the module into your Drupal 7 platform. Take a look and feel free to leave comments regarding any thoughts or experiences you have regarding the “Social Media” module for Drupal 7. You can also find more documentation @ http://drupal.org/project/socialmedia.

Getting Started:

The Social Media setup wizard will take you through a few easy steps and get you on the social networking path quickly. Click here to [Watch the video tutorial].

• Step 1: Install the “Social Media” module
• Step 2: Install the “Widgets” module
• Step 3: Launch the setup wizard (Note: If you installed through the App menus, the setup wizard will automatically load up. If you do a  traditional installation, go to: admin > config > media > socialmedia and click the + setup wizard quick link.)
• Step 4: Simply follow the 4 automated steps the wizard will take you through:

1. Setup your “social media profiles”
2. Configure the “profile links” widget
3. Configure the “sharing” widget
4. Set location of the profile, sharing and other social media widgets on your website

Standard Usage:

(more usage options listed here: http://drupal.org/project/socialmedia )

Module Configuration:
Go to admin > config > media > social media and then select which social media platforms you would like to support on the website.

Site Profiles Setup:
Click on the Profiles tab (admin > config > media > social media > profiles) and enter the information for your social media profiles. These profiles are the main site profiles. User level profile settings are described below.

Review/Configure Widgets:
Widget sets are an easy way to organize and configure social media widgets into a group. The social media module provides multiple variations of default widget sets. If you would like to review them, simply visit the widget set admin menu: admin > structure > widget sets. Select a preset, or customize them by overriding. You can even build your own from this interface.

Display Widgets In Blocks:
Blocks are the primary way to display most widgets. Use the block admin: admin > structure > blocks or your preferred method of displaying blocks (e.g. Context or Panels) to place widget sets.

User Profiles:
You can setup users with the Administer own profiles permission to manage their own set of user level social media profiles. Widgets can be configured to switch to user level profile data on nodes (for the node author) and user pages. Enable user level profiles on the social media configuration page admin > config > media > social media. A Social profiles tab will appear on user pages for people with the correct permissions.

Required:

There are no required modules for this application.

Recommended:

• Widgets - enables widgets to be grouped into tokens and blocks.
• Token - Displays list of available tokens. Makes it easier to know what tokens are available.

Options:

• Token filter - enables tokens to be used in filtered content such as node bodies.

For more information on sponsorship and current development status visit the source: http://drupal.org/project/socialmedia