Seen this a couple of times on various sites and had a couple people ask me on Twitter about it.
Starting October 1st, Facebook will start requiring two new things:
1. OAuth 2.0 support. SFC has this in version 1.1, which will be released shortly (tomorrow, probably).
2. Canvas and Page Tab Applications will require HTTPS/SSL support.
Both of these are true.
However, some people are interpreting that second one to mean that you need to buy an SSL certificate for your own domain to use Facebook Connect type of functionality, like my plugin Simple Facebook Connect provides. This is false.
A “Canvas” application is one that runs on your site, but shows up on http://apps.facebook.com. A “Page Tab” application is similar, but can show up anywhere on the facebook.com website, depending on how it’s written (it makes a “tab” for somebody’s “Page”). Both of those have something in common: Your website’s contents are actually showing up on *.facebook.com.
Simple Facebook Connect does neither of these things. SFC is a way for you to integrate Facebook connection functionality back into your own site. It can publish stories to Facebook, it can let users comment using Facebook, etc., but the whole point of it is to take things from FB and put them on your site. SFC does not enable your site to appear under the *.facebook.com domain name.
You do NOT need an SSL certificate to use SFC, and you will continue to not need one after October 1st.
You will, however, need to upgrade to SFC 1.1. Old versions, including 1.0, will cease to function.
SFC 1.1 will most likely be released tomorrow, and should be a painless upgrade from 1.0. Sorry for the delay.
