There are two different numbers associated with Facebook. This article attempts to explain both of them and how they are used in BLOX.
Facebook App ID
The first number is called the Facebook App ID (or Facebook Application Identification number). This is a unique key that an organization applies for from Facebook, that gives permission to interface with the Facebook application.
On the BLOX front end, our templates interface very closely with Facebook - for example, the "recommend" buttons on stories, the new "facebook_official" block template, the integrated fan box on the Marketplace business details pages, the Facebook federated login feature, etc. All of these widgets use the Facebook Javascript SDK and XFBML tags, and a Facebook App ID is required to interface with those APIs.
Each BLOX site that is on a separate domain MUST have it's own Facebook App ID to use the Facebook integrated features.
All BLOX sites will need a Facebook App ID, even if they do not have a Facebook profile page for their newspaper or organization.
For instructions on how to create a Facebook App ID, click here.
Facebook Profile ID
The Profile ID is the unique identifcation number of a profile page which exists on the Facebook site. This is the number we use to identify a specific page or business within the Facebook system, in order to pull a list of fans, give a "like" button for that page or interact with that business profile in some way.
The Profile ID is a separate number from the Facebook App ID, and just having a Profile ID does not give a site permission to interface with the Facebook APIs. Sites must have a Facebook App ID in order to use the integrated Facebook features that BLOX offers; sites do not necessarily have to have a Facebook Profile ID.
If an organization has a Facebook profile page, you can find their Profile ID by going to their page and then clicking on their profile picture. On the resulting page you can look at the URL and see the &id=xxx in the URL.
For example, if you go to http://facebook.com/townnews.com, and then click on the TownNews.com logo in the upper left corner of the page, the resulting page is:
So, the Profile ID for TownNews.com is therefore 98681439791.
The App ID will be set in the Site Custom Properties (Flex), whereas the Profile ID may be set on some Block Page Customization properties. In the future, however, there may be settings for each of these.