So I'll be the first to admit I'm not so great with the whole facebook like button thing.
On my site http://vegasonthemic.com I have facebook "like" buttons for every post (of a custom post type "portfolio") that are automagically generated.
When you click this like button it shows on your facebook profile that you liked something with a thumbnail and the excerpt text.
BUT when you look at your news feed all it says is "Bob liked this artist" and doesn't show any of the metadata. Is there something I'm missing for this function to work?
You can see your problem here: http://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/og/object?q=http%3A%2F%2Fvegasonthemic.com%2F
Fix the issues that the linter is showing. Then your website will work fine.
Related
I have a "single page" website. Let's call it "mySite.com/index.html".
There are several different places on my page that I would like users to share via Facebook. Each of these items should display a different image and headline text, when shared on the user's Facebook timeline.
Each of these item posts should link Facebook users back to my website, "mySite.com/index.html", when the posts are viewed from a Facebook timeline.
Example:
On my page, I wish to have two different share buttons:
A. ButtonA: This button would create a picture of an elephant on the user's Facebook timeline, with the headline, "A Beautiful Elephant!". This post on the user's timeline should link back to my page, when the post is clicked.
A. ButtonB: This button would create a picture of a tiger on the user's Facebook timeline, with the headline, "A Scary Tiger!". This post on the user's timeline should link back to my page, when the post is clicked.
The Problem:
My understanding is that in order to create Facebook timeline posts which contain attractive headline text and images, I must use Facebook OpenGraph Meta tags, on the same page that is being linked to. It seems impossible to have two different sets of Facebook meta tags on "mySite.com/index.html", one outlining the 'elephant' post, and the other outlining the 'tiger' post.
The only possible solution I can think of is this:
Create a special 'Facebook Meta HTML Page' for each post I want to make. Each 'special page would only contain the meta tags for the post I wish to outline. "mySite.com/elephant_meta.html"
The body of the special page would be blank. This will work, but there is a problem: The resulting Facebook post will link users to "mySite.com/elephant_meta.html", which is just a blank page. I wish them to be directed to "mySite.com/index.html".
Solution: Create a JavaScript redirect in the body of "mySite.com/elephant_meta.html". This redirect will take users to "mySite.com/index.html".
This will work, but it feels incredibly hacky. Is there a better way?
Still finding my way on the open graph stuff as well, but the way I understand it, you can set og:url to the url that you want users to go to when they click on the link in your story on facebook. So each of your meta pages could point back to your main site page using the og:url meta tag.
as the subject describes, when I facebook-like an video-item or other type of page of our homepage, it turns into a whole "facebook page" instead of a timeline-post.
Why is that?
I have tried to lint it at the facebook-linter, and it says that there's noting wrong. The type of the video is "video.other".
E.g: http://metopia.se/tube/NKQeT/lanterna-education-summer-courses
When I liked that page, it turned into this page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lanterna-Education-Summer-Courses/334204833309981
Which I am admin for.
Am I doing something wrong here?
You're not doing anything wrong; this is expected behavior:
Website owner puts FB Like button on site.
Website visitor clicks said Like button.
Timeline story is generated for the website visitor. It appears on his timeline and in his friends' News Feeds.
I liked the page myself to confirm.
What you're seeing is expected if you have liked the page and have also designated yourself as an admin for the page (i.e., whoever is denoted via the fb:admins Open Graph meta tag). Judging by that page's source I'm guessing you're either Adam or Mathias?
You should read up on Facebook's Open Graph protocol. In short, putting a Like button on a website will create a corresponding Open Graph fan page for whatever location is referenced by that Like button's href attribute.
I want a Like button on my web site that Likes my Facebook profile (rather than my web page), so that when a user clicks it they subscribe to my Facebook posts.
I've created the Like button using the tool at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/
Further down that page there is an FAQ entry:
Can I link the Like button to my Facebook page?
Yes. Simply specify the URL of your Facebook page in the href
parameter of the button.
So, I've edited the href parameter to point to my Facebook page. eg:
https://www.facebook.com/myfacebookid
When a user clicks the Like button it has the desired effect. The user ends up having Liked my Facebook page. This is easily verified by the user going to my Facebook profile and checking that the Like button has changed to Liked.
But. When the user clicks the Like button, and entry appears in their News Feed with a generic Facebook description. ie:
Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and
others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to
keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, post links
and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.
I don't want a generic post about Facebook to appear. I want the description to relate to my Facebook account and/or web site.
Normally, I could modify this behavior with the Opengraph og: description tag, but as the page in the href is a Facebook page and not my own, I can't control the Opengraph tags.
I'm pretty sure that this was working okay before I enabled timeline for my account, so maybe this is a timeline bug?
So, how do I add a Like button which a) Likes my Facebook profile rather than one of my own web pages, and b) Posts a description of my Facebook profile rather than give a generic Facbook description?
Are all your fields in the info part of your page filled in, and/or completed? I just tested your theory and it seemed to work as expected, only thing is I know all fields in "info" are filled it. Give that a try.
This may happen if you have filled invalid/incomplete/wrong og tags in past and later changed them. Facebook's cache creates problem sometime.
Try putting all the entries (i.e. all og tags) and then debug them here http://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug. This debugger gives a detailed info about the url with og tags and also clears the cache for you.
This should solve the problem.
You have 3 important fields that used on page opengraph: Name,Description,Profile Image.
They are used when some one post your link on Facebook, or Google or some else web service that handle opengraph.
Actually, the suggested answers currently do not work and there is an open bug / ticket on Facebook for it. Up to now, there's no fix.
The problem is that you can not use simply https://www.facebook.com/myfacebookid. You should copy and paste the exact page URL. If you have a low number of likes it would look something like https://www.facebook.com/pages/[YourPageName]/[Your page Id]/, and this is the URL that you should use at this point.
If it does not work, try also https://www.facebook.com/[YourPageName]/[Your page Id]/.
In short, copy-paste the URL, do not type it manually.
I have a page containing a list of activities. I want multiple FB Like buttons: for the page itself and for each of the individual activities.
In order for the page itself to be Liked, it needs OpenGraph tags. But if the page has the tags, then the Like button, according to the docs, will ignore the url parameter of the Like buttons. From the docs:
When you use Open Graph tags, the Like button posts a link to the og:url instead of the URL in the Like button code.
Possible solution So, my idea is to create small stub pages that will only contain the Open Graph tags and a meta redirect tag to the real activity page.
Has anyone tried this? Or some other solution to the problem?
Your solution is feasible, I have tried it before: creating separate pages that only contain OG meta tags. However, the problem with this is, once a user likes the item, it posts automatically on the user's wall saying "Larry likes a link". When his friends see this, and click on the attached link, they will see a white screen (your og:meta-only pages). but since you said you will have redirect then this is good.
On the side, you had a wrong interpretation about this quote:
When you use Open Graph tags, the Like
button posts a link to the og:url
instead of the URL in the Like button
code.
It doesn't mean "When you use Open Graph tags on the root page". It means when you use Open Graph tags on the pages you were linking to in the like buttons.
Also, what it meant by "posts a link" is posting a link on the user's wall. Liking open graph pages automatically posts to wall now. It didn't say "using the link" on og:url of the current page.
I'm trying to embed the Facebook Like button on a web site. The URL of the item I am trying to allow the user to "like" is an individual Facebook post on a Page's wall.
I'm using a simple FBML implementation of the Like button like so:
<fb:like href="http://www.facebook.com/[PAGENAME]?v=wall&story_fbid=[ID OF THE POST]" layout="button_count"></fb:like>
The like button works, but when it is clicked, the user is actually liking the PAGE, not the individual post.
Any help would be much appreciated. I've tried various formats for the URL, but so far have not been able to make it work.
Thanks!
What you are trying to do is not possible. You can only 'like' things that have a unique page to display them. The url you have ?v=wall&story_fbid=[ID OF THE POST] is just a 'helper' url for facebook. It takes you to the http://www.facebook.com/[PAGENAME] url and Facebook will treat this url the same as the page.
It is a bit confusing because you could do something like you are talking about off of facebook, but the like inside of Facebook isn't really the same as what the like button's are doing. The like buttons are using the Open Graph protocol. Content on facebook.com doesn't play by the same rules.
In short, likes for "facebook generated" content inside of facebook can only be liked inside of facebook.
Check out this article for more information on some of the things you can do with the like button inside facebook: http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/407
Very late answer, but the Graph API might help. You might be able to grab a post and like it - https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/post/