Problems caused by Facebook like button changing to confirm in iframe application - facebook

I've developed a Facebook iframe application, where we run a contest. It can be found here :
http://www.united-bakeries.no/facebook/tub/0412/
(The web site is in norwegian. The link will expire on March 4th when the contest ends.)
The contest is about guessing the winner of the Vasaloppet ski race. When you click the like button on one of the athletes, the pictures of all the athletes disappear, and a form appears where the athlete you liked is selected in a select box, and you are asked to submit your email address to take part in the contest. You can also reach this form without liking one of the athletes, by clicking the link below all the athletes where it says "Dersom du ønsker å delta i konkurransen uten å klikke Liker på en av deltakerne over klikk her.".
I think the contest works exactly in the same way as the Quiz application that Offerpop offers ( http://offerpop.com/SiteProduct.psp?view=quiz ).
This worked great for awhile. But after some time the Like button suddenly changed so that it now needs confirmation. This is apparently very confusing for users, as the statistics show that people stopped participating in the contest when the confirm button appeared. Offerpop doesn't seem to have the same problem with their applications. Why?
I have put an alert box there explaining to people that they need to press the confirm button for it to work, but it seems that it then becomes too complicated for most people. Are there any workarounds for this?

Confirmation link appears when facebook notices something suspicius about where the like button is placed and how it is shown to the user. That means if you are hiding any part of the button, if it is completely hidden under a custom button or if your links get too many unlikes.
Even for 'legit' likes you may get the confirmation button but it will soon dissapear if everything is right. If not, contact Facebook.
Hope it helps.

Related

Facebook like button press does not stay liked

I'm working on a site for a client. The site is built in Joomla and is using a Facebook like button on each page. When a user clicks a like button it unclicks itself after a second or two.
I've seen several similar problems here but none have provided enough insight to help me figure out what to do to fix this problem.
I ran the page through the Facebook debugger:
https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/og/object?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theartoflove.net%2Findex.php%2F9-blog%2Fmen%2F27-go-ahead-and-ask-her-out
but I don't have a clue how to figure out what that result is telling me. The URL I used as a test in the debugger is:
http://www.theartoflove.net/index.php/9-blog/men/27-go-ahead-and-ask-her-out
Anyone know what I need to do to fix this problem? It seems to happen regardless of what like box I put on the site (I've tried three different ones so far).
My sincere thanks for any help!
When I clicked the like button, a small 'CONFIRM' link appeared under the "Like" widget, i had to click the 'CONFIRM' link (which brought up a dialog box asking me to confirm that I liked the page) in order to get the "Like" to stick.
See image
Facebook sometimes makes the arbitrary determination that your page is 'spammy' and adds extra precautions like 'CONFIRM'. That may be part of what is going on.
The code is reentrant and the developer is flipping the bit instead of verifying the current state with a conditional before setting the value. (This is a common coding mistake. Too common.)

Like Confirm not working

I'm adding a Like button to a website and currently making a few tests. At first, everything was working fine, until the Confirm link started to show up whenever I clicked the Like button. I searched this and found out it is a spam control. So I understand the button showing up, since I am liking and unliking the site many times, for test purposes, and I'm OK with that.
The problem is that, even when I click Confirm and click Like again in the popup, the Like is ignored. The counter does not show any likes and the action is not posted to the Facebook wall.
The Facebook debugger does not show anything wrong with the url either.
Here's how to reproduce:
1. Access http://sjc.prima.net.br:8777/fb_test/like_test.htm
2. Click Like button
3. Click Confirm
4. Click Like again, in the popup
See that the Like is ignored.
Any help, please?!?

Facebook - click on a like button does not increase the like count

After searching the internet and doing my own research on this subject I still can not find the answer to my problem, so here it is.
When I click the like button (to like my website http://openarchitecture.cz) then the like count is not being increased.
Debugging the FB javascript code on client-side (in Chrome) and examining the ajax response
send back from FB servers after the click on "Like" button, revealed that FB is instructing the Like button to be "disconnected", resulting in the behaviour described below.
The term "disconnected" is a strict FB term (in a sense of a javascript code), it means that on client-side there will be used a "plugin" that will perform certain operations leading to "inactivity" of like button. Technically, when the plugin "disconnect" is beeing recognized as part of the ajax response, there is an array of predefind actions (functions) that will be followed and called sequentially.
Now for the reproducibility of the problem.
Go to http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like and fill the "URL to Like" field with http://openarchitecture.cz
url.
Click "Get code", then click "Ok" on the pop-up and finally click "Like" button on the right.
The like count should increase. Instead a pop-up shows up for (aprox.) 1 sec.
then the popup disappears. Now I am in the same state as before I click the
like button, i.e. like count is not increased.
I have found similar questions here on SO, but none of them seems to finally
resolve the issue.
The related questions here on SO are:
1. http://facebook.stackoverflow.com/questions/5195183/facebook-like-button-flashing-on-then-off/12958474#12958474
2. Facebook Like button does not work on one website?
One of the suggestions was that this migth actually be a FB bug. I found a (very recently created) bug, reported in FB bug tracking system. The bug is located here:
http://developers.facebook.com/bugs/268340209965207?browse=search_512b8e0bed9724580954683
The bug has however "Low" priority an so far it does not seem to be resolved (it might even be returned as not a FB issue, I am not sure if this possibility is still open).
So for all interested in this.
Is this a real FB bug ?
How have you dealt with this ?
Could it be that my site is for some reason on FB spam/black/"whatever nasty" list ?
Well. This will end up like the other posts, i.e. no lesson learned here.
[The term "page" used later in this post represents the http://openarchitecture.cz page]
I just tried today to like the page again via the FB generated like button (on http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/ ) and the result is now ok. So the like count gets increased after clicking the like button.
The difference that I observed when checking the request exchange to FB servers is that this time the communication has been done (by default. i.e. using the XFBML version of the like button) over iframe, not direct ajax call (as was in the past for XFBML).
I dont know what was the cause (I tried the pure iframe version of like button before) but the response going back as a result of the mentioned iframe request is now correct, ie. FB sends back response instructing javascript in client browser to use "connect" plugin not "disconnect" plug-in.
One more thing. One month ago I have created a FB profile (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Openarchitecture/125515934292877) of the page and have done some updates to this profile. So maybe FB decided that the page (being referenced from FB profile) has now earned the provilige to be "liked".
Like I said at the beginning. Problem solved, but no lesson learned.
For me, the problem (Like popup disappearing after a second; "Plugin","disconnect" response) was happening when the Like button URL redirected to another URL.
The fix was to add og:type, og:url, and og:title (required per https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/opengraph/object-type/website), then running the URL through the Facebook debugger to clear the cache (https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug).
More at https://stackoverflow.com/a/16597060/2391566 .

Facebook Like without Confirm?

I think I have the same issue as here, but can't quite get enough out of the answers over there.
I'm using a Like button (in an iframe on a Static XFBML page) to allow users to Like a YouTube video, with the intention that since the user clicks Like it shares it to their Wall.
What happens is that they click Like, it says "You like this", but nothing is posted, and then after a random short interval the Like button is replaced by a Confirm hyperlink.
What I really want is no "Confirm" stage because a) it's clunky and b) the user has probably left the page by then. I know there's at least one app that does it... Is this behaviour possible for me to code, and if so, how?
this is a feature of the like button, so as to avoid spamming website that cheat user on the like buttons. The "confirm" feature will be turn on for suspicious site. When your site is well received and get positive feedback, the "confirm" feature will be removed automatically.
In your case it's because you implemented it using an <iframe> - I've tried it before and the <iframe> is the cause.

Facebook page: How to add a customized box at the bottom left side of wall tab?

Dear all, I have a question about Facebook Page: (NOT user profile page, I mean a facebook page where you can become a fan)
How to add a customized box at the bottom left side of wall tab?
(I am the page creator/admin)
Please don't just give an answer "add the box to the page". Cause I really don't know how.
Also, it seems that putting $facebook->api_client->profile_setFBML and $facebook->api_client->profile_setInfo for the application won't provide a way for the page to add the box.
Below is an example image that is done by the other. I have circled the box at the image. I would like to know how to do the same to the page that I owned. Many thanks for reading.
alt text http://design.outblaze.com/calvin/facebook/facebookPageBoxQ.jpg
$facebook->api_client->profile_setFBML
is absolutely correct afair. Go to the App Page and Add the App to your Fan Page. It will most properbly appear in the Boxes Tab.
// get the fbml for the box
$main_box = $this->render();
// the first main_box is actually deprecated feel free not to use it
$this->facebook->api_client->profile_setFBML($main_box, PAGE_ID, $main_box, NULL, $main_box, $main_box);
// for easier workflow forward the user directly to the page
$this->facebook->redirect(PAGE_URL);
But as said by others in this thread in 90% of the cases the Static FBML App by Facebook does the job.
Unreality's answer helped me best but one clarification is needed. These boxes can be added only to "Pages" that you have admin rights to. You cannot add one of these boxes to your profile page from what I can see. (Anybody? Prove me wrong, please!)
You write an application that has a box. You add the box to the page, then move the box to the page's wall.
For example, I moved the Notes box on my app's page to my wall so you could see it:
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=96193636102
Update, with more info:
In general, the way you do this is you add a function to your app that creates a block of fbml and passes it to setFBML(), using your page's ID instead of a user ID as the destination.
I'm planning to do this myself to add some summary statistics to my app's profile page, but that has to wait til after working hours.
I have found the answer. It's using the static fbml made from facebook
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=4949752878&ref=s
Go there, click "add to my page", and pick your page.
Then goto your own page, and click "Edit page", then you will find FBML under the applications.
Click the pencil at the FBML box top right, select edit.
Then at the edit page, just write something up and save the changes
Next go back to your own page. Goto the "Boxes" tab, you will find the FBML box that you have just made.
Click the pencil button at the FBML box, select "Move to Wall Tab", and then done! Happy FaceBooking!
As far as I understand the profile boxes will be removed soon.