Meaning of referer param fb_source=games_ego - facebook

I see many people coming to my facebook game with HTTP referer that includes
fb_source=games_ego
Previously all options were at
http://fbdevwiki.com/index.php?title=Ref&cb=7347
but "games_ego" is something new.
What could it mean?

It's new section "Discover New Games" in the right block which is shown only in games.
Official Facebook documentation:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/games/services/measurement#referraltracking

I don't know if they just changed it, but I only see "fb_source=ego". I updated the wiki.
Also, on the wiki there's a link to where Facebook has documented the possible values.

Related

Facebook share ignores custom query string parameters

I try to share an URL that contains query parameter in FB.
Here is my share link
Sharing works but my custom query parameter is gone and replaced with facebook query parameters in the facebook timeline something like here
The same problem when FB.ui({ method: 'share',... is used.
It worked well on previous version of facebook sharing sharer.php but it's deprecated now and I have no idea how to make current share work.
We faced same problem. We instead used Feed Dialog that works fine. The irony is that if you read on facebook's developer's site Facebook is recommending us using Share Dialog in place of Feed dialog however, Share dialog does not work as expected.
Here is the link to get more information on Feed dialog
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/reference/feed-dialog/v2.2
Personally i like Feed dialog more the share cause it gives you some additional properties to manage how dialog should appear
i assume you solved your problem in a different way already but i have found a solution for this. Just in case somebody else comes across this question.
Facebook strips the parameters only when it is more or less sure that the file is an php file.
So for http://example.com/?test=1
or http://example.com/index.php?test=1
the parameters are removed.
But if you make it look like a normal html file, it works:
http://example.com/whatever.htm?test=1
for example is posted with the parameters.
Of course you can use some simple mod_rewrite Rule to redirect the request to the original php file:
RewriteRule /whatever.htm(\?.*) /index.php%1
(rule is untested but should work hopefully)

Tumblr share url

I've came across this page https://www.tumblr.com/examples/share/sharing-links-to-articles.html which shows a possible way to customly create a share URL for tumblr.
Simplified version of what they have:
Click to share
http://jsfiddle.net/m5ow6bhs/2/
This will take you to the log in page or straight to the share page if you're already logged in. However, if you change the http%3A%2F%2F part to a simple http:// it will now load to a "Not Found Page". http://jsfiddle.net/m5ow6bhs/3/ What the hell Tumblr?
Do you guys have any idea what's going on or what's the correct code to share something to Tumblr?
Cheers.
As with most share services, the URL should be passed as an encoded string. This supports the OPs comments about http%3A%2F%2F(encoded) and http:// (raw).
Tumblr provides variable transformations in the theme operators to handle encoding, but sadly it doesn't work with custom variables.
One quick solution is to drop the http:// part. Example: http://jsfiddle.net/L9jd8dhz/
I have discovered as of recently that the share URL needs to be updated as such:
https://www.tumblr.com/widgets/share/tool?shareSource=legacy&canonicalUrl=<-urlencode(share_url)->&posttype=link
The &posttype= seems to be a new requirement to make the share work correctly.

Do Facebook Like Buttons require an App ID?

When going to the set up pages for all the Social Plugins, they now provide example code using an APP ID.
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/
Is an APP ID now required for the Like Button and other plugins? What happens if an APP ID is not included when using the plugins?
I've checked the Facebook developer blog and read about the Like Button Migration. I haven't been able to find a straight answer for this either there or in the FB Like Reference.
Notice:
This is an old dated information, the official facebook's behaviors are changed.
Simply, the answer is No, just look at the following official Facebook resource.
Notice: To do it without need to the app id, you have to visit the above page when you are signed out from Facebook. Look at the following screen shot.
As semsem said, the simple answer is "no it is not required"... there are ways to get around having an appId associated with the "like" button. Here's my experience working with this. I'm not a Facebook or Open Graph expert, so YMMV.
Why we avoided using the appId on the button:
We're providing an service where we have one website (the engine, as it were) that provides a service distributing online courses to students (customers). Instructors (also customers) who what to use our service to disseminate courses to students can brand the site how they wish, and map their domain to their section of our website that serves those course(s).
As a simplified example: we serve from http://courses.example.com/instructor_name, but we want students to access the content through http://www.instructors-domain.com/. Any courses would be sub-directories off the base URL.
Associating the "like" button with our Facebook App disallows any cross domain shenanigans. While there are valid reasons for doing so, it doesn't work for where we're at in our company and product evolution. So we needed to find a workaround.
We wanted to allow folks to "like" a course, have the "story" point to the appropriate places on the net, as well as get some customization (e.g. "NAME likes an online course on FBAppName"). We basically achieved this. We lost some functionality which we deemed acceptable at this point in our evolution.
The short of it
I used the iframe version of the Facebook "like" button as dictated by the appropriate Facebook developer's page (for the link see semesm's answer for the link, I got no rep). I took their code snippet and manually removed the appId query string in the iframe's src.
In the "liked" page itself (which was the same page that had the "like" button) I used the Open Graph meta tags including specifying the appId. (These tags were specified: fb:app_id, og:type, og:url, og:site_name, og:title, og:description, og:image.)
The og:type was our custom type of the form 'namespace:app_custom_object_name'.
A failed approach
My first attempt was to use what I understand as the preferred method, the "HTML5" tab in the "Get Code" section of the developer's "like-button" page. I tried their method stripping the appId from the appropriate places. This method proved ineffectual.
If the domain doesn't match that in the Facebook App, there will be no "like" button.
If the domain does match, the "like" button will appear. However, it takes 3 clicks to actually "like" something. The first click changes the "thumbs-up Like" icon to a normal anchor with one word that didn't make obvious sense (I forgot what the word was). The second click will brings up the login/authorization window for using our app. The third actually bring up the modern fancy "like" box where you can type in a comment. I didn't find a way around this behavior.
Note that when I specified the appId in this approach on the appropriate domain, it worked as one would expect (though inconsistent with our desired behavior).
I did not try the other two options in the "Get Code" section of the "like-button" page.
Informed speculation and rumor
In my research around this, my overall impression is that requiring an appId is the way of the future for Facebook. Who knows if the old way will be depreciated, probably never, though I didn't find anything in the docs talking about this "legacy" behavior. This makes sense to me with their newer offerings and the advanced tracking that becomes available with this method.
I've seen suggestions that the "likes" used in this manner are akin to second-class citizens... treated as inferior in some respects. In my own experimentation I found the behavior of the fully specified appId (in the "like" button itself) to be different and more accessible and predictable (in terms of Open Graph queries and visibility on my limited Facebook tests) than the partially specified appId. (Again, I've found no solid documentation on this, and did not endeavor to full grok the differences.)
May this info help someone else along. Good luck!
So, I just tried the sємsєм method, as comments say: Facebook want you to login to get the code, and if you have an app, you have to choose one.
But if you don't, it gives you a code without any app reference.
So when you get a code – no matter any app you choose –, you just need to remove the appId parameter in the .js URL (&appId=##############), and you got (for the latest HTML5 code, 6th line):
js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1";
The code for the div element does not change.
I simply use the URL code inside an iframe tag without an appID and it seams to work,
here is an example:
<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=<%=request.original_url%>&width&layout=button_count&action=like&show_faces=false&share=false&height=35&appId=" frameBorder="0" width="150" height="25">
</iframe>
According to Facebook's Social Plugins FAQ
Web: If you are using Social Plugins on the web, you do not need to create a Facebook app for integrating a Social Plugin.
iOS/Android: If you are using Social Plugins within a iOS or Android app, you need to create a Facebook app and tie it to your app identifier.
It seems that the official answer is that they are only required for iOS/Android.

Making a blog in Moodle 2.3 public, viewable to the whole world

I am using Moodle 2.3 and want to make blog posts viewable to the whole world or public i.e without having to login or go to a particular course. I think in previous versions of moodle you had the option to make blog posts viewable to yourself, to site users or whole world. I don't seem to have the 'whole world' option when I create a blog post. Has this been removed in 2.3 or does it need to be enabled somewhere else?
Also is it possible to display a list of recent blog posts either as a block on the left/right or inside the home page?
Thanks
Yep. You have to change the blog visibility option in site admin to "The world can see entries set to be world-accessible". By default it's set to "All site users can see all blog entries"
The setting is at http://your-moodle.com/admin/settings.php?section=blog

Is it possible to change the Facebook Comments assotiation URL somehow?

We have recently changed our URL scheme of some pages on our site to gain a little SEO boost. For example, domain.tld/$id/slug/ -> domain.tld/$category/slug-$id/.
However the comments associated to the old URLs are now obviously not shown on the new URLs as the links are generated automatically using the new scheme.
As our site is very new, we don't have many comments yet. Obviously we would hate to lose those few comments we already have and would rather migrate their association to the new URL scheme. I haven't found such option on the Comment Moderation Tool and the comments documentation doesn't elaborate on this either. Is that possible at all?
I never tried this, but I imagine that having the old pages return a 301/302 redirect to the new ones would do the trick.
This way, you would keep pointing your comments to the OLD pages' URLs, not the new ones.
Try this
<fb:comments href="http://www.domain.com/oldurl"></fb:comments>