Multiple Facebook opengraph objects on the same page - facebook

I have a page where users must initiate actions on multiple objects, but Facebooks design limits you to just one object per page using the required meta property tags.
Has anyone found a solution to this problem?

The Open Graph uses the URL as the object identifier, so its not possible to have several objects on one page, the page is the object.
Instead, you'll need a URL for each object, and that URL's HTML should contain the correct OG markup.
You can put multiple like buttons on one page, and make them point at each of your objects by specifying the 'href' parameter for each like button.
However, if you want the user to end up back at the SAME page when they click on the link to each of these objects, you can do this, but its a bit tricksy...
On your object pages, on your server, look at the incoming request useragent. If the useragent contains the string 'facebookexternalhit' then render the HTML and the OG markup - this is how the Facebook scraper sees your page. If the useragent does not contain this string, perform a 302 redirct to the page you want the user to see.
Result? Many objects, but only one user-visible page. Win.
And this is how you would do it:
<?php
if ($_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"] != "facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)") {
redirect('http://www.somesite.com', 302);
}
function redirect($url, $type=302) {
if ($type == 301) header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: $url");
die();
}
?>
<html...

https://stackoverflow.com/a/7659770/1354666 This is a great answer, but a few things about it aren't working out well for me, so I've tried an alternative.
Instead of using href's in button tags I'm using Iframes.
Make a series of html pages for each of OG objects.
In Each of these pages add the necessary facebook header scripts and facebook root elements to call the facebook api.
Create form input elements that will call the actions for each of these OG objects. Give each of these elements an id.
Include a small script that will determine if you're and Iframe or a page, so you can redirect users back to your home page if they click on the facebook feed.
Finally, place and your sized iframe with a style set to no frame on the page and set it to no scroll. Use the ids of the form elements to target which action should be in the iframe view.
I'm still working on refining this for my mobile phones output, but it's working as I it should for most browsers.

FB uses the URL you assign to the object to scrape it for information. The only way around this would be to have the objects shown via an iframe or some approach similar. If the object was referenced directly you'd need a way to redirect back to the appropriate wrapper page for the combined object view. As long as everything is in the same domain you could work out a method for communication between the children frames via the parent.

Related

Pass reference id from url bar to other internal pages

I am compiling a lead generation landing page and, in the form I have inserted a hidden field which collect whatever is written in the url bar after
"?rel=".
This is done in order to track where the leads come from (Facebook ads, direct linking etc).
To be more clear if this is the url: www.mywebsite.com/form.html?rel=fbads
the hidden field will be fill with "fbads" and this is working.
In the landing page I have a link to another page with more details and in this webpage I have the same form.
My idea is to run campaings on the first page with the rel link, but then if the user clicks on the link and go to the detailed page (and then compile the form from there), I am losing the rel field.
How can I pass the rel field to the url of the second page?
Thanks
You may refer the this stackoverflow page. Once the HTTP GET request comes, traverse in HTTP headers in your controller and look for Referer field but it is not always set and the client can change the header value. May be using google analytics is the better option.
If you just want to know that whether if they came to your form page from your landing page or not, you may add fix HTTP URL parameter prior to HTTP redirect.
If you save your rel in a variable, you can add it on your link to detailed page, for example in case of =fbads just once variable is set up, add it: <a href="http://myDetailedPage.com/detailed/?=<?php $rel;?>"</a>

displaying own like count next to like button

I have a website where the URLs have some tracking parameters that do not affect the page that is displayed i.e. the URL is of the form http://mywebsite.com/page1?tracking1=aaa&tracking2=bbb and 'tracking1' and 'tracking2' are just tracking parameters used for some other purpose and do no determine the page that is displayed. The page that is displayed is always 'http://mywebsite.com/page1' irrespective of the values of these tracking parameters.
I have included the facebook like button on my website pages and facebook treats each of these URLs, including the tracking parameters, as separate pages. I'm not able to get facebook to ignore these tracking parameters and just consider the URL without tracking parameters as a page. So, I'm storing my own like count against the actual URL (when I get a callback on the like action) and displaying it next to the like button.
Is displaying own like count next to facebook like button against their usage policy? Is there a better way to do this?
Is there any particular functional reason you're using GET (ie URL) variables to store your tracking?
If you can push them into POST instead, or use cookies or sessions for your tracking, you can simplify your URLs and Facebook should treat it as a single page.
If you have to use GET due to, for example, the links coming from external websites, you could use a pass-through URL to do your tracking, before forwarding to the main page. ie someone clicks the link to redirect?tracking1=aaa&tracking2=bbb&page=page1
And redirect, as you may have guessed, does what you need to do with your tracking before forwarding the user on to page1.

How to get the Facebook iFrame Tab url (including parameters) from within the app?

I think there are a few similar questions that seem to suggest using app_data in the signed request (http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/signed_request/) but I'm not sure if it will be possible to do what I am trying to achieve with it as I've never used it before.
If I have my Facebook 'Tab' Url as follows:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/PAGE_TITLE/PAGE_ID?sk=app_APP_ID
What I want to do is add an extra parameter on the end as follows:
&WT.mc_id=email-uk-8014
The reason for this is for tracking purposes and links will be sent out of the form
http://www.facebook.com/pages/PAGE_TITLE/PAGE_ID?sk=app_APP_ID&WT.mc_id=email-uk-8014
and the extra parameter will allow us to track the campaign id.
As you can see I have no way of knowing the value of the parameter beforehand as it depends on the link clicked by the user so is it possible to somehow get the value of the WT.mc_id parameter inside my iframe app?
app_data is the only parameter passed through other than the page ID and user's basic details (locale and if they do/don't like the page) - you'll need to use that for any sort of campaign tracking (or link elsewhere and redirect to the tab after capturing your analytics data)
you can pass get variables in facebook but only in canvas application
you just have to use $_REQUEST['xxx'] to retrieve the data.
you should not pass the param in href of facebook. Instead just make linking inside your app so that you can track the events. As you will be in iframe and having complete control you can do same on your own site.

The title, link and description don't work

I've been reading guides and examples for a long time (hours) but I can't manage. I tried to use all html meta tag like title, description, and og:property. Also tried to use the link sharer and also to create a new blank page with just the info I want to share to facebook in order to test. Also I tried to generate an random url in php so to have always a different url variable (the url to share and also the url of the main page containing the script). I also grabbed (url linter) a lot of time the url to clean the cache of facebook. It always give me the title of the site domain as title or the url itself as the shared title and description. I don't know what to do.
The main web site is from joomla. In the code of index of joomla I put a php include if the url has the variable "articolo" id. This incuded php page has regulat head body etc. So maybe I facebook check the main meta of joomla first? So now I tried to open a popup with just the page for sharing. Look here: link
It's possible that the title is locked in, meaning that after X number of likes Facebook doesn't allow you to change it anymore. Can you give us an example URL you're having issues with?
EDIT
Ok, now the link you provided shows some very interesting output. http://modernolatina.it/wjs/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=96&Itemid=258&autore=6&articolo=6
First, you webserver, instead of sending back a 200 code, is sending back a 500 code.
Secondly the HTML your webserver is sending back has two HTML tags (Do a view source on the content returned)
Fix up those two issues and I think the linter will be happier with your page.
Test your page here:
http://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug

handle subpages inside facebook app (with one single tab)

My goal is that have a fb page app (only in one tab) and use it with linkable subpages inside it.
For example:
If I click on subpage link there would be a http or ajax request inside the iframe. Thats fine, i can do that.
BUT
in the solution I also want to implement these two features:
1.:
I want that page to be accessible directly from an url like:
http://facebook.com/pagename/app..blabla/subpage1
or
http://facebook.com/pagename/app..blabla&sk=535&subpage=1
or
http://facebook.com/pagename/app..blabla#subpage1
2.:
On subpage link click inside iframe I want the browser url to turn into something like mentioned in the 1. point. (even when using ajax - probably with a hash tag)
Is it possible?
If you look at the page tab tutorial http://developers.facebook.com/docs/appsonfacebook/pagetabs/ at the bottom of the page they describe how you can create the 'subpage' idea using the app_data parameter. So your links will look like http://www.facebook.com/YourPage?v=app_1234567890&app_data=any_string_here
For your second question, in the links on the page you would specify target="_top" in any links you have with the href being: http://www.facebook.com/YourPage?v=app_1234567890&app_data=subpage1. This will cause the entire page tab to load through Facebook and you'll get the signed_request and your app_data parameters.
You probably don't want your ajax to load through facebook, because you'll get the Facebook page back instead of json or whatever you are trying to load. Instead you'll just make ajax calls to your server and pass the parameters you need to, like app_data or whatever you want.