[Plugin: Simple Facebook Connect] Comments not being pulled from FB

Comments don’t get pulled back as “real” comments. They get pulled back as comments for display purposes only.

If you visit the single-post view of the post in question, do you see the comment?

Hi Otto,

Mostly I’ve been checking the home page, although occasionally I checked the single-post view and haven’t seen anything appear there.

1 hour ago I deleted all test comments and re-posted another test comment, and it is not displaying in the single-post view.

So to clarify, could I ‘lock down’ the commenting restrictions under the WordPress Settings-Discussion page, and it won’t affect the displaying of FB comments at all?

I should also have mentioned, that I’m using the TwentyEleven theme with a bbPress child theme, and I’ve checked that I do have that comments form.

Cheers,
Tom

Two things:

1. You’re *only* going to see the FB Comments on the single post view. Not the home page or any place else.

2. 6 hours is a minimum. It’s only checking once every 6 hours at most, and only when the single post page is viewed.

Hi Otto,

Thank you so much for making this plugin. I was checking out the plugin’s file simple-facebook-connect/sfc-getcomm.php and I found this bit of code:

set_transient(‘sfcgetcomm-‘.$id, $newcomms, 6*60*60); // 6 hours seems reasonable

Is there a specific reason why I wouldn’t be able to change that number to a more frequent time period (like maybe FB has a request limit)? I changed it to once a minute to test and see if it was actually pulling comments from FB, but it does not seem to.

Oh yeah I guess I should have mentioned: The SFC Plugins I’m using are Login with Facebook, Like Button, Publisher, Sidebar widgets , Allow FB Login to Comment, Integrate FB Comments, Photo Posting. I’m getting posts pushed over to FB fine, but just can’t seem to get FB comments back.

People don’t actually comment on your posts that often. Changing it to be more frequent won’t fix the problem if it can’t actually pull the posts from FB.

If the posts aren’t showing up, then you have an underlying connection issue. For whatever reason, the plugin can’t get the comments from FB. Changing the frequency at which it tries won’t fix that.

Right I know people wouldn’t comment that often. I’m just testing with my own WP and FB before I use it on other sites. So of course I’m commenting like mad. On any other site I would leave it at 6 hours, but I just didn’t want to wait 6 just to see if it worked or not. So you think it’s a connectivity issue? Do you know if this a typical problem because FB gets so many requests?

Ok nevermind. I figured out what was going on. I didn’t realize you were storing the frequency in the WordPress cache (actually I didn’t even realize there was a WP cache) until I looked at your code a little closer. So at the time that I set the frequency to 1 minute, it would have taken nearly 6 hours for that frequency to be used. Sorry for the confusion. Your plugin is awesome.

1. You’re *only* going to see the FB Comments on the single post view. Not the home page or any place else.

Otto,

On my homepage, facebook comments are displayed ! However, the comments_number() is not accurate…

When I switch to single view, the count is ok.

Any chance to find a workaround to get the proper number of comment on the homepage ?

Cheers,

Jk_

If your theme is using the comments_number() or get_comments_number() functions to display the comments count, then the number should get updated correctly. If it’s displaying the number in any other non-standard way, then it won’t get updated.

The plugin doesn’t know about single or home pages. Not really. It’s filtering on the comments_array filter to add the FB comments to the array. Then it’s storing the comments in memory. When the comments_number is called, it updates the comments count.

So two things have to happen. First, the comments_array filter has to be called, which actually inserts the comments and causes them to be displayed. Secondly, the comments_number function has to be called, to display the count. If this happens in the wrong order, the count won’t get updated in time.

Normally, on single post pages, the comments_template function is called. This both loads the comments and then calls the comments template. The template itself then contains the comments_number call. If your theme is doing it backwards and calling the comments_number call before the comments get loaded into memory, then the count will be wrong there. The only fix would be to alter the theme to reorder these operations. There’s no way that the plugin can alter the count before the comments get loaded into memory, because it doesn’t know how many there are.

Very clear answer ! It makes sense. Thanks.

Weirdly yesterday evening, everything was working properly and now the comments / count and the comments themselves are not displayed anymore.

Hey, Otto — I’ve got a slightly different problem. My posts appear on Facebook, but when someone comments there, all that appears on my blog is “So-and-so says:” with a blank text area.

In other words, it’s correctly pulling in the name of the commenter, but not the text of the comment itself.

This is happening on the single post page, and the only code in my theme is the basic comments_template();.

Any ideas? (If you need more info, let me know — and thanks!)

Ha! Never mind — figured it out. My fault (as expected).