WPbook: FB can't add app to profile

I think I’ve determined that FB no longer allows Application tabs on [user] Profiles; but that neither FB’s error messages nor WPbook’s installation instructions have been updated to reflect that.

Instead, I was able to make a [fan] Page for the WP website and put a WPbook application tab there.

The unstable email verification of the developer’s FB ID may be a problem, but it is unrelated to the aforementioned issue. It was a red herring.

Although I got WPbook to publish posts to the Page’s Wall, there are two remaining issues:

1.
When I unpublish and re-publish existing WP posts (to make them appear on the Wall), most posts appear but some do not. All is repeatable: the posts that go to the Wall always go to the Wall; the posts that don’t stream to the Wall, never do.

I don’t see a pattern; some from each group are short, others long; some of each have HTML in the post, others don’t. (All the WP posts have a featured image and all have a MORE tag.)

2.
WPbook doesn’t work as per its documentation: The installation documentations says that the Wall will show the post’s excerpt, if one was specified; otherwise the post’s intro up to the MORE tag, if one was specified; and otherwise a limit of 995 characters. However, WPbook actually ignores the MORE tag.

I hacked publish_to_facebook.php to fix this, as follows:

//    $wpbook_description = stripslashes(wp_filter_nohtml_kses(apply_filters('the_content',$my_post->post_content))); // JLW: this was the original code!

// JLW replacement code begins:
	  $JLW_description = apply_filters('the_content',$my_post->post_content);
	  $JLW_beforeMore = strpos($JLW_description,'<!--more-->') ;
	  if ( $JLW_beforeMore === false) { }
	  else {
         $JLW_description = substr( $JLW_description, 0, $JLW_beforeMore ) . '...' ; // JLW: force WPbook to respect the <!--more--> tag!
	  }
	  $wpbook_description = stripslashes(wp_filter_nohtml_kses( $JLW_description ));
// JLW replacement code ends.

It seems to work fine, and I include it here in case it may help somebody else.

Any ideas for troubleshooting #1, or feedback on the viability or usefulness of #2 are appreciated.

— J.

I have added

add_action('pending_to_publish','wpbook_publish_to_facebook');

to wpbook.php as per the thread at: …/topic/plugin-wpbook-not-posting-to-facebook-wall-when-contributors-posts-are-approved-by-editors…

but that didn’t fix the problem. I also tried un-publishing the posts to Pending status rather than to Drafts (before re-Publishing them). Still didn’t work…

When you move a post from published to draft and the publish it again, it should get posted to the facebook wall.

Why it sometimes fails and sometimes succeeds I don’t know – in my testing it works every time.

Is there something characteristic about the posts which go the wall versus those that don’t? Unusual characters in the titles? Images? Other embedded media? Length? Author?

Once we identify why the posts which don’t publish don’t publish, then I might be able to do more troubleshooting – the problem is Facebook isn’t returning an error message. (If it were WPBook would be showing it).

There’s no correlation between the posts’ lengths and whether they will flow to the Wall, nor any correlation with how far into the post the MORE tag is. There’s no correlation with the presence or absence of EM tags, which is the only HTML used in posts so far; there’s nothing special inside any titles.

I hadn’t thought to consider the lengths of the titles until just now; I’ll go check that.

All the posts have one “featured image” and no other. All have a MORE tag (which protects at least the punch line, but usually much more).

Since the site is brand new, all posts are by the same author, me.

Will poke around some more and get back here with the results…

Each time I fix something I seem to break something else!

1.
The Wall-Posting problem turned out to be simple: Each post has a new feature in the editing area that I never noticed before, called “Custom Fields”, and displays a custom field named “wpbook_fb_publish”.

The posts that weren’t flowing to the Wall had one (or more!!!) instances of this custom field set to no.

I don’t know why some posts had more than one instance of the field. But deleting them until there was just one instance, and setting it to yes, is all that was needed.

Thank you for this great WP Plugin and this great support.

2.
I set a 75×75 image for the app.
I also changed the image associated with one of the app’s two Profile Pages (see #3 below). But then changed my mind and uploaded it back to the original.

Apparently as a result, the Jewish Jokes app tab on the Profile Page now has its contents all messed up. The featured images are gone, and the layout seems cruder, and the text of the links simpler. The template for that tab must have been reset to some default.

I’ve tried removing the Jewish Jokes tab, and adding it anew. But contents are still wrong template. Can you look at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jewish-Jokes/137026546358702?v=app_181713155192177&ref=sgm
and see if you can tell why does the Jewish Jokes app’s Tab’s contents look like that?
(The Wall is now fine.)

3.
I am thoroughly confused by Facebook, specifically about the difference between some very similar Profile Pages, and I never know which one I’m being taken to and why.

One Jewish Jokes Profile Page has the URL https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jewish-Jokes/137026546358702?v=app_181713155192177&ref=sgm
and it says I have no Active Users, and have only the two Likes that I did myself. This is the page with the Wall and the (now messed up) Jewish Jokes Tab.

The other Jewish Jokes Profile Page says that I already have 11 monthly users, including one friend. Its URL is: https://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=181713155192177
but its wall is empty, and the tabs are completely different.

Why do I have two Profile Pages? Which one do other Facebook Users see as *the* Jewish Jokes Profile Page? Do I need both, or could the Wall-Posting and AppTab have been added to the facebook.com/apps/ Profile Page without having needed to make any facebook.com/page/… Profile Page?

( The Jewish Jokes app is at https://apps.facebook.com/jewish-jokes/ and it looks fine.)

Lots to reply to here – you might want to start different threads for some of these items.

1. Wall posting – there should be a panel in the post edit screen which says “Publish this post to Facebook Wall?” and offers Yes and No – it’s title is WPBook.

That’s what should set the custom fields appropriately.

What version of WordPress are you running? Do you not have such a panel?

2. In Chrome, I actually get a blank tab at that url: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jewish-Jokes/137026546358702?v=app_181713155192177&ref=sgm

That is, the tab is there but has no content.

In Firefox, the tab looks as I would expect – tabs only allow for simple FBML so there isn’t much formatting we can do on those pages.

3. FB is confusing indeed.

The first thing you describe as a Profile Page, at this url: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jewish-Jokes/137026546358702?v=app_181713155192177&ref=sgm

Is the tab for your FB App on your Facebook page. The Page itself is actually: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jewish-Jokes/137026546358702

(The v=app part just tells it to load the Tab for that app, rather than the wall tab which is the default).

The other thing you point to, https://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=181713155192177, is the profile page of your application itself.

In other words, you created a Facebook Page for Jewish Jokes, then you created a Facebook Application for Jewish Jokes, then you created a tab on the JJ Facebook Page which imports the content form the JJ application.

You could just have the JJ Facebook app, which people can visit at https://apps.facebook.com/jewish-jokes/ – if they go to the very bottom of that page where Facebook tells them what application is responsible for this page, and click on Jewish Jokes in that footer, they go to https://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=181713155192177, which is the “About Page” for the Facebook Application you created.

From there, they can add that application to their own pages, recommend it to friends, Like it, review it, discuss it, etc.

From the Facebook Page you created, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jewish-Jokes/137026546358702, they can also like it, suggest it to friends, etc – but it isn’t an App, it’s a page.

One option is to just have an app – no page at all. Then point the app to publish to the wall of the App page itself – but that is complicated. (And best left as an exercise for the reader).

Myself, I have an app for Open Parenthesis which I use to post to my personal FB profile – but that’s just one way tot do it.

Thank you so much for the clarity re: FB pages.

I have deleted the [Jewish Jokes Fan] Page, and

changed WPbook’s settings to post to the Wall of the App’s Page, and

deleted the App Tab
(I can’t imagine why, after putting so much customization work into the WPbook App template, I would ever want anyone to see the crude App Tab contents), and

added a “Post a Joke” link in the WPbook template that links to the App’s Wall (i.e., the App’s Page).

Everything seems to be running smoothly. Thank you so much!