Facebook widget not showing up

Hi there,

I’m using the Divi theme and when I added the Facebook jetpack widget to the sidebar, the widget does not display. The only thing that shows up is “facebook” from the title bar and when I click on that link, it takes me to the facebook page.

The Facebook widget is loading for me when I look at your site, so most likely the problem lies with something in your browser that’s preventing the widget’s code from loading. The usual cause for this is anti-tracking or anti-malware browser add-ons, so try disabling those and see if it helps. The built-in tracking protection of browsers like Firefox and Opera can also block the widget, so see if switching that off helps.

You might be able to add an exception for your site to the add-on or browser if you can narrow down what’s causing it, but the widget is visible to people viewing your site that do not have that type of tracking protection enabled.

There are no add-on anti-tracking or anti-malware extensions installed in my Chrome or Firefox installs.

Foolishly, I did not do a hard reset to clear the cache and reload, which I did this morning, and the plugin is now showing up.

That’s interesting about the anti-tracking since the default of “Do Not Follow” is turned on in my Chrome install and I never had a problem in the past of loading websites either I was creating or viewing with Facebook widget. But I’ll use this as a troubleshooting tool if things break again. Thanks!

That’s interesting about the anti-tracking since the default of “Do Not Follow” is turned on in my Chrome install and I never had a problem in the past of loading websites either I was creating or viewing with Facebook widget.

The Do Not Track setting in Chrome is just a request to web services to not track or collect your browsing data, but it doesn’t block tracking and rely on those services to honor the request.

Tracking protection as is built into the Firefox browser and which can be added through add-ons like Privacy Badger or Ghostery does active blocking on the other hand, and that can prevent widgets like the Facebook widget or the Twitter Timeline widget from working, as those widgets rely on tracking to work.

In this case it sounds like it was only a caching issue, but I hope that clarifies things for you.

I use Chrome to mainly develop. As I said previously, not only do I not have Ghostery or Privacy badger installed on Chrome OR Firefox, I don’t use add on-extensions so there is nothing for me to disable which is why I turned off “Do Not Track” only just to be sure.

After working yesterday afternoon, the plugin is gone again. I’ve cleared the cache and even cookies to cover all bases. I’ve checked against not only Chrome but also Firefox and Safari. Same thing.

I do not have any other plugins enabled.

I have rolled the site back to the 2015 and 2017 themes and I’m having the same issue.

Other suggestions?

The widget appears to be displayed on my end:
https://cl.ly/pzwJ

It seemed to work for me in Chrome, Chrome Incognito, Firefox, and Safari.

Do you use an external app (like a “focus” app) or an antivirus that may block access to specific sites on your computer?

It may also be useful to try to check for JavaScript errors on the page when the widget does not appear:
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Using_Your_Browser_to_Diagnose_JavaScript_Errors

Let us know what you find!

Things just got weird.

– I had completely spaced that we have pi-hole enabled so that got disabled.
– With pi-hole disabled, I was still unable to get the plugin to work.
– My husband, with pi-hole disabled but plugins enabled, could not get the plugin to work
– My husband disabled his plugins and with pi-hole disabled, he was able to get the plugin to work.
– I was still unable to get the plugin to work with pi-hole and plugins disabled
– With pi-hole enabled, my husband was able to cURL the page
– I then thought that everyone seemed to have no problem getting the plugin to work when I asked for help so I VPN’d to several sites across the US and international and every single time the plugin worked regardless of extensions or if pi-hole enabled or disabled
– I then thought about DNS. I disconnected from my VPN and changed our local DNS to Google’s public one and with extensions and pi-hole enabled, it worked
– As stated above, my husband had no DNS issues and for him it was a matter of extensions
– With our DNS, we’ve had zero problems accessing any websites, tools, plugins, etc across the internet and we’re online about eight hours a day (work and pleasure)
– With pi-hole enabled, using Google’s public DNS, no extensions and with tracking protection turned off, the plugin works in Firefox.
– With pi-hole enabled, using Google’s public DNS, with no tracking protection or extensions, the plugin works in Safari
– With pi-hole enabled, using Google’s public DNS, extensions re-enabled, the plugin works in Chrome

My husband and I are both stumped.

I don’t know if OS matters but he runs Linux and I am on a Mac.

I consider this to be resolved but I am curious as to what your thoughts are on this!

This is odd indeed. Jetpack itself does not do anything special with the Facebook Widget; it creates the same widget you would get from this generator:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/page-plugin/

It also means that whatever is happening on your site will happen to you whenever you visit other sites that include a Facebook widget.

If you are having trouble seeing that widget, it basically means that something in your browser or on your network stops one or more of the scripts hosted on Facebook.com from loading. Looking at your tests above, it looks like Pi-hole may not impact the scripts from loading, but your DNS configuration might.

At this point, and if this keeps happening, it may be worth testing things one at a time, to pinpoint the issue to the root cause, whether it be your browser, your computer’s DNS settings, your local network’s DNS settings, your ISP’s DNS settings, or something else.