"Official" Help Forum for Facebook Fan Box Cache

[Donald Gilbert]

If any of you have issues / problems with Facebook Fan Box Cache, or if you would like to suggest a feature, please do so in this topic.

Thanks,
Don

https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/facebook-fan-box-cache/

[aaronprill]

Just wanted to say I’m loving it so far- page load times are great compared to the default like box facebook provides… Put on update 0.3b and it looks much better! Making a mental note to donate at some point… ??

[Donald Gilbert]

Thanks Aaron! Glad you like it. FYI – I added a donate link just for you!

[aaronprill]

Hey Donald,

I put on the latest version this morning, and look what’s happening with the “Become a Fan” link on my homepage- https://hungerband.com/

I haven’t had time to dig through the plugin code, but do you have any idea why it’s being generated as such: “https://hungerband.com/target=_blank” instead of where the graphic properly links to (which is): “https://www.facebook.com/hungerband”

Let me know-
Thanks,
Aaron

[Donald Gilbert]

Well, that’s embarrassing. ??

Apparently, I didn’t account for fan pages that didn’t have /pages/ in the url.

Your page, being https://www.facebook.com/hungarband, didn’t match my regex looking for facebook.com/pages/*/*.

I’ve updated it, and it should now work out for you. If you update to 1.1 when it comes out, it’ll work fine.

If you don’t want to wait until the release is approved, you can fix the regex yourself. In the _parseHTML function, change
$urlExp = '/"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/(.*?)\/(.*?)"/';
to
$urlExp = '/<div class="connect_top clearfix"><a href="(.*?)" target="_blank">/';

Also change $this->_url = $url[0]; to $this->_url = $url[1];

Sorry about that. I’ll get the fix pushed live asap.

[Donald Gilbert]

oops – you’ll also have to change a couple other lines, adding double quotes around $vars['url'] in two places. Probably better to just wait unless your comfortable with doing that.

[aaronprill]

That makes sense because I just updated to a custom Page domain last night. I thought it had to do with your update, but it had to do with that I guess… (Facebook allows custom page domains after you get 25 fans or more, btw).

I am pretty comfortable editing php, but I’ll wait for the official update… no big rush.

Thanks again- glad I could help find a bug!
Aaron

[peteratomic]

Excellent! THRILLED to finally find a FB fanbox plugin that works with Display Widgets so that I can control what pages the box appears.

Just a small problem. I’ve got the number of connections set to 8 but only 6 are showing up. Could it have to do with some randomization issue? I’ve currently only got 9 fans listed so far (just create the page last night) so there aren’t a lot to pull from.

Ideas?

[Donald Gilbert]

@peteratomic – glad you like it. That was one of the problems I was facing and one of the reasons I created it.

Your issue could be the size of your div container for the fanbox being set too small. Check the HTML and count the actual number of connections it’s showing. (I use https://www.getfirebug.com and Firefox for that sort of stuff.)

What’s your site? I could take a look when I get a chance.

[peteratomic]

https://www.atomicdesignstudios.com/blog/clients/

It looks like one more person “liked” the page, so now there are seven people filling eight potential slots. (Yesterday it was six filling eight potential slots.)

That’s why I thought there might be a bug with the randomization or something.

Thanks for the quick reply!

[Donald Gilbert]

Weird…

I went ahead and “liked” your page, and now I’m in there, rounding out the 8. Interesting. Being that I get the original iframe via cURL, and then just regex over it to get the info out that I need, there’s really only two options:

1. Facebook limits the number of fans that can be shown in a fanbox for pages that have less than X. (somewhat unlikely)

2. A problem with my regex that reveals itself when used on a fan page that has less than X. (highly likely)

Let me look into it.

[Donald Gilbert]

So, I looked into it, and it’s actually a problem with facebook.

If you look at your regular iframe fanbox url ( https://www.facebook.com/plugins/fan.php?connections=8&id=170388796337902&locale=en_US&stream=false&width=255 ) you’ll see what I mean.

Notice how the URL says to show 8 and the fanbox only shows 7? Apparently, there’s a limit on facebook’s side that causes this. Sorry it wasn’t something I did, then there’s the potential that I could fix it. But not this. ??

[Donald Gilbert]

I went ahead and “liked” your page again, so it shows the 8 on your site. ?? (yay – I CAN do something!)

[peteratomic]

what? bugs in the most popular internet service in the world? I can’t believe it! (when will we ever have sarcasm in text… I long for the day)

thanks Mr Grape for the excellent customer support. I sincerely hope to make a fat donation, as soon as I pay my server bill!

[hnaparst]

I am trying to use the widget. What is the Fanbox ID?

[jackfuture]

Hi Donald,

I really like the idea of this plugin. But I place great value on a well-looking layout. I’m sorry to say that your plugin looks quite boring.

I’d love, if you implement a more facebook-like layout (like this plugin: https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/wp-fb-fan-box/).

Thanks,
Jakob