"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/

[Donald Gilbert]

@hnaparst – Your Fanbox ID can be found in your Facebook fanpage url. It is the part after /pages/PAGE-NAME/###########/ . Those numbers are your ID. If you are using a custom page name for you page, then I don’t have an “easy” way to get it for you. However, I am working on a tool that will take care of it for you, and will implement it soon.

@jackfuture – That’s precisely why I coded it the way I did. I made it as plane-jane as possible and even added the option to disable all inline CSS so that people concerned with the way it looks can put in their own styling via style.css. However, if the need is great, I’ll consider adding the ability for “themes” selection in the admin panel. With options like “Facebook Style”, “Clean & Crisp”, or “Blank Slate”

[jackfuture]

@donald: Thanks for your reply.
OK, I didn’t know the possibilities resulting from the option disabling inline CSS. But not everybody is an expert in CSS-coding, so this theme-option would be really great! ?? It will be definitely the best facebook fanbox widget then.

[darrencoen]

hi donald, i get this error trying to activate:

————-
Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or ‘}’ in /home/content/B/2/8/B2885796/html/wp/wp-content/plugins/facebook-fan-box-cache/facebook-fan-box-cache.php on line 128
————-

the server is running PHP Version 4.4.9

[darrencoen]

blah sorry… just saw this in the readme.
“This plugin requires PHP5 and cURL to be enabled on your server.”

[Donald Gilbert]

Exactly what I was going to point out. The reason I did this is because WP 3.1+ is going to be PHP5+ only.

[christianslater]

Hey, this plugin is the best idea I’ve ever seen regarding to the really annoying loading times of the fanbox… UNfortunately it doesn’t work for me ??

I get this error on my page when I activate the widget:

Warning: file_put_contents(/###/#####/#####/wp-content/plugins/facebook-fan-box-cache/cache/fanbox.tmp.html) [function.file-put-contents]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /###/#####/#####/wp-content/plugins/facebook-fan-box-cache/facebook-fan-box-cache.php on line 175

Warning: file_put_contents(/###/#####/#####/wp-content/plugins/facebook-fan-box-cache/cache/fb_fanbox_cache_2111175171316.html) [function.file-put-contents]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /###/#####/#####/wp-content/plugins/facebook-fan-box-cache/facebook-fan-box-cache.php on line 288

Warning: file_get_contents(/###/#####/#####//wp-content/plugins/facebook-fan-box-cache/cache/fb_fanbox_cache_2111175171316.html) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /###/#####/#####/wp-content/plugins/facebook-fan-box-cache/facebook-fan-box-cache.php on line 153

how come? I really would love to use this!

[Donald Gilbert]

@christianslater – that usually means that PHP isn’t running under the same account as the hosting account, or for some other reason doesn’t have sufficient privileges to use that cache directory.

This can be easily solved by accessing your account via FTP and changing the permissions on the cache folder to 777, thus allowing PHP permission to write to it and read from it.

If you aren’t able to access and change permissions via FTP, you could possibly request your web host to “allow PHP to write to the /###/#####/#####/wp-content/plugins/facebook-fan-box-cache/cache/” directory.

[christianslater]

Hey Donald, thank you for your quick reply. I changed the permission of the cache Folder to 777 but then I get this error on my front homepage:
Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Exception' with message '22: The requested URL returned error: 404' in /###/#####/#######/wp-content/plugins/facebook-fan-box-cache/facebook-fan-box-cache.php:170 Stack trace: #0 /###/#####/#######/wp-content/plugins/facebook-fan-box-cache/facebook-fan-box-cache.php(143): EE_FB_Fanbox_Cache->_getHTML() #1 /###/#####/#######/wp-content/plugins/facebook-fan-box-cache/facebook-fan-box-cache.php(120): EE_FB_Fanbox_Cache->__construct('', '', '', '', NULL) #2 /###/#####/#######/wp-content/plugins/facebook-fan-box-cache/facebook-fan-box-cache.php(313): ee_fb_shortcode() #3 /###/#####/#######/wp-includes/widgets.php(182): EE_FB_Fanbox_Cache_Widget->widget(Array) #4 /###/#####/#######/wp-includes/widgets.php(891): WP_Widget->display_callback(Array, Array) #5 /###/#####/#######/wp-content/themes/avid2011/template-home.php(58): dynamic_sidebar() #6 /###/#####/#######/wp-includes/template-loader.php(43): include('/www/htdocs/v07...') #7 /###/#####/#######/wp-blog-header.php(16): require_once( in /###/#####/#######/wp-content/plugins/facebook-fan-box-cache/facebook-fan-box-cache.php on line 170

[Donald Gilbert]

That means that cURL is not able to access the URL of the fan page iframe. It throws the error when $this->_html is empty or false. Do you have a custom URL for you fan page? Are you sure that you entered the ID correctly?

[chrissss]

Is there a way to help you with translations? I could help you with german.

Btw, for those of you who have problems to get their facebook page id, because they’ve got a fanity url like https://facebook.com/whatever. Just open your page and look for the profile picture. The url to the picture will look like this…

https://profile.xxx/xxx/161999_182395928443149_1010918_n.jpg

…the 15 digit long number – in this case 182395928443149 – is the page id.

[Jurg3n]

I really like what i see and hear. Unfortunately it doesn’t work on my site, i just see the title of my widget. its is just a white space.

What am i doing wrong?

[Donald Gilbert]

@chrissss – Danke! I knew that this would come up when the plugin got popular, but I’m sorry to admit that I don’t have anything in place for language translation. I want to for sure, but I don’t know where to start. Can you point me in the right direction? (I’ll start searching the Codex.)

Also, thanks for pointing out an easy way to find the page id for users you can’t. I have another regex created that will search page source for the id, but I don’t have it implemented yet. Maybe version 2.0 with IDFinder and Translations is in order?

@jurg3n – what version of the plugin are you using?

[Jurg3n]

I am using Version: 1.3.1 and wordpress 3.04

But i think i have solved my first problem, i try to make it work locally witch doesn`t work when i try it online i got it to work.
now i’ve got a next question i would like to show the latest couple of posts from my stream is this possible? and how?

[Donald Gilbert]

@jurg3n – I don’t have streams enabled at this point. Although it is on the hitlist for version 2.0.

Here’s the fully partial list: ( <- Not a typo :] )
1. Themes
2. Facebook IDFinder
3. Translations
4. Streams

If there’s anything that anyone would like to see in v2.0, let me know. Feature requests are always welcome.

[jackfuture]

I’m wondering if it would be possible to like my facebook fan-site without opening a new window?

It’s a dream to have the cached facebook fan-box which looks and feels exactly like the original and without any restrictions ??