Oddly Active

Hi again @antoscarface –

Thank you for your reply / links. It’s greatly appreciated, esp as you’re the developer of a different plugin and not the ‘official’ plugin support team, who remain frustratingly quiet.

Re your links: I had seen these pages previously and have now looked again, but I’m still not seeing the bit explaining how to make a ‘catalogue’ item (complete with links back to my website shop and shopping basket), show up in my (Facebook) shop. I thought – and it appears many other Facebook for Woocommerce (which I will call F4W from now on as it’s easier to type!) users did too – that this was automatic, but if it is a two stage process the second stage is not explained anywhere. I have read various support files on Facebook, Github, WordPress, Woocommerce forums, but nowhere is there a clear walkthrough on this, or even an indication that it is necessary. F4W has, in fact, a specific ‘hide on Facebook’ setting, which seems completely counterintuitive if ‘show on Facebook’ isn’t the default. I can, of course, add a replica product from the (Facebook) shop tab, but this then won’t have the links to the original catalogue or to my website shop and shopping basket, which defeats the object…

IF I’m missing something and there is a very simple ‘step two’ to link products in my (Facebook) catalogue – c/w links to my website – to the (Facebook) shop a walkthrough explaining the process would be really helpful, for me and for the countless other users who are equally confounded. The F4W plugin description states:

“After completing the setup, you’ll be ready to create ads that promote your products and you can also create a shop section on your Page where customers can browse your products on Facebook.”

so clearly it’s supposed to be viable. What it doesn’t tell you is how, or if indeed it is necessary, to do anything other than link the plugin to Faceook…

With regard to pixel caffeine, will it connect a woocommerce/wordpress store to a Facebook catalogue AND shop in the way described, and if so can it use the pixel already embedded in my site or does the setup process always create a new pixel? If it can you’re going to have a very successful plugin, because the ‘official’ one seems extremely unreliable, and the support pretty-much non-existent.

Thanks again for taking the time to respond, and if you can provide a walkthrough to help achieve the catalogue – shop connection you’re a star!

David / Oddlyactive

Hi @antoscarface –

Thanks for reply, but that’s my problem – I don’t really know anything about ‘JS snippets’ or anything else you mention! ALL of this e-commerce stuff is completely new to me and my plan is to worry about the fine-tuning later.

Here’s what I THOUGHT Facebook for Woocommerce did/would do (ads aside):
1) Add the products from my Woocommerce shop to a Facebook catalogue that would then be visible in my Facebook shop, while linking back to the Woocommerce cart on my website for purchasing.
2) Link the same catalogue of products to my Instagram account, allowing for ‘tagging’, and directing buyers back to my website / Woocommerce cart to complete their purchases.

The problem I’ve hit (and seemingly so have many others) is that while the catalogue is definitely visible (via catalogue manager) and the products appear as ‘synced’, they DON’T show up in my Facebook shop, which resolutely displays a banner telling me ‘your shop won’t be visible until you add inventory […]’ I’m HOPEFUL that the existence of the catalogue will allow the Instagram connection to be made but can’t check it out until my partner, currently out of the loop dealing with a family health crisis, get’s back from leave. If it does we’ll bypass a Facebook shop completely other than as a tool for linking the catalogue to Instagram, but if the Facebook ‘non shop’ means Instagram integration is missing too then we need an alternative for integration, which is why I’m asking about Pixel Caffeine.

I hope all that makes sense, but in a nutshell what I’m asking is whether Pixel Caffeine will do the ‘back end’ stuff in Woocommerce that Facebook for Woocommerce does while offering a reliable connection to our Facebook page shop and catalogue manager so we can actually sell some products on Facebook and Instagram…

Thanks again for response, and any further help/insight greatly appreciated

David / OddlyActive.

Hi Doug –

Yes, I did post on GitHub but only, as here, to explain the problem. My plan this afternoon is to update that with the full details you outlined (steps 1 – 7 above) including some screen grabs. The GitHub thread is: https://github.com/facebookincubator/facebook-for-woocommerce/issues/1103#issuecomment-523113253

Have not as yet run ads or had any advertising spend with Facebook as the shop integration hasn’t worked! The plan was/is to look at ads once the shop is functioning, and to connect that up with Instagram too. One issue with the ‘delete and reinstall’ approach to fixing the problem (other than it doesn’t work) is that each overwrite of Facebook for Woocommerce plugin creates yet another ad account and another pixel, which at the very least makes identifying what goes where more problematic but worst case scenario may be actually exacerbating it. As well as ad accounts, ‘business manager’ proves equally convoluted, especially as you have to access it via a three click process from ‘commerce manager’ which isn’t yet available in the UK! In a nutshell, simply trying to get the plug in to connect has generated a host of poorly linked account and muddied the water even further. A simplified ‘connect to’ dialogue and the option(s) to remove rather than disconnect additionally created pixels and ad accounts would be much more user friendly…

Anyhow, heading over to add info the the GitHub thread very soon, so check there for full details a bit later, and thanks again for advice/taking an interest: https://github.com/facebookincubator/facebook-for-woocommerce/issues/1103#issuecomment-523113253

David

Hi – thanks for replies

@sterndata – I don’t think there’s a woo-specific plug in area on wordpress.com. The app support links directly to the support forum here.If there is a ‘dot.com’ forum for plugins the live help engineer didn’t direct me to it and offered no help with the problem – he just (effectively) said contact Facebook (ha! like THAT’s an option!) or Facebook for Woocommerce plug in on github. I’m trying both, but posted here too in hopes somebody on the forum might have found an answer to similar problems. When I posted in the wordpress.com forum I was effectively told not to post there because the plan I’m on gives me live support!

@dougaitkin (ref 13747701-HC) – I have posted this on GitHub page too and have read through (and implemented) lots of pixel/feed-related suggestions on the facebook help files, but they’re so convoluted and difficult to navigate it’s a minefield! On GitHub there are many threads about similar issues, but the developers seem to have stopped responding to them. If you (or anyone else) knows a way of raising a ‘ticket’ that’ll get a response from any of the developers involved (WooCommerce/automattic, Facebook) I’d really appreciate the info. At the risk of sounding dumb the link you sent (which I’ve tried already) tells me what to send but doesn’t offer any obvious way to send it! I’ll try raising a new ‘issue’ but in the meantime any help from anyone who’s solved similar issues greatly appreciated.

Oh – one final thought: does anyone know of another FREE plug in I can try linking to Facebook with? It seems illogical with Facebook playing such a major role in e-commerce / instagram advertising that integration isn’t incorporated directly into Woocommerce, esp if the official plug in that Facebook offers can only pool a 1.5 star rating. I’m not being tight (mean) but the reality is that for the ‘service’ shop we’re running the cost of upgrading to a business account to access woocommerce and then having to pay another ten-fifteen a month for a reliable add-on plug in isn’t really viable.

Anyway, thanks for help so far and for any further advice anyone on the forum can offer!

Further to above… thanks fellas. Though the solution wasn’t quite as simple as suggested I’ve ‘found’ the allow comments and pingbacks fields right at the bottom of the editor. They weren’t there previously, but by toggling jetpack’s comments box on and off they miraculously reappeared! Now only have to remember to toggle them with each post! ??

Hi Mark and Umesh – thanks for feedback, but I don’t appear to have the post editor check boxes you’re talking about… There’s a drop down panel at the top of the editor called ‘Screen Options’ but it says ‘additional screen options for suffusion’. Both discussion and comments checkboxes are ticked (and always have been) but there’s still no ‘comments’ option in the online page.

If there’s another ‘Screen Options’ relating to WordPress how do I access it?

Hi MacManX –

Thanks for reply, but as stated in the original message I have no access to dashboard / back end of site to try your first two suggestions – unless you can an advise a way to disable ALL plugins without access to the dashboard.

For the same reason I can’t edit the PHP.ini file or ht.access file..
To clarify: the site in question was originally set up by a 3rd party who is no longer around. The only access I have as ‘admin’ is via the dashboard. I can only make changes via the dashboard, which I can’t access because of the memory allocation issue.

I can contact the host server indirectly, but would need to tell them exactly what needs to be done as the intermediary is NOT the 3rd party who set up the original site and is probably even less technically minded than me!

I know – it’s a mess, ennit? In my defence, I did tell the intermediary not to do it that way in case something like this happened, but… …

Anyhoo, any further suggestions, preferably with ‘walkthroughs’ greatly appreciated ??

Hi – this is NOT what’s causing the issue (unless I’m missing something?)as the setting under ‘maximum memory wordfence can use’ is 256Mb – i.e. twice what you have quoted. I haven’t adjusted the ‘PHP.ini file’ because a) the maximum memory has been 256Mb since the website was first created and this hasn’t been an issue before and b) I haven’t a clue what the PHP.ini file is/how to adjust it/why I should need to…

I changed the update interval because it was a suggested fix. But it didn’t work. The issue I have hasn’t been an issue prior to updating to the latest release, so the natural assumption is that the ‘bug’ was introduced with the latest release, which is what Stever 22 seems to be saying too and within exactly the same time period. If there’s a way I can rewind to the previous (and, on my site at least, stable) version of Wordfence I’ll try that and wait to update manually until the next release in the hope that whatever’s causing the problem is resolved.

Any other suggestions greatly appreciated, but for now i’ve had to deactivate wordfence and install a different security plug in. It’s either that, or I have no site.

Hi – I’m having same problem with latest update.

I have tried disabling live traffic and changing the update interval to 30 seconds but still getting fatal error…

Any other suggestions?