Was saving down facebook data into a database from the graph api, wanted to save the urls in a mixed url table but didn’t want to bother saving the whole http://www.facebook.com every time, what a waste of data. Initially I lazily abbreviated this too: fb.com/whateverthepagewas, left the acquisition stuff to its job and then went off to do something else. Coming back to the management system I accidentally clicked one of these fb.com/ links, and it worked! Facebook have set it up as a redirect. Maybe this was common knowledge but I hadn’t heard of it before…Anyhow a useful biproduct of dataspace savings!

So check it out: fb.com/hayday

That will redirect you too http://www.facebook.com/hayday (my page.) – just like fb.me, but traditional-like, lol. Neat eh? Anyone else know any facebook quick wins?

The post Did you know: Facebook short url’s already kinda exist first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

Clock Face by tibchris
Facebook Time in PHP, who the what where?

If you haven’t tried pulling anything time-sensitive out of the graph API yet, don’t, that’s my advice. There is not a single bit of coherent explanation as to how the API hand’s out times, when I first researched it I had written on my pad “Pacific time”…great, did my past (possibly beer holding) self not remember that Pacific time is one thing half the year and another the other half? PDT/PST? Obviously not. What’s more, now when I check (post something on a page, grab it with graph API) – its giving me GMT+00 times, WHEN I’M IN GMT+01.

All I can work out is facebook have either been pleasant enough to convert the time to the users original registration locale (likely, and pleasant) and not noted it down ANYWHERE publicly, or they have chosen to use GMT. Probably the former, either way – facebook developers – we need a better solution for working with facebook times.

The post Facebook time in php – Facebook uses GMT not PDT/PST? first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

You can host facebook apps on any host, but hosting somewhere unsecure (not accessible via https) will flag up the following prompt for anyone browsing to the page with secure browsing turned on (high proportion of fb users.) You CAN also use amazon cloud storage (S3) for free https file storage, up to a level, however you cannot run server side code (php/ASP.NET) without setting up a server with their EC service.

Not pretty eh? What will that do to your conversion rates? Yep nothing good.

Its not just the mavericks either, for example brands like banana republic are still running http stuff, prompting the user with this message on loading their like-capture pages.

Set up 1and1 shared hosting to host Secure SSL facebook apps/applications/tab pages

So anyway here’s the cheap, quick way to hosting your facebook apps SECURELY using 1and1 shared hosting.

1. Log onto admin.1and1.co.uk (or .com)
2. (Optional) Register a domain name which you don’t mind generically hosting your fb content. For me this is www.whfb.co.uk – this will only show up if users looked at the information for the frame, probably wont ever matter, but if you are running a whole host of different niche pages it might be worth it for simplicity/segmentation.
3. Go to domain management section and click “Shared SSL Encryption” under SSL option
   
4. Assign the Shared SSL Encryption to your generic domain/main domain you want to use
   
5. Setup a folder under your domain like you would with any facebook page, use the facebook php api to fangate or just put some html up there, bare in mind all objects referenced in what you put up should direct resources to “https” not http. That is if you reference “http://www.example.com/someimage.png”, switch the http for https (save your own copy of the file if you need to. Referencing images locally in the folder should work fine for http/https if you use the same domain.
6. Setup your facebook app (theres thousands of guides on this…) and set the following (under “Select how your app integrates with Facebook -> Page Tab”)
   
7. Add the app to your facebook fan page and visit it, (setting it as default landing page perhaps ;)) – you should not get any security messages, if you have you need to go back and check your html is pointing to any external elements via https.

Chances are if you are running 1and1 shared hosting (or any other major) then you will have SSLRelays free of charge with your package, what’s more this takes about 1 minute to setup, so test with this before you stick stuff in the cloud!

The post Hosting facebook Apps/Applications/iFrame Pages on 1and1 (SSL) first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

As I have been dabbling with facebook fan pages I thought I would share a few of the take-away’s, in this case purely to do with the branding of your facebook page, increasingly an important outward factor in all web developments – facebook fan pages are perhaps the building blocks of a good social sprawl. I will post later about the technicalities of using fan-gated iframe apps (hosting them on 1and1/Amazon S3 for no extra cost) and similar but for now lets focus on the looks.

Take a look at these few examples:

You have probably noticed straight away what I am getting at. Coherence. Branding coherence is an eternal battle for marketing departments, making your brand appear coherent to the corporate strategies laid down to be long term principles. In the realm of smaller web projects though its not such a huge deal. The first thing I do when setting up a new facebook page is get the overall branding planned and implemented. In short I make/contract 6 Images. These 6 images will either work well together, leaving a mark in the mind of an already bombarded potential fan or they’ll excite no one and be forgotten along with the other mediocre half-attempts. Get these 6 images right.

So here’s how it is. You are allowed a facebook profile pic for your page, this image can be just a logo (check out HP) or it can be utilised as any ad space might be, stick up an exclusives offer deal, some shocking message etc. This image can be up to 200 px x 600 px and you can upload a higher resolution, baring in mind the width will always be proportionate.

Your other 5 images come in the form of Tagged/Wall posted/Album images. These are shown across the top of your wall (where ultimately you wan’t your fans to be hanging out) and are sorted in a RANDOM order by facebook. That’s right, however you upload them they will occasionally appear in a completely different order unlike the ones on your personal profile page. These stick to normal photo proportion ratio’s and can be uploaded via the “upload photos” option on the pages’ wall. Remember they don’t have to be photo’s, use these 5 images to extend (coherently) the brand of the page you are trying to promote.

Take a look around, check out some pages of your favourite brands, I have no doubt they will be using the images in clever ways, ways that can improve like rates, conversation and overall brand image.

Facebook Fan Page Branding Template



(Adobe Illustrator CS4, 600kb Rar’d)

Its an Adobe Illustrator file with a dummy facebook page laid out with artboards setup for each of the 6 images I talk about above, it should let you create all your images in a single space so you can really get a feel as to how well they gel together. Once you have constructed your images, switch to artboard view and click each image in turn, remember when exporting the main profile pic image that it needs to be 200 pixels wide, this way you won’t suffer any of facebooks image downscaling nasties.

The post Facebook Fan Page Branding Template – Illustrator first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

Scenario’s are either:

• Use facebook like button generator to generate code for a like button (sometimes even this bugs out..)
• Use some service like ShareThis to generate code for a facebook like button

• It shows as Zero – Facebook likes ‘0’ even if you know that URL (that you installed it on, or fb page) has likes
• It occasionally shows correct like count, but most of the time shows Zero [0] like’s

Investigate with:

• Facebook Lint tool (object debugger)

After spending a few hours working out what was causing this 0 like problem on my facebook like button I narrowed it down to two problems people are experiencing:

1. Error in the code you are copying across. It should be an iframe (unless you are using XFBML) like the code shown on the facebook lint tool (object debugger.) In fact the best way I found was to use the object debugger to make the iframe code and then adapt that using parameters from the facebook like button generator as the likebutton generator bugged out for me. MAKE SURE its pointing to the right url, use https if you can and point it to the page which validates in Lint tool.
2. Page Problems. If your page doesn’t validate properly in the Lint tool (object debugger) then this is your issue, this is the likely situation if you are seeing it OCCASIONALLY show the right figure in your likes box, but mostly 0 [zero] likes. Page problems as far as I have experienced boil down to:
1. Facebook soft deleting your page and not telling you. If you are experiencing this ZERO likes situation it might well be that facebook has actually discontinued your page without telling you, leaving it on your admin menu’s and leaving the likes/wall/everything in tact. This is confusing as hell and I wish they would formally tell/make it obvious. Reasons why your page gets deleted? I am sure there are a bunch. I repeat. Your page may look to you to be live, with likes and all – but if you are experiencing zero likes on your like button it might also be deleted. Get your friend to search for it in the search box, if it doesn’t appear, you’ve had it deleted!
2. Restricted Content. We all love fangating, well its a working economy, but I have a sneaking suspicion it may occasionally cause a discrepancy in like button, potentially pointing a like button to an inaccessible page to the potential like’ee would mean facebook wouldn’t be able to access it and therefore show zero (whereas it might be showing you the proper number as you have access..)

Anyway, for a nice combo of a facebook like button and a google + button (are these going to be more and more important?) check the following code, don’t forget to replace your url

<div align="left" style="height:70px">
    <div id="fbbox" style="float:left;height:65px;width:55px;">
    	<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=***YOURURL***&layout=box_count" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="height: 65px; width: 55px" allowTransparency="true"></iframe>
    </div>
    <div id="gbox" style="float:left;height:65px;width:55px;"><g:plusone size="tall" href="***YOURURL***"></g:plusone></div>
</div>

The post Facebook Like button not working or showing 0 likes first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

There is infinite uses for this – with facebook more and more integrating “likes” with their search and other stuff you will need this functionality to drive traffic from facebook. Anyway this used to be the easy case of using https://api.facebook.com/method/pages.isFan?access_token=… to get a 1 or 0 depending on whether or not the user had “fanned” the page/website/whatever.

But then came along the big bad Graph API, which to get this IsFan functionality is a bitch. Getting the “likes” directly works for the page owner (which confuses everything) but not for third parties, showing just the popular/main category “likes” against them (and you need extended permissions.)

Long and short of it there’s about 5 ways to skin this cat, all of which suck except this one, in my brief, frustrated look into it. In any case this uses FQL and the Graph API call to produce a Boolean indicating whether or not the user has fanned something with id $pageID. It works, in all scenario’s for me so far.

$likeID = $facebook->api(
array( ‘method’ => ‘fql.query’, ‘query’ =>
‘SELECT target_id FROM connection WHERE source_id = $userID AND target_id = $pageID’ )
);

if ( empty($likeID) ) {

// user has NOT Liked the page/whatever

} else {

// user HAS Liked the page/whatever

}

If only facebook would update their documentation to show how easy it is to fql query from the API!

The post Facebook Graph Api – Is user a fan of page id – Using FQL and opengraph to mimic Pages.IsFan first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.