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Social Plugins FAQs

General Questions

Which platforms are supported?The Like, Share and Send Button available for Web, iOS and Android. The Embedded Posts and Page Plugin are exclusively available for Web.

Do I need to have a Developer Account?

• Web: If you are using Social Plugins on the web, you do not need to have a Facebook Developer account.
• iOS/Android: If you are using Social Plugins within a iOS or Android app, you need to register as a developer.

Do I need to create a Facebook app?

• Web: If you are using Social Plugins on the web, you do not need to create a Facebook app for integrating a Social Plugin.
• iOS/Android: If you are using Social Plugins within a iOS or Android app, you need to create a Facebook app and tie it to your app identifier.

Do I need to submit my integration of a Social Plugin for review?

• Web: If you are using Social Plugins on the web, you do not need to submit your integration(s) for review. You can use any Social Plugin instantaneous.
• iOS/Android: If you are using Social Plugins within a iOS or Android app, you will have to submit your integration of the Like button for review via the App Review tab in the App Dashboard.

What information does Facebook get when I implement a Social Plugin, and how is it used?If a person has visited Facebook and visits your website with a social plugin, the browser sends us information in order to load Facebook content on that page. The data we receive may include info like the person's user ID, the website they're visiting, the date and time, and other browser-related info. We record some of this info and may use it to improve our products and services and to show people more interesting and useful ads.

How do I display Social Plugins in different languages?

If you are using the HTML5 or XFBML versions, you should include the language code when you instantiate the library.

When you load the SDK adjust the value js.src to use your locale, just replace en_US by your locale, e.g. fr_FR for French (France):

// Example 1:
'//connect.facebook.net/fr_FR/sdk.js';

// Example 2:
js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/fr_FR/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.6"; 

Supported locales are referenced in the Facebook Locales XML file. You may need to adjust the width of a Social Plugin to accommodate different languages. Find more information on our Localization & Translation page.

How do I integrate multiple Social Plugins?

• Web: If you are using Social Plugins on the web, you do not need to submit your integration(s) for review. You can use any Social Plugin instantaneous.
• iOS/Android: If you are using Social Plugins within a iOS or Android app, you will have to submit your integration of the Like button for review via the App Review tab in the App Dashboard.

Do Social Plugins work on Mobile, Tablet and Desktop?Depending on the Social Plugin you may need to implement a discrete version for Mobile, Tablet or Desktop. Please refer to the FAQ or "Get Started" document for the plugin you wish to implement.Note: It is not recommended to use CSS media queries to adjust the size of Social Plugins.

How do I move a page to a different URL?

I need to move a page to a different URL, you can't move the likes, shares or comments directly to the new URL but you can use the old URL as the canonical source for the number of likes or shares at the new URL. We include background on how to do this below.

Background

When resolving which url a like or share action should be attributed to, Facebook uses a process to resolve the canonical url for url that's been loaded. When a URL is loaded, the crawler will look for:

1. A HTTP 301 or 302 Redirect
2. The use of an og:url open graph tag in the page
3. The use of rel=canonical as described in RFC 6596. (Facebook's crawler only supports content, not HTTP headers.)

If any of these methods result in a URL that's different than the URL originally loaded, the specified URL will be considered the "canonical URL" for the original URL. If required, the crawler will also follow a chain of redirects to find the canonical URL.

All likes and shares will be attributed to the canonical URL instead of the loaded URL.

Examples

Hint: Use our debugger to see what Facebook sees when crawling your page.

By controlling the canonical URL you can move content from one URL to another and retain like and share counts, as long as you allow Facebook to continue to resolve the new URL into the old one. This can be done with one of two methods:

Add an og:url tag to the new URL which points at the old URL (Preferred)

In your new URL, you should include a link to the old URL. For example, if your new URL was https://example.com/new-url, and the old URL was https://example.com/old-url, you should include this snippit in the new-url:

<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/old-url" />

Using this method tells the crawler that the canonical URL is at the old location, and it will use that to generate the number of likes and shares on the page. Any new likes and shares will continue to aggregate on the old URL as well.

This also requires that the old URL still renders a document with Open Graph tags and returns a HTTP 200 response, at least when loaded by Facebook's crawler. If you want other clients to redirect when they visit the URL, you must send your 301 HTTP response to all non-Facebook crawler clients. The old URL should contain its own og:url tag that points to itself.

You can learn how to recognize Facebook's crawler in our Sharing Best Practices Guide.

This method will work with rel=canonical as well, but og:url is preferred.

Redirect Facebook's crawler to the old URL

Another method to accomplish this is to redirect Facebook's crawler to the old URL any time it visits the new URL. As with the method described above, the old URL must be a valid document with Open Graph headers. And if you want to include a redirect at the old URL, Facebook's crawler must not redirect when it visits the old URL.

Why is my social plugin not visible on my site?

Only public content can be embedded. If the post, page, or url has any sort of privacy restrictions, it's not embeddable. This applies to the Like button, Page Plugin, and Embedded Posts and Videos.

A quick way to test if a specific piece of content is embeddable is to try and load it using your browser's "Incognito" or "Private" feature.

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Like, Share and Send - Common FAQs

How can I customize what is shared?

The story created by the action of liking, sharing or sending your page can be enriched by using meta tags to turn a simple HTML page into an Open Graph object.

If you plan to use the Like, Share or Send button on any page on your website, you should read our best practices guide to ensure published stories look great on Facebook and get the best possible distribution.

Should I display different buttons together?We recommend that you include all buttons on your app or website to let people choose the way that they want to share your content.

How can I track referrals?

The ref setting causes two parameters to be added to the referrer URL when a person clicks a link from a stream story about a shared link:

• fb_ref - The ref parameter
• fb_source - Like/Share: The stream type (home, profile, search, ticker, tickerdialog or other) in which the click occurred and the story type (oneline or multiline), concatenated with an underscore. Send: The story type (message) in which the click occurred.

For example:

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?fb_ref=top_left&fb_source=profile_oneline

You can track these parameters using your analytics software.

Was this answer helpful?YesNo

When I click a button, the popup window (flyout) doesn't show. Why?If the Like, Share or Send button is placed near the edge of an HTML element with the CSS overflow property set to hidden, the flyout may be clipped or completely hidden when the button is clicked. This can be remedied by setting the overflow property to a value other than hidden, such as visible, scroll, or auto.

Why and when does Facebook scrape my website?

Facebook needs to scrape links shared to Facebook to know which to link preview information to show on Facebook.com or on Facebook for iOS and Android. This happens every 30 days to ensure the properties are up to date. The linked page is also scraped when the URL is entered into the Debugger Tool.

Facebook observes cache headers on your URLs - it will look at Expires and Cache-Control in order of preference. However, even if you specify a longer time, Facebook will scrape your page every 30 days.

In some cases you may want to serve a different version of a page to our scraper (containing more Open Graph metadata) than you do to people who are viewing the page. In this case you can target the browser agent used by the scraper:

facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)

Can I link buttons to my Facebook page?Yes. Simply specify the URL of your Facebook page in the href setting of the button.

Like Button FAQs

Why are people seeing a "Confirm" button when they click on my Like button?

There are integrity and spam-prevention safeguards built into social plugins, and this is one of them. If you have been heavily testing a Like button before launching, you may have inadvertently triggered these safeguards. Additionally certain domains on the internet are more likely to contain spam, so will see the confirm step more often.

This confirmation adds one extra step to the Like button process, but once the like has been confirmed separately by a number of users, it will no longer appear, and the regular Like button will only appear.

What makes up the number shown next to my Like button?

The number shown is the sum of:

• The number of likes of your URL
• The number of shares of your URL (this includes copy/pasting a link back to Facebook)
• The number of likes and comments on stories on Facebook about your URL

How do I display the Share button without the Like button?To get code to display the Share button by itself, please visit our Share button documentation.

What are the different Like button layout types?

There are the following options:

Layout	Default Sizes
standard	Minimum width: 225 pixels. Default width: 450 pixels. Height: 35 pixels (without photos) or 80 pixels (with photos).
box_count	Minimum width: 55 pixels. Default width: 55 pixels. Height: 65 pixels.
button_count	Minimum width: 90 pixels. Default width: 90 pixels. Height: 20 pixels.
button	Minimum width: 47 pixels. Default width: 47 pixels. Height: 20 pixels.

Share Button FAQs

What makes up the number shown next to my Share button?

The number shown is the sum of:

• The number of likes of your URL
• The number of shares of your URL (this includes copy/pasting a link back to Facebook)
• The number of likes and comments on stories on Facebook about your URL

How do I display the Share button without the Like button?

Can I use the Share Dialog without using the Share Button?Yes, although we recommend using the Share button to offer the simplest and most consistent experience for people using your site, we provide a standalone dialog that can be invoked using the JavaScript SDK or using a URL link. Read our guide to use the Share Dialog.

Comments Plugin FAQs

What does the grammar filter do?

• Adds punctuation (e.g. periods at the end of sentences)
• Trims extra whitespace
• Expands slang words (e.g. plz becomes please)
• Adds a space after punctuation (e.g. Hi,Cat would become Hi, Cat)
• Fix common grammar mistakes (e.g. convert ‘dont' to ‘don’t’)

Can I get comments for a URL via an API?

The comments for every URL can be accessed via the Graph API. Simply make an HTTP GET request to:

https://graph.facebook.com/v2.6/?fields=og_object{comments}
  &id=<YOUR_URL>
  &access_token=<YOUR_TOKEN>

How do I moderate comments?For detailed instructions checkout the Comments Moderation guide. If you're not able to setup the moderators list using the fb:admins meta property, you can setup the fb:app_id and update the moderators list in the moderation tool settings for this app.