Live Stream plugin not posting to Facebook
I recently had the pleasure of setting up the Facebook live stream plugin on democracynow.org for their US election night coverage. This should have been a 5 minute job:
- Create a new Facebook application
- Specify the icon, logo, canvas page, site url and domain
- Wait a while to make sure the new app is rolled out over their servers
- Generate your plugin code here using the id of your new application
- Drop the code on your web page
For some reason although the generated code will display a live stream box, posts made through the box do not appear on Facebook!
After some trial and more error I eventually managed to track it down to the always_post_to_friends=true parameter in the iframe source URL. If you remove this, it springs into life and comments get posted to Facebook unless the user unchecks the box:
<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/live_stream_box.php?app_id=109494315784346&width=440&height=300&via_url" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:440px; height:300px;" allowTransparency="true"></iframe>
The code generator includes always_post_to_friends=true whether you choose this option or not, which is odd. The example on the page also doesn’t post through to Facebook if this option is selected. Perhaps the parameter is misnamed and should be never_post_to_friends=true. Perhaps it is some kind of permission problem. Anyone got this option to work?
