Facebook issues and Google Analytics suggestion

[Jack Speranza]

Hi Bill —

Let me start by saying that I have found working with your authentic theme enjoyable… and quite relevant to my needs despite the fact I’m using it for a business vs. church (though, really, the needs of both kinds of organizations are practically identical)

A couple of quick issues ::

1. Facebook page template :: when I check out your demo fan page to see an example in action, I find it isn’t working. The specific error message that’s displayed is “secure browsing is not supported.” FB directs the user to their apps and games dashboard, but there are no settings there that would seem to resolve the issue.

Are you going to be correcting this?

2. I was looking at the FB interface to see if it was possible to simply create one page within the WP theme to embed in the fan page (vs. the whole site… which I don’t necessarily want to replicate entirely within Facebook). Is this possible, or is the intent to use the FB page template throughout your site design and simply deliver the entire site through that platform?

3. Also, though I started using your interface to embed my Google Analytics code within the site, I found this placed the code well down in the body of the page (vs. the recommended placement within the head tags). Not sure if you opted to place the GA code there with a purpose in mind, but it tends to interfere with some of the data gathering and features needed for the (relatively) new GA interface.

Thanks, and especially look forward to hearing back on the FB issues.

[Bill Robbins]

I’m glad you’ve enjoyed the theme first of all. I always welcome suggestions too. Let me see if I can help you out.

Facebook: after I created the theme, Facebook began requiring every app (technically the page is an app) have a HTTPS version. They did this because Facebook users can now browse using HTTPS which is more secure.

The downside is, you have to add a SSL certificate in order to make that possible. For many sites that’s a significant extra expense. For me, adding SSL costs $300 per year.

You can still use the page feature without one, but any Facebook user browsing with HTTPS won’t be able to see it.

You can also add a SSL with most web hosts and the page will work for all visitors.

Analytics. We’ve actually made the decision to take this out with the next update to the theme. It makes more sense to use on of the great Analytics plugins. I use Yoast’s analytics plugin myself on most of my sites.

If I can help with anything else, just let me know,
Bill

[Jack Speranza]

Bill —

Thanks for the quick response.

Sorry to comment back, but I just want to assure I’m understanding your reply correctly. Are you saying that if we add an SSL certificate to our site, the page will render correctly within FB for all users (as the https protocol will recognize the feed as also being secure)?

Are there any additional steps that would be required? What about on the FB side? Would I have to register anything as an app first? Do I simply embed the web page via FBML or is there some other mechanism?

I’m sorry to pepper you with questions, but the process is not intuitive to me and the lack of specific documentation means I have to bother you… just tying to minimize our back and forth as much as possible 😉

Thanks again!

Jack

[Bill Robbins]

That is correct. There is a knowledge base article that can walk you through setting things up at https://support.organizedthemes.com/3560/set-up-a-custom-facebook-page-tab/

If you have any questions let me know. I’ll be back home in about an hour and can help a bit more from my computer if you need me to.

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