Events Facebook Plugin

[Robert]

Dear Support.

I have this site: http://www.campramah.com/events/
Whereby I want to pull events down once an hour from these facebook events: https://www.facebook.com/RamahCanada/events
I installed Free Events Calenar, then the paid Facebook Events add on. I plugged in the activation key and used the following for the fanpage id: 131258917989
I have been waiting for the events to pull down from Facebook for over a day and nothing

[Barry]

Hi Robert, sorry to hear that you are having problems here. Have you enabled automatic imports and/or have you tried manually importing?

[Robert]

I have. Also, I want to confirm that I do not need a Facebook App ID & Facebook App Secret. In terms of Organization and Page Usernames / IDs to sync with… For this page, https://www.facebook.com/RamahCanada

Would it be “RamahCanada” or “131258917989”. After all is said and done if the automation of the events don’t work… then what?

[Barry]

Also, I want to confirm that I do not need a Facebook App ID & Facebook App Secret.

You mean is it required that you enter an ID and secret that belongs to you? No, it’s not.

If you don’t then the plugin uses its own ID and secret – however if I understand things correctly then a potential problem there is that if everyone is doing this their collective requests are viewed by Facebook as coming from a single app – and their API request limits may kick in and prevent further communication for some period of time.

In terms of Organization and Page Usernames / IDs to sync with… For this page, https://www.facebook.com/RamahCanada would it be “RamahCanada” or “131258917989″

Assuming 131258917989 is the organizer ID then you could use either or, depending on your preference. Personally I use the more human readable slug simply because it’s easier to detect mistakes.

After all is said and done if the automation of the events don’t work… then what?

Can I just clarify, is it the case that only automated imports are failing for you? Or are manual imports also a problem?

[Robert]

only automated imports are failing for me? manual imports work fine

[Robert]

only automated imports are failing for me.
manual imports work fine

[Barry]

It’s possible that in your hosting environment WordPress is unable to initiate scheduled tasks (the mechanism used to enable events to run at set periods in the “background”).

If that’s the case you may need to set up a real cron task – thankfully, many web hosts offer a nice web based interface in CPanel (or equivalent hosting control panel packages) that make this pretty easy. If you choose this approach please seek the assistance of your web host if necessary.

The actual script you would be targeting would be the wp-cron.php script in the root of your WordPress installation.

[Robert]

Can I get a refund? My Host does not all me to set up cron tasks and I found an alternate solution. My transaction is Transaction: 70010314SC184452A

[Barry]

That’s a shame – one last avenue you could look at re automated imports is a remote or simulated cron service: I believe there are web services where you can ask them to trigger a “cron job” at set periods and they simply send a request to the URL you specify.

Alternatively, if it is impractical for you to carry on using manual imports, please send an email (to [email protected]) marking it for the attention of my colleague Leah. If you could include a reference to this thread that would be great.

Thanks – and sorry to hear it hasn’t worked out for you.

[Author]

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