Pictures are not importing from Facebook events

[Citizen LocalMotive]

We import the events from our Facebook profile at Blu Letters https://www.facebook.com/blu.letters.37. Images for the majority of events, however, do not make it.

The problem with this is when the event from our calendar is shared back on to Facebook and other social media, instead of using the original organizer’s picture it always uses our calendar’s logo image. I would really, really like to get this fixed.

Thank you for your help.

Carolyn

[Courtney]

Hi there Carolyn

Thanks so much for reaching out! I’m surprised that your imports are working at all.

Facebook recently announced a range of changes (https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/04/restricting-data-access) to their APIs (the protocols we use to ‘speak’ to their servers and retrieve event information) which are having an effect on a number of our users.

As part of this, a number of new restrictions were applied to their Events API, which is the specific protocol Event Aggregator uses in order to import events, organizers, and venues. These changes went live with little notice to providers such as ourselves. At this point, it does not seem possible to reliably import any events, even if you created and ‘own’ events on Facebook and have linked Event Aggregator to Facebook using those same credentials.

This is frustrating for you, and for developers like us.  As Facebook continues to alter what it allows us to access, we will continue to pursue a path forward for Event Aggregator to import Facebook events.  We will continue to keep https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/ea-fb-privacy-policy and https://theeventscalendar.com/event-aggregator-status/ updated as this unfolds.

That said, the actual image from your site to be shared back to Facebook is a different issue. You’ll need to have Facebook Open Graph for images set up on your site. Usually, Facebook will use whatever you’ve set as the featured image in the right sidebar of your event editor panel. If it does not, this tutorial may help you get that completed: http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-themes/how-to-add-facebook-open-graph-meta-data-in-wordpress-themes/.

Please let me know if you have any other questions!

Thanks
Courtney 🙂

[Citizen LocalMotive]

Hi Courtney, Yes, I undertsand about Facebook’s new privacy policy.  That is why we are using a personal profile as a work around.  We mark that we are interested in events we want on our calendar.  This seems to be working well, *except* the picture the organizer chose for their event does not get fed in.

I think you misunderstood my concern. We do *not* want our site’s featured image to be used.  We want the photo chosen by the event organizer specifically for the event that is being fed in. 

This is an aggregrator problem, not an Open Graph problem.  The open graph is about using our image, which is what we don’t want.  We want pictures to feed in properly with the event.

Thank you.

⁣Sent from Blue ​

[Courtney]

Gotcha, I’m going to check in with the team to see if the Facebook image passing to your site works for anyone else at this time.

Thanks
Courtney 🙂

[Denise Hoyle]

Carolyn – how are you able to use a personal profile to get around the FB issue? I’m still unable to import events even if I’ve clicked that I’m “interested” in them.

[Courtney]

We’ve heard mixed results on this Denise. If events were imported up to 3 months in advance, they are on client sites. But no new events are being fetched or synced for most trying this workaround.

I do hope Facebook shares some updates soon on all this.

Thanks
Courtney 🙂

[Denise Hoyle]

Thank you Courtney! I did figure out how to export all my “interested” Facebook events as an .ics file that I can then import into Events Calendar. It’s a huge pain in the rear because it doesn’t pull in pictures and the times are sometimes off but its much better than nothing!! I’ve got everything crossed that your application with FB will be approved soon.

[Courtney]

I do hope you are right Denise. This whole process is quite an ordeal.

Thanks
Courtney 🙂

[Support Droid]

Hey there! This thread has been pretty quiet for the last three weeks, so we’re going to go ahead and close it to avoid confusion with other topics. If you’re still looking for help with this, please do open a new thread, reference this one and we’d be more than happy to continue the conversation over there.

Thanks so much!
The Events Calendar Support Team

[Author]

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