× Joomla Facebook Connect support forum

Topic-icon [Send] button reports empty error message

Active Subscriptions:

None
Hello!

I purchased JFBConnect last week and am slowly and surely getting its features in my website. Thanks for such an easy to use product!

When I add the [Send] button as a module on every page, or add a [Send] button automatically to the bottom of my article pages, I enter a valid e-mail address, enter something for the message, then receive the following error: "We encountered the following error when sending your message". However, there is nothing after this error to tell me what went wrong, just empty space.

It doesn't matter which e-mail address that I use nor which browser (I've tried IE and Chrome). Can you tell me what is going wrong? Here is the website that you can try the [Send] button on:

www.centralokpt.com

Thanks much for your help!
Tom
The topic has been locked.
Support Specialist
14 years 1 month ago #21547 by alzander
Tom,
When I try to send to an email address, I'm getting the following message:

We encountered the following error when sending your message: Requires a public email address: To send to an email address, first set up your own <a href="/messages/?setup" target="_blank">facebook.com email address</a>.

It's extremely quick, and not one I've seen before. From a little digging, there's a good bug report that tries to describe this, below:
developers.facebook.com/bugs/302953569717849

Basically, a Facebook user can get a @facebook.com address by going to Account Settings -> General -> Email, and then activating their Facebook email address. It looks as though having a @facebook.com email address is a requirement to use the Send button to send to email addresses. You can send to Facebook friends without having that address.

The bug mentioned above is simply to fix the error message so it explains things better. I don't believe it would be to remove that requirement.

Hope that explains, even though I'll agree, that's a bit inconvenient.

Thanks,
Alex
The topic has been locked.
Active Subscriptions:

None
14 years 1 month ago #21555 by TomHammond2
Hi Alex,

Thanks for the fast reply. I am not receiving the error message that you reported ("Requires a public e-mail address"). Instead, I receive the "We encountered the following error" message with blank status instead. Have you tried using the [Send] button on the website example that I provided?

I tried your suggestion of using a valid Facebook e-mail address (my own account, tominohio1), but that fails as well. I tried the following scenarios:

1) When I start typing "tominohio1", it shows a picture of me for my Facebook account. When I click my picture, type a message, then click [Send], I get the error message.
2) When I completely type "This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it." for the address, I still get the error.
3) When I type "tominohio1" for the address and then go to type a message, the name is erased (probably because it needs to be a complete address).

I tried these scenarios 7-8 times. Out of those times, only once did the message get sent successfully. I checked my Facebook account and the message was there. All of the other times I received the original "We encountered the following error" message when trying to send via JFBConnect's [Send] button.

Can you please troubleshoot this problem using our website (www.centralokpt.com) and my Facebook account to send to (tominohio1)? That will give you immediate feedback for troubleshooting. If you need an admin account into our website to look at the JFBConnect component, please let me know. This is an important feature that we need working.

Thanks!
Tom
The topic has been locked.
Support Specialist
14 years 1 month ago #21566 by alzander
Tom,
I was definitely testing on your page when I reported that error before. That's what I saw when I tried to use a regular email address. I've honestly not seen that error outside of your page. I don't see any reason why your site would be different, but we also don't know if other's have tested the send-to-email feature much.

I tested at the same time by sending to other Facebook user accounts we have, and they all came through. I didn't mention those tests because in your first post you specifically mention that email addresses are what fail.

I just sent you a friend request. Feel free to approve that and we can try Sending things back and forth to see how it goes.

Thanks,
Alex
The topic has been locked.
Active Subscriptions:

None
14 years 1 month ago #21575 by TomHammond2
Hi Alex,

Thanks for friending me on Facebook. :) When I "send" the page to you, it works every time. I think the problem is that I was sending to my own Facebook account, while already logged into Facebook as myself. Sending to myself is obviously not allowed.

So, there probably is not a problem at all. If I want to tell myself about the page, I "like" it. If I want to tell someone else about the page, I "send" it.

Thanks again for helping me find the source of this confusion and sorry for the numerous "sends" that I sent you.

One last question. I intend to activate the login integration feature of JFBConnect. To do this, I need to create an "app" in a new Facebook account, then tie this app to JFBConnect. There are two types of Facebook accounts, personal and organizational. I was told by another support person that JFBConnect only works personal Facebook accounts. However, our website represents an organization. When I tried to create an organizational account, I could not find the area where I can create a custom app for JFBConnect. So, I then tried to create an app for a "personal" account, Facebook rejects the app creation because it thinks we are an organization, not a person. Does JFBConnect's login integration feature only work for personal Facebook accounts?

Thanks again!
Tom
The topic has been locked.
Support Specialist
14 years 1 month ago #21587 by alzander

So, there probably is not a problem at all. If I want to tell myself about the page, I "like" it. If I want to tell someone else about the page, I "send" it.

That's a perfect summation right there. You can't send to yourself because it doesn't really make sense. Additionally, Facebook (of course) uses a lot of analytics behind the scenes for what is being shared with friend, and they don't want you to be able to scam the system by repeatedly sending things to yourself.

As for creating an App, that has to be done by a personal user account. That's a Facebook restriction, and every App has to adhere to that, whether you're Zynga, Coca-Cola, or SourceCoast. There is a 'personal' profile account that must own a Facebook Page, Facebook Application, or other types of things. Basically, there is no way to create an App or a FB Page as an 'organization'. It's originally created by a 'person' (profile). Once created, the organization can post and do things as that new Page or Application, but Facebook requires a real person behind the scenes as the owner.

Hope that all makes sense. If not, just let us know,
Alex
The topic has been locked.