How to update corporate Facebook page automatically?
October 15, 2018 12:27 PM Subscribe
Staff members make updates to our public web site through a WYSIWYG editor. Some of these should automatically appear as Facebook posts. Is this even possible anymore? If so, how? If not, what is the best alternative?
My company has a primitive content management system which allows staff to update parts of our public-facing web site via a WYSIWYG editor.
Certain kinds of updates made to our web site should also be posted on our corporate Facebook page. I've been told that staff responsible have been forgetting to post on Facebook after posting on the public web site, or doing so very late. Boss's solution is for me to find a way to have the post appear on our facebook automatically when one of these updates is made.
I already have a to do list a thousand miles long. I think my boss thought this would be trivial. It does not appear to be so. From the Googling I've done so far, it looks like Facebook no longer lets apps or external web sites post automatically.
Developers who are up on Facebook: Is this really impossible to do automatically, or is there some work-around? If so, what would be best alternative be? I've considered trying to implement a Share button on the public web site page, to make it slightly easier and as a reminder for the staff member (customers also might want to share these particular updates themselves), but even that doesn't seem trivial. I haven't found so far how to only share the content that was just posted rather than the whole page.
Halp! Peas!
My company has a primitive content management system which allows staff to update parts of our public-facing web site via a WYSIWYG editor.
Certain kinds of updates made to our web site should also be posted on our corporate Facebook page. I've been told that staff responsible have been forgetting to post on Facebook after posting on the public web site, or doing so very late. Boss's solution is for me to find a way to have the post appear on our facebook automatically when one of these updates is made.
I already have a to do list a thousand miles long. I think my boss thought this would be trivial. It does not appear to be so. From the Googling I've done so far, it looks like Facebook no longer lets apps or external web sites post automatically.
Developers who are up on Facebook: Is this really impossible to do automatically, or is there some work-around? If so, what would be best alternative be? I've considered trying to implement a Share button on the public web site page, to make it slightly easier and as a reminder for the staff member (customers also might want to share these particular updates themselves), but even that doesn't seem trivial. I haven't found so far how to only share the content that was just posted rather than the whole page.
Halp! Peas!
Response by poster: No, not Wordpress. It's just a roll-your-own admin site that someone wrote many years ago. It uses CKEditor for the WYSIWYG.
Yes, I don't want to spend a lot of time, but I would still like to hear about options that may work. I find it unlikely that my boss would want to spend money on this, but it's not absolutely impossible.
posted by nirblegee at 1:31 PM on October 15, 2018
Yes, I don't want to spend a lot of time, but I would still like to hear about options that may work. I find it unlikely that my boss would want to spend money on this, but it's not absolutely impossible.
posted by nirblegee at 1:31 PM on October 15, 2018
Facebook provides a Page Publishing API. I imagine you need to customize your admin site to conditionally call out to Facebook's API endpoints as appropriate.
posted by mmascolino at 2:52 PM on October 15, 2018
posted by mmascolino at 2:52 PM on October 15, 2018
Best answer: Can you rig up some combination of RSS and IFTTT?
posted by yeahlikethat at 3:32 PM on October 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by yeahlikethat at 3:32 PM on October 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
Best answer: I've used Zapier to automatically cross-post from a blog's RSS feed to a Facebook Page, and it works like a charm. Zapier really makes that kind of thing easy (IFTTT also does, but in my experience Zapier is a bit easier to monitor and customize).
But the hard part of the problem as described, as others have pointed out, isn't Facebook - which is scriptable with Zapier etc - but the organization's webpage, which is custom. Unless it has an RSS feed or something similarly parsable, there's no off-the-shelf solution that will know what an 'update' is and how to translate it to anything else. So, unless the site already has an RSS feed, you'll need to create that (with custom code), or you may want to switch to a platform that does RSS automatically, like Wordpress.
posted by tmcw at 10:09 PM on October 15, 2018
But the hard part of the problem as described, as others have pointed out, isn't Facebook - which is scriptable with Zapier etc - but the organization's webpage, which is custom. Unless it has an RSS feed or something similarly parsable, there's no off-the-shelf solution that will know what an 'update' is and how to translate it to anything else. So, unless the site already has an RSS feed, you'll need to create that (with custom code), or you may want to switch to a platform that does RSS automatically, like Wordpress.
posted by tmcw at 10:09 PM on October 15, 2018
Response by poster: Thanks for the ideas. I still don't know the best way to proceed.
The page publishing API appears to require that we have an "app" and have it approved by Facebook.
It would be far too labor-intensive to modify the site to be in WordPress or similar.
I played with HootSuite a bit and it gave me a message that it was no longer possible to post automatically to facebook--which makes sense given what I'd already read about facebook shutting down automatic posting on August 1st.
posted by nirblegee at 7:36 AM on October 16, 2018
The page publishing API appears to require that we have an "app" and have it approved by Facebook.
It would be far too labor-intensive to modify the site to be in WordPress or similar.
I played with HootSuite a bit and it gave me a message that it was no longer possible to post automatically to facebook--which makes sense given what I'd already read about facebook shutting down automatic posting on August 1st.
posted by nirblegee at 7:36 AM on October 16, 2018
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Have you heard of Hootsuite? They have Wordpress integration but it sounds like you aren't using that. Do you know what you are using? It looks like Buffer and Zapier integrate with a lot of different apps too.
posted by hypercomplexsimplicity at 12:45 PM on October 15, 2018