I recently bumped into an issue with a Facebook social plugin not working properly for logged out Facebook users. The Facebook social plugins enable you to share your Facebook content such as fanpage streams, fans, and other data right on your website.
While working on a client's website I recently came across this issue that I believe may be a new one that many people will be having problems with and prompted me to post this quick tip. The photo below will expand for a better look if you click to view, if this helps you please let me know by posting a comment on this post and I'll share more useful tips in the future:
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I'm not sure if this is fallout after the recent Facebook privacy issues but after pulling my hair out for hours trying to untangle this mess and on the verge of giving up, I found the solution was one tick box away!
The problem that was occurring on the client's site was whenever a visitor who was currently logged out of Facebook viewed his business web page, the Facebook social plugin did not present the data as it regularly did and instead showed a message that read something like "Facebook Public Profile Login to see this content."
I soon realized after much to do that the reason the Facebook social plugin was not appearing to all visitors to the website had to do with this specific Facebook fanpage's permissions and namely, the age restrictions.
By default a new Facebook fanpage is set to the following age restriction: "People 18 and over."
By simply going to the Facebook fanpage in question and clicking "edit page" in the upper right corner (you must be an admin of the page to see this option), and then selecting "manage permissions," I was able to correct the issue of the Facebook social plugin not displaying any information for logged out Facebook users visiting the company's website.
Once on the "manage permissions" page change your age restriction settings to "Anyone 13+" and this will most likely solve your problem and make the Facebook social plugin appear correctly on your (or your client's) website.
I've attached a screen shot with a brief walk through to this blog post to help others sort this problem out because I found this very simple solution through hours of trial and error. There's currently not much help or support documentation to be found anywhere on the internet or on Facebook regarding this particular problem causing me to suspect that this may be a relatively new issue.
Just click the thumbnail image above for a quick walk through on how to fix your Facebook Social Plugin Issues...
If you found this post helpful or are having a related issue please drop a comment below or share this post so that others may find the solution.
