WSN Classifieds

Automatic Facebook Posting

Mon, 22 Mar 2021 13:24:44 GMT

If you want to tell your social media followers about every new listing you add, WSN can do that, although unfortunately facebook makes it a trillion times more complicated for you than it needs to be. At Admin -> Settings -> Social you'll find an option for automatic facebook posts. These posts will go to a facebook page you own, every time a listing is approved.

First, you'll need to set up a facebook app if you haven't already done that for the Facebook Connect login option. To create an app, go to https://developers.facebook.com/apps/ . The app display name and namespace can be whatever you want, but you must ensure to enter the domain your WSN is installed on in the app domains box. Copy the app id and app secret into the boxes at Admin -> Settings -> Social -> Auto-Facebook.

To find your facebook page id, go to your page and click About in the left column. Scroll down to find your Page ID below More Info. Enter that at Admin -> Settings -> Social -> Auto-Facebook -> Page ID.

Finally, the hard part is generating a facebook access token with the required permissions and making it last more than a few hours. Here's the process:
1. Go to https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer/
2. Select your app from the facebook app menu on the right.
3. Select your page from the "user or page" menu just below that.
4. Click into the "add a permission" box to start searching for permissions.
5. Search for and add the permissions pages_manage_posts and pages_read_engagement
6. Click the generate access token button.
7. Copy that token and paste it it in the text box on the Access Token Debugger at https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/accesstoken and then click the Debug button.
8. On the Access Token Debugger, scroll to the bottom of the page and click Extend Access Token.
9. Copy the new extended access token it gives you to Admin -> Settings -> Social -> Auto-Facebook -> Facebook Access Token.

Token Expiration

The most exhasperating issue here is token expiration. The token officially lasts only 60 days. However, Facebook says "the SDKs automatically refresh the token whenever the person uses your app, so the tokens expire 60 days after last use." What constitutes your use of the app remains to be determined. WSN will periodically check the token expiration time and warn you with an email alert if it's due to expire within two weeks, if you have facebook auto-posting turned on. Hopefully a simple process can be established to refresh the token so that you don't have to go through all these steps to create a new one every couple months -- this article will be updated when that process becomes clear.

Tokens are also invalidated when you change your facebook password, so beware of that. They may also be invalidated by logging out of Facebook, unless the offline_access permission is granted... but how to get the offline_access permission is unclear, so best not to logout (you don't need the page/app open, just to not specifically logout).

Testing

To give it a test without waiting for a new listing, and to make sure you see any error message that may occour, go to Admin -> Miscellaneous -> Advanced and run the following in the "run PHP" box:

facebookit("This is only a test, we will delete it shortly.");

Check your facebook page to verify and delete the post. If you get an error, read the error message carefully. If it tells you your token is expired, you'll have to create a new one. If it tells you it doesn't have enough permissions, make sure you add the specified permissions when creating a token. Also double check that you're creating a page token and not a user token.

Watermarking Images

Fri, 06 Nov 2020 05:12:04 GMT

Watermarks are small branding messages placed over images which ensure that they'll be attributed to you when people use them on other sites.

At Admin -> Settings -> File Settings, you have an option "Watermark Images?" When you set that to yes, several more options appear below where you can choose a text or image watermark, which corner of the image to put it in, etc.

Assuming you have the "Keep Watermark on Large Thumbnails?" option set to yes, watermarks show on all thumbnails and image downloads. But sometimes a situation may arise where you want to offer an unwatermarked version of the image to certain people. The most common situation would be offering an unwatermarked, higher resolution version to people who buy it. When you have prices and sales switches on and the particular listing has a price specified, WSN Gallery will automatically remove the watermark when it's purchased. (You can also use Admin -> Revenue -> Sales Settings -> "Prevent Hi-Res Downloads?" to control the size until they pay.)

But what if you want to offer an unwatermarked download on a free listing? You can just tack on &unmarked=1 to the download URL to get an unwatermarked version. If you want to prevent people from potentially exploting that loophole on their own, you can disallow that parameter in the file settings.

Category File Uploads

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 17:30:47 GMT

Sometimes, instead of displaying files from listings in a category, you want to display a separate set of files that's associated with the category but not with any of the listings in the category. That's what the "category file uploads" switch is for.

When enabled, a bulk upload button appears on the submit category and edit category pages (unless the jquery bulk uploader switch is turned off, in which case you'll see a single upload field). You can control the number of files that can be uploaded here at Admin -> Categories -> Category Settings -> Maximum Files Per Category (default is 10).

If you upload images, you'll see a row of thumbnails just below the category description on the category display page. If the listing details slideshow switch is turned on, clicking one of the thumbnails will open a lightbox slideshow... otherwise clicking the thumbnail will download the image.

Non-images that you attach to the category will display in a bulleted list of download links just below the images.

Rating Template Variables

Wed, 03 Jun 2020 16:13:22 GMT

Ratings are invidual votes or reviews on a listing. You can use rating template variables in any ratings toplist, such as the one in the "Vote" template which appears when you have full review ratings enabled.

{RATINGID} - The id number of the rating.
{RATINGOWNERID} - The id number of the person who submitted the rating.
{RATINGAVATARURL} - URL of avatar of the person who submitted the rating. Optional parameters: width and height.
{RATINGDATE} - The date/time the rating was submitted.
{RATINGVOTEVALUE} - The rating they gave.
{RATINGSTARS} - Visual star display to represent the rating given.
{RATINGOLDSTARS} - As above, but with static HTML instead of clickable.
{RATINGGETCUSTOMSTARS} - Pass a field name to get the rating stars for a custom rating type if you're having people rate multiple separate aspects of a listing.
{RATINGCOMMENT} - The review text for a full review rating.
{RATINGTITLE} - The headline title of the review for a full review rating.
{RATINGHELPFULAPPROVED} - The number of people who found this review helpful
{RATINGHELPFULDISAPPROVED} - The number of people who round this review unhelpful
{RATINGHELPFULVOTES} - The total number of people who found the rating either helpful or unhelpful.
{RATINGCANVOTE} - True if viewer is allowed to make a helpful/unhelpful reaction to this review, false if not.
{RATINGCANDELETE} - True if viewer is allowed to delete the rating, otherwise false.
{RATINGPROFILEURL} - Member profile URL of the person who submitted the rating.
{RATINGAPPLICABLELOCATION} - The associated listing details URL, or for member ratings the profile URL.
{RATINGAPPLICABLENAME} - The associated listing title, or for member ratings the member name.
{RATINGIP} - The IP address of the rating submitter.
{RATINGTYPE} - The type or rating, either link or member.
{RATINGVALIDATED} - True if the rating is active, false if pending validation.
{RATINGOWNERNAME} - The name of the member who submitted the rating.
{RATINGLISTINGID} - The id of the listing the rating is of.
{RATINGLASTEDITDATE} - The date/time of the last edit to the review.
{RATINGLASTEDITBY} - The name of the last member to edit the review (presumably the owner or a moderator/admin).

Site Modes: Development, Standard and Production

Fri, 28 Jun 2019 11:30:51 GMT

WSN has three configuration modes. You start off in standard mode. If there are certain settings you want to change every time you take your site offline for development or debugging, you can use development mode for that. If there are certain settings you want to change when you're ready to put the site into its' mature long term ideal state, you can use production mode for that.

The effects of development or production mode are defined by you, at Admin -> Settings -> Development Mode and Admin -> Settings -> Production Mode. In general, you'll want to apply minification/caching/speed options in production and apply things that make debugging easier or prevent users from recieving notifications of test data in development. If there's a particular option you'd like to have configurable for development/production which isn't there yet, please contact support to ask about it.

At the regular locations of each setting, you'll see a warning to the right telling you that the setting is overriden in development or production mode. When you see the warning, be aware that the change you're applying is only a change to standard mode. If development and production are set to use the standard value, then WSN won't show you the warning.

To switch your site between modes, simply click the desired mode on the front page of your admin panel.

Note: Site modes were added in version 10.4.27.