Making RSS Graffiti

Recent Improvements & Bug Fixes

This past week we rolled out a number of bug fixes and improvements. Here’s a breakdown of recent changes:

• We now support feeds that contain root-relative URLs (URLs which start with a /)
• Resolved an issue with videos from certain feeds not being playable inside Facebook
• The minimum image size for thumbnails has been lowered to 50 pixels. Previously, images had to be at least 59 pixels wide and 59 pixels tall to be attached as a thumbnail
• In response to Facebook removing their embedded mp3 player, we no longer try to add audio attachments to posts. This fixed an issue with duplicate content appearing where the player used to be. (Fear not, podcasters! We’re working on an alternative way to post your audio)
• Various other minor tweaks that improve app efficiency and broaden our support for uncommon feed types

As always, if you have any questions, suggestions, complaints, or praise, please drop us a line in our forum.

Facebook’s permission system is changing

Under a new Facebook policy, you must log into RSS Graffiti (or any other app) at least once every 60 days to renew its access to your profile and groups. Unless you visit the app at least this often, its authorization to publish to your profile and groups will expire. The good news is, our contact at Facebook has confirmed that access to pages can still be granted indefinitely, so if you only use RSS Graffiti to publish to pages, visit http://beta.rssgraffiti.com now and hit refresh to automatically grant RSS Graffiti a permanent access token. 

Please understand the security considerations that motivated this change in Facebook’s policies; the new rules will help protect accounts from unwanted intrusion by malicious 3rd party apps. For more info from Facebook regarding the deprecation of permanent permissions, see http://developers.facebook.com/roadmap/offline-access-removal and if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions about this new policy, please reach out to us via http://getsatisfaction.com/rssgraffiti2

Upgrade Complete

The RSS Graffiti 2.0 servers are now posting more than 20 pieces of content to Facebook every second. Pretty impressive, right? 
Aside from the shiny new UI, version 2.0 should behave almost exactly like 1.9 for the vast majority of users. If you think you’ve found a bug we missed, please let us know! When reporting an issue to our community support forum be sure to mention any errors displayed in your RSS Graffiti activity log, accessed via the bar graph icon at the top right of each publishing plan. Until we integrate version 2.0 into the Facebook application canvas (our next priority), your RSS Graffiti settings can be configured off-site at beta.rssgraffiti.com.
The RSS Graffiti team truly appreciates the support from everyone who has given us feedback during the upgrade process. The best is yet to come!

Here we go!

As promised, RSS Graffiti 2.0 is now available to everyone. To upgrade your account, visit http://apps.facebook.com/rssgraffiti and click OK!

IMPORTANT: After you upgrade, any permissions errors shown on the 1.9 application canvas can be safely ignored. Your feeds will be configurable at http://beta.rssgraffiti.com until after the upgrade is complete for all users.

ALSO IMPORTANT: The rssgraffiti.com support docs are currently inaccessible. If you need assistance, please open a thread in our community support forum.

Next week, RSS Graffiti 2.0 will be available to all users

In response to Facebook rolling out the “enhanced” permissions dialogue (the cause of the “Allow Publishing: Pending” error) to all new pages, starting next week all users will be offered the option to upgrade to RSS Graffiti 2.0, which contains a fix for this problem. The option to upgrade will be accessible in the 1.9 application, and we’ll post another announcement next week when it’s actually deployed.

It is important to note that when you upgrade, any pages or groups you co-administrate will not be configurable by the other admins until they too upgrade to 2.0. Therefore, make sure to communicate with your fellow admins before you make the switch.

2.0 Upgrade Update

Today, we will begin automatically upgrading users to RSS Graffiti 2.0. You will no longer have the option to delay the switch. If you receive an app notification or email from us, it means you and your targets have already been upgraded, and you can configure your publishing settings at http://beta.rssgraffiti.com/

This should come as great news for anyone experiencing the “endless permissions loop” error, as this has been fixed in the new version. It will take a few weeks to get everyone upgraded, so if you’re seeing this error and haven’t yet received an upgrade notice, please be patient! Have any questions, comments or concerns? Open a thread in our community forum at http://getsatisfaction.com/rssgraffiti2 and someone from our team will assist.

2.0 Upgrade Status & Permissions Fix

Starting this week, users who don’t have any shared targets are being upgraded to 2.0. If you are in this upgrade batch, you’ll be shown the invitation next time you access the app. Please note that the upgrade is no longer optional. From now on, if you have been sent an invite, you will only be able to configure your feeds using beta.rssgraffiti.com

Regarding the permissions-granting issue: Facebook recently began implementing an “enhanced” authorization dialog to about 5-10% of users. The problem was that the main permission we were requesting which allowed us to publish to fan pages was silently not being granted. To resolve this, we had to revise some of our publishing code to use a different permission, which required a few days to complete.

The fix is complete, and 2.0 users should now be able to publish to fan pages without the “endless permissions loop” problem. For those still on 1.9.6, bear with us! We want to be as thorough as possible in the upgrade process to make absolutely sure no one’s publishing is interrupted. We apologize for the delay and appreciate your patience and feedback in helping us resolve this frustrating bug!

Tomorrow’s Timeline Deadline

Procrastinators! Ready or not, Facebook is switching all pages to timeline tomorrow (March 30th). Since a few of you asked, we want to assure everyone that RSS Graffiti is compatible with timeline, so feel free to make the switch before the deadline. 

Keep in mind posts will be placed on the timeline according to when RSS Graffiti published them, not when they were originally written. If you’ve used the app to publish articles from the past, you may want to manually change the date of these posts in Facebook so they appear at the appropriate point on your timeline. Now get to it!

Regarding the outstanding permission-granting issue: If you are part of the small percentage of users who can’t grant publishing permissions to RSS Graffiti, please be patient while we work on a solution. We’ll make an announcement soon with an update on the status of the fix. -Seth

2.0 Migration Schedule

In February we announced RSS Graffiti 2.0 was going to be rolled out slowly in preparation for a global release. We are happy to report the initial beta period was a success, and so far we have received an overwhelmingly positive response from beta testers using the new version.

This week we will open up RSS Graffiti 2.0 to another batch of existing users, chosen based on how they use the application. At this stage the upgrade will be available on a purely opt-in basis. The purpose of this gradual roll-out is to ensure that everyone’s feeds continue to publish without interruption. Once we are confident these users have been upgraded successfully, a much larger batch of users will be migrated to 2.0. 

We will eventually require all remaining 1.9.6 users to upgrade. It will be worth the wait; RSS Graffiti 2.0 offers improvements that will expand the power and usability of the application. With this release you can expect an increase in speed and greater control over how & where your feeds are published.

Have questions? if you’re already using RSS Graffiti 2.0, we set up a new GetSatisfaction community support forum to help with any 2.0-specific issues you might encounter. Rest assured, we will continue to support users on 1.9.6 until the migration is complete. If you are using 1.9.6, you can always find help on our 1.9 forum.