How to disable posting on a Fan Page
Some users have complained that RSS Graffiti is still able to post on their Fan Pages even after they have removed the application.
It seems that two [one] things are [is] going suddenly wrong and result in this behavior:
RSS Graffiti fails to realize that the application has been removed (our bug). [UPADTE: this is now fixed and all removal notifications from Facebook suceed.]
- Facebook still accepts posts from RSS Graffiti even though the user has removed the application (strange Facebook behavior).
Of course Facebook should not accept posts from a removed application. We used to count on that. It seems we can’t count on that any longer.
One of the new Facebook permissions that is specific to Fan Pages is not revoked automatically by Facebook when the application is removed. The permission that seems to be causing this issue is “Manage my Pages”. Since Facebook does not remove the permission automatically, to avoid the issue you have to manually revoke the permission before removing the application.
Apart from this issue on Facebook’s side, there is one more problem on our part: When you remove the application, Facebook pings our server to notify of the removal. Apparently there is a bug in our code that results in not marking the application as removed, so RSS Graffiti will still try to post as long as there are feeds on the page. This was not a problem so far because Facebook denied to accept the posts. Apparently it now accepts them so RSS Graffiti never gets a chance to realize that something is wrong and that the application has been removed. [UPDATE: FIXED. All removal notifications now succeed.]
We identified the problem on our part and we are going to push a maintenance release later today to fix it for future users. [UPDATE: DONE]
If you are experiencing this issue now, please follow these instructions to make sure RSS Graffiti does not publish on a Fan Page even after you have removed the application:
- If you have already removed RSS Graffiti then just add it back temporarily.
- Go to RSS Graffiti and select the Fan Page that you want to disable.
- Click on the ON/OFF button on the top right corner to switch the Fan Page OFF.
- You can now remove RSS Graffiti from the Fan Page again.
If the ON/OFF switch was in the ON position then the Fan Page was active and as long as it had feeds added to it and the “Manage my Pages” permission was not revoked, RSS Graffiti would still be trying to publish on the Page and Facebook would still accept and actually publish the posts even if the application was removed.
So make sure this time you leave the ON/OFF switch in the OFF position. This way RSS Graffiti won’t try to publish and regardless of whether Facebook would still accept the posts or not, you would not see any more posts coming from RSS Graffiti on the Fan Page.
Look at the following screen shot to get a better orientation on where you should click to disable RSS Graffiti for a Fan Page.
Look at the following screenshot to see the same Fan Page in Disabled Status.
If you later on decide to add RSS Graffiti again to the Fan Page you can always come bak and switch it back ON again so that updates can resume.
This is the easy way to disable posting.
Although this is not entirely our fault we would like to apologize to the inconvenienced users. A maintenance release will be pushed to our servers later today to address the application removal issue. [UPDATE: FIX RELEASED]
[Important UPDATE: We have also noticed that some users file similar complains (i.e: ‘I removed the app but it still posts’ or ‘I never added the app how do I get rid of it’) but actually have the application -still- added. This is usually observed on Fan Pages with multiple administrators and it is actually caused by lack of proper coordination between them (i.e. admin A removes the app, then admin B adds it without telling admin A, then admin A complains about the app still posting). If you run a Fan Page with multiple admins please also make sure that the application is indeed removed and coordinate with other admins on the issue.]