open graph

I integrate Facebook posting with a few different websites and services, so I've gotten to know Facebook's Open Graph and API pretty well over the past few years. A lot of sites I work with automatically post new stories straight to a Facebook Page's wall, and have a format with a message and an attached link. All of these parameters are well documented in Facebook's API under Post.

However, lately I've been getting the following error message whenever a site uses the first method below to send a post with a link attached:

I tried using the Open Graph Explorer, the official Facebook SDK for PHP, and other methods to see if there was any other way to get around that exception, but nothing I did turned out any different response.

For a very long time, for my simple Catholic News Live fan page on Facebook, I was using RSS Graffiti to post new stories to Facebook (usually in batches of 3-5). RSS Graffiti is super-easy to set up, and it simply ties into your existing site's RSS feed to post new stories from your site to Facebook.

However, after I redesigned the Catholic News Live website in Drupal 7, I decided I'd take a few extra minutes to rework the site's social integration for Twitter and Facebook (I was using HootSuite for Twitter postings—a batch of 5 stories per hour maximum—and RSS Graffiti for Facebook.

People who followed both accounts weren't engaging, liking, or even sharing/retweeting stories too much. The twitter account was doing okay, because Twitter doesn't seem to hide tweets from other users as much as Facebook likes hiding certain posts (especially those from automated apps like RSS Graffiti).

Other graphs, like the shares, likes, etc. are similarly aligned.