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I'm trying to use FB social plugins on a company intranet site. It is almost fine, controls are displayed, I can comment, like or recommend stuff. Comments, likes and recommendations are persistent on the intranet site.

However neither my recommendations, nor my comments are shown on any facebook page. They're not on my timeline and do not show up on the FB page either.

The problem is probably what is stated under the FB comment box as a warning:

"Warning: http://greenhouse.intranet.mycompany/ is unreachable."

How can I get it working just like with every news portal so that these actions would show up on the timelines of users and the FB main page?

PS/update: I know the difference between the internet and a company intranet, I also know that a company intranet is not accessible from outside. You don't have to explain that.

PS.2: Come on, guys. It's just logic. If facebook does not refuse to waste storage space on the likes and comments for the intranet page, then why don't they publish it? With a comment, maybe, saying that this link might not be available for everyone.

Laszlo T
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1 Answers1

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These sites you are referring to are accessible from the internet. Your intranet (as the name and the error-message suggest) is not.

Facebook can not link anything to the timeline that will not be accessible to other users.

EDIT (add workaround from comments):

You can try this workaround:

Put up a public campaign site that serves every request (no matter what url-params) to a basic main-page with general information and maybe some links. The main-page contains a little javascript that checks if your intranet-page is available from client-side.

  • yes: Forward the browser to the intranet-page based on your url-params.
  • no: The user sees some basic information about your campaign on the public page.

This way you provide at least some useful information (instead of 404s) to facebook's servers and the linking should work.

fragmentedreality
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  • I am absolutely aware of the difference between the internet and an intranet. The site is intended for our colleagues, several thousand, most of them are present on FB. Since all these information (comments, likes) are stored in FB, I don't see any reason why can't be they published on a FB page or on a user's timeline. Half of their friends cannot access that site? So what? – Laszlo T Feb 11 '13 at 15:58
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    I am not accusing you to not be smart enough to know the difference between internet and intranet. I just pointed out that facebook *does* care if the links are reachable. You can drop Mark Zuckerberg an email and complain about it, but don't kill the messenger – I'm just telling you the facts. If you don't like the truth, don't ask. In short: Facebook won't link stuff to anyone's timeline that cannot be accessed from their (FB's) servers at the time of linking. Point. P.S. I downvoted your question for your rude comment. – fragmentedreality Feb 11 '13 at 16:05
  • It's not a matter of liking it or not. It's just lacking reason. For several thousands of their users the site *IS* accessible - so, purely following your argument, facebook do not care about them? PS. I can't help if you're frustrated. But congrats. – Laszlo T Feb 11 '13 at 16:12
  • Facebook does not care about content that is only accessible to some 1000 users, that's the plain and simple reason. You can argue as much as you want, it's not gonna happen. So let's not talk about my virtual frustration, here. Maybe you could circumvent Facebbook's behavior by providing a public link to your internal content that is only valid for some minutes. – fragmentedreality Feb 11 '13 at 16:19
  • I tried it last Friday, just replaced the intranet URL with my company's web site address. Almost perfect, but in that case, I think, all likes and comments will go to the company's FB page and not to our site (which is helping a campaign). I'd like to have an effective campaign with well separated social activity. Do you think I'm wrong? – Laszlo T Feb 11 '13 at 16:32
  • I'm not questioning your motives. There are many cases when it would be nice or helpful to have these abilities. But it just does not work. If you want to widen your campaings range it's worth considering to have a seperate but public site for that. The easiest way: Put up a public campaign site that serves every request (no matter what url-params) to the main-page. The main-pages contains a little javascript, that checks if your intranet is available and if so: forward the browser to the intranet-page based on your url-params. If not. The user sees some information about your campaign. – fragmentedreality Feb 11 '13 at 16:43
  • Understood. I still don't like it but I accept. If you submit it as an answer, I'll approve. – Laszlo T Feb 11 '13 at 16:46
  • let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/24329/discussion-between-fragmentedreality-and-laszlo-tenki) – fragmentedreality Feb 11 '13 at 17:24
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    OP: The crawler from Facebook's servers needs to reach that URL to read the Facebook-specific metadata, this is not something you can easily work around, though @fragmentedreality's answer looks like a pretty good and simple workaround. See also [my answer here](http://facebook.stackoverflow.com/questions/7197919/how-can-i-move-a-url-via-301-redirect-and-retain-the-pages-facebook-likes-and-o/10152342#10152342): which outlines something similar for working around moved URLs – Igy Feb 11 '13 at 17:25