New Release: SNAP for WordPress Version 3.3.6

SNAP for WordPress Version 3.3.6 has been released. This version adds support for the API 2.0 from Facebook.

Facebook silently changed it’s policy regarding app permissions that available without review and approval. It means that if your app existed before April 30th 2014 plugin will use the same API 1.0 that worked fine for the last 4 years. If your app created on or after April 30th 2014 it will only be compatible with Facebook API 2.0 that requires a complicated review/approval process.

Please see the whole history of the issue here: www.nextscripts.com/known-issues/facebook-issues/

Updated instructions for Facebook are here: www.nextscripts.com/instructions/facebook-social-networks-auto-poster-setup-installation/

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Changes to SNAP Pro for WordPress Promotion offer

Promotion offer Changes

We are no longer offering downloadable Google+ and Pinterest APIs along with WordPress Plugin.

We had this promotion offer for quite some time. Two downloadable API libraries were included with SNAP Pro WordPress plugin purchase.

Today we are replacing this offer with something much better. From now on SNAP Pro WordPress plugin comes with built-in run-time edition of SNAP Universal API. SNAP Universal API adds not just Google+ and Pinterest, but 10 additional networks otherwise not available for autoposting in any form or significantly improved over the original APIs.

Platforms/Social Networks based on the unique NextScripts SNAP API:

 1. Blogger/Blogspot – Post to your Blog. HTML is supported.
 2. Deviantart.com – Post to your blog. HTML is supported.
 3. Flipboard – Post to your magazine.
 4. Google+ – Post to your profile, business page or community. Ability to attach a link to Google+ post. Ability to make “Image” posts.
 5. LinkedIn – Unique ability to Post to LinkedIn Company pages
 6. Pinterest – Pin your blogpost’s featured image to your Pinterest board.
 7. Reddit – post to your subreddits.
 8. vBulletin – Auto-submit your blogpost to vBulletin forums. Could create new threads or new posts.
 9. vKontakte(VK.com) – Post to your profile or group page. Ability to attach link to vk.com post. Ability to make “Image” posts.
10. YouTube – Post messages to your YouTube channel feed. Ability to attach videos to posts.

PS: If you need downloadable Google+ and Pinterest APIs, they are now the part of our SNAP Universal API (Light and Pro Editions are downloadable). And guess what? SNAP Pro WordPress plugin is included for free with every Light or Pro SNAP Universal API purchase.

PS2: This change is effective today, May 1st 2014. If you find our old ad somewhere, the old “3in1” promotion there is no longer valid.

PS3: We are no longer offering separate downloadable Google+ and Pinterest APIs to the new customers. We simply don’t have and don’t support those two files anymore. All up-to-date APIs including Google+ and Pinterest are available only in the SNAP Universal API.

What happened with what I have now? Does it mean I should re-purchase?

1. Nothing will be changed for you if you are using WordPress Plugin (actually it will be even better). It will work with SNAP Runtime API indefinitely. SNAP Runtime API is embded in the “Pro” plugin.

2. Downloadable Google+ and Pinterest API libraries (that were included for free with SNAP Pro Plugin order) are discontinued. Those files will be kept up to date till the May 2015 after that they will stop working right after Google and/or Pinterest make any breaking changes to it’s interfaces. Those libraries should be replaced with SNAP API before that.

3. Universal SNAP API. New product that includes API to Google+, Pinterest and all other networks (free and not free). SNAP API comes as a yearly subscription. If you purchased “SNAP Pro WordPress plugin with Google+ and Pinterest API libraries for $49.95” within a year of upgrade, you can get a $49.95 discount for your first year.

Old Posts Re-posting is no longer supported.

We introduced the “Old Posts Re-posting” functionality with version 3.0. It was one of the most requested features and it was one of the most hardest features to implement.

What we did works, but it turned out to be very hard to understand and configure correctly. You need to setup the re-poster itself, then you need to include/exclude posts to/from re-posting based on several different criteria. It’s complicated and hard to get. It should be much more clear and easy to use.

It’s time to admit that we did it wrong.

So we officially announce that we will completely re-do the “Old Posts Re-posting” feature in the version 3.5 release. Until then, starting from March 25, 2014, we are no longer offering support for the current implementation. There is no point in fixing it, it must be completely re-done.

If you still want to try to use it please see the instructions and troubleshooting

We are sorry, but we are longer accepting or replying to support tickets/inquires about “Old Posts Re-posting”. This functionality is now provided “as is” without any guarantees.

The good news is that we actually got a lot of feedback and a lot of experience from this. We know what we did wrong, and what to do to improve it. We promise that we will do it right this time.

PS: Just to clarify. “Old Posts Re-posting” functionality is not buggy, it’s not broken, there is nothing wrong with it as it’s done. You can configure it and it will work. It’s just very confusing and hard to understand and configure. Also it is not as flexible as it should be and many desired configurations are either extremely hard to achieve or even impossible. It should not be like this.

Update (Dec 2014): Upcoming Version 4 Features: Auto-Reposting

Update 2 (March 2015) (FAQ)

Question:I got “Pro” version and it says that this is not supported. I urgently need this functionality!!!

Answer We are not sure what exactly are you asking here. First of all “Re-posting” is not a part of “Pro” upgrade, it’s available in the free version. Re-posting functionality in V3 is working, we just don’t support it because it was not implemented to satisfy everyone and we are completely redoing it. We are working on new re-posing functionality for the last 10 months. It will take another 2-4 months to finish it. What exactly can we “urgently” provide you with?

New Release: SNAP for WordPress Version 3.3

SNAP for WordPress Version 3.3.0 has been released. This version adds support for Flipboard Magazines (Pro Only) and a lot of improvements.

One important improvement is rewritten Facebook API access.
When we started this project as “Facebook-Twitter-Google+ Autoposter” we took official Facebook PHP API library and used it. Two years and 21 networks after that we actually asked a question why exactly we are still using those 47kbs of code. We can do much better then that. We have enough knowledge and experience to use Facebook API directly, without some “middle man”. As a result we got much faster and more reliable Facebook autoposter engine.

Another important change is disabling Auto-Reposter if WP Cron service is not correctly configured. This should save a lot of frustration and prevent many issues.

= 3.3.0 [03/06/2014] =

* New – New network “Flipboard”. Post your links to your magazine.
* Improvement – A lot of code, error handling and interface optimizations and improvements.
* Improvement – Plugin is not using 47kb of official Facebook API for PHP anymore. Facabook autoposting is now more stable and faster.
* Improvement – Auto-Reposting functionality will be disabled if WP Cron is not configured correctly.
* Improvement – Plugin shows how many posts is included in auto-reposting on the settings page.
* Bug Fix – Many bug fixes and improvements to the “Auto-Reposting” and “Posts from Query” functionality.
* Bug Fix – Checkboxes with selected categories were not saving correctly.
* Bug Fix – Google+ – custom URL postings were incorrect.
* Bug Fix – Tumblr is now working “New Post to Social Networks”

You can install it directly from your WP Admin panel, download it from NextScripts or from WordPress.org

Troubles with WP Cron and existing posts auto-reposter

“Existing posts auto-reposter” functionality will be disabled if WP Cron is not configured correctly.

It’s been more then three months since we released SNAP for WordPress Version 3.0 with “Existing posts auto-reposter” functionality. It was one of the most requested features and a lot of people are enjoying it. However this feature brought a lot of troubles to us.

The problem is that this feature could work properly only with correctly configured (healthy) WP Cron. It turned out that a lot of people have no idea what is “WP Cron”, how does it work, and why it’s important to keep it healthy.

Combination of unhealthy WP Cron and “Existing posts auto-reposter” feature could cause: no auto-repostings, no auto-postings, many duplicate postings and repostings, site crashes, 500 Internal server errors, etc … and of course we are getting the blame for all those problems.

We don’t feel that we deserve all those bad reviews and being called “Unhelpful Support” simply because we don’t have technical capabilities to spend hours on each website debugging WP Cron. WP Cron is a part of WordPress itself and its absolutely not related to our products. Healthy WP Cron is a requirement for “Existing posts auto-reposter” functionality and SNAP for WordPress Version 3.3 will check and disable this feature if it detects that WP Cron is not configured the way it should be.

Please go to the “Help/Support” tab and click “Show Cron Test Results” to see how your WP Cron is doing.

We have a very good tutorial about correct configuration of WP Cron: WP-Cron: Scheduling Tasks in WordPress

Once the WP Cron is configured correctly, please go to the Help/Support tab again and click “Show Cron Test Results” and then click “Re-do Cron Check”.

“Existing posts auto-reposter” functionality will be reactivated after successful test.

We are really sorry, but we can’t offer troubleshooting services for WP Cron as part of our support for SNAP plugin. This is a server administration issue, so please work with your server admin or hosting provider if you need help setting it up correctly.

UPDATE: Yes, you can force “Auto-Reposter” back on from the settings tab.

New Release: SNAP for WordPress Version 3.2

SNAP for WordPress Version 3.2.0 has been released. This version adds an ability to make posts to social networks without making a new blogpost and adds Scoop.It to the list of supported networks.

= 3.2.0 [01/29/2014] =

* New – Post to social networks without creating WordPress post.

* New – New network “Scoop.It”. Make text posts, link posts, or image posts. Post with tags.

* New – New LinkedIn Showcase pages are supported. (Pro Only)
* Improvement/Bug Fix – New interface for checkboxes for networks with excluded categories.
* Improvement/Bug Fix – %EXCERPT% tags won’t cut the actual excerpt to 300 characters anymore.
* Bug Fix – filed link [Enabled/Disabled for Repost according to Categories/Tags/Taxonomies filters] * Bug Fix – Stability improvements to re-posting functionality.

You can install it directly from your WP Admin panel, download it from NextScripts or from WordPress.org

New Release: SNAP for WordPress Version 3.1.2

SNAP for WordPress Version 3.1.2 has been released. This version fixes several bugs.

= 3.1.2 [01/15/2013] =

* [Critical] Bug Fix – [ERROR] (#100) actions should be a JSON-encoded dictionary with ‘name’ and ‘link’ keys
* Improvement/Bug Fix – Plugin will import all comments from Facebook posts, not just the first 100.
* Bug Fix – Plugin were re-posting the same “Sticky” post in some configurations.

You can install it directly from your WP Admin panel, download it from NextScripts or from WordPress.org

New Release: SNAP for WordPress Version 3.1.1

SNAP for WordPress Version 3.1.1 has been released. This version brings compliance with “Jan 14 Twitter API changes” as well as some bug fixes and stability/compatibility improvements.

= 3.1.1 [01/14/2013] =

* Improvement/Bug Fix – Update for Jan 14 Twitter API change – requirement for ONLY secured SSL connections
* Improvement/Bug Fix – Better compatibility with some WP Admin themes – like fixed missing “Update Settings” button
* Improvement/Bug Fix – Stability improvements and better error handling for WordPress based sites.
* Improvement/Bug Fix – Some fixes, improvements and optimizations to the re-posting functionality.
* Improvement/Bug Fix – More clear interface for category filters.
* Bug Fix – Missing Twitter image on servers without proper “Content-Length” header
* Bug Fix – Duplicate categories filter for Twitter has been removed.
* Bug Fix – vBulletin module optimization and better error handling.
* Bug Fix – General options were getting overwritten by post options in some configurations.
* Bug Fix – Memory limit problem for servers with more then 1GB of allowed for PHP memory.

You can install it directly from your WP Admin panel, download it from NextScripts or from WordPress.org

New Release: SNAP for WordPress Version 3.1.0

SNAP for WordPress Version 3.1 has been released.

* New – WordPress 3.8 Compatibility
* New – New Ajax based settings page – 7 times lighter and faster.
* New – Filter autoposting by tags and custom taxonomies.
* New – Ability to set all posts “Enabled/Disabled for repost” according to the Categories/Tags/Custom Taxonomies filters
* Improvement – Performance/compatibility improvement with latest LastPass extension.
* Improvement – Better compatibility with SSL.
* Improvement/Bug Fix – HTML tags and shortcodes are now removed from Facebook attached titles.
* Improvement/Bug Fix – Compatibility with new LinkedIn security feature “We just sent you the code”.

More about New Features:

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New non-numeric “custom” URLs for Google+ pages.

Google is actively rolling out non-numeric “custom” URLs for it’s users and pages.

yes, we’ve got one too: http://google.com/+Nextscripts

This +NextScripts is not our page ID and it cannot be used in our API.

Here is how to get the numeric page ID:

1. Login to your account, go to “pages” and select your page.

2. You will see the front of your page with the new URL. Click “Manage this page” button.

3. You will get to the dashboard and dashboard will show the numeric ID in the URL.

Alternately you can just click “Manage this page” right from the pages selection.

New Release: Version 3.0.4

The long awaited version 3 has been released.

* New – Major release with a lot of new and improved features.
* New – Auto-repost existing and already posted posts based on some rules – one-by-one from old to new, one-by-one from new to old, from specific dates, “older then N days and younger then X days”.
* New – Add auto-posts to the query that will be posted according to some specified rules (like “two posts per hour”)
* New – Select what image to use for “Image” and “Attachment” post types if post has several images
* New – Custom URL for posts
* New – Reset all Settings for existing posts.
* New – Extended debug info.
* New – Ability to send errors by email.
* New – New Option – How to handle spaces in hashtags.
* Improvement – Comments import has been completely redone. Disqus and usernames should be correct now.
* Improvement – Code was optimized for lighter footprint
* New – App.net Support
* New – Reddit Support
* New – Deviantart Support

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Facebook new [bigger] shared link thumbnail images

Facebook recently has made a change to shared link thumbnail image size. The whole layout of the share has been changed as well. The big image is now located under the text, not in the left column.

While this new layout yet to be transitioned to the regular API shares, there is a way to make this happen right now. Version 3 has an option to let Facebook decide the share info by itself using your OG tags and other info.

If you check this option and your image is up to the specifications Facebook will make your share presented in the new layout. The recommended og:image size for this feature is 1200x627px, minimum is 560x292px.

Update: Version 3.0 has been released.
Update 2 (January 2014): New layout is available to all types of Facebook shares including API shares.

If you don’t see the big thumbnail then your link doesn’t meet the Facebook requirements for big thumbnails.

There are several:

– link MUST be shared, not attached.
– page must have og: meta tags.
– og:image meta tag must be set and contain the correct image URL.
– size of the image listed in og:image meta tag should be minimum is 560x292px, recommended 1200x627px.

Live example – Embeded autoshare of this exact post:

SNAP Version 3 [Beta] Release Candidate 2 – Public Release

We have reached the point where we can offer SNAP Version 3 Beta to anyone. Product is already stable enough not to cause any major troubles. There will be no more new feature added, just some more bugfixes and then it will be released as “stable”.

First of all, thanks to all people who tested betas 1 – 6 and RC1 and provided us with valuable feedback. We made a lot of bug fixes and made some functionality changes based on your suggestions.

Now, you can take V3 Release Candidate 2 for testing. Please go to the SNAP V3 Beta download page.

New Features

New “Free” and “Pro” Features
– Auto-repost existing and already posted posts based on some rules – one-by-one from old to new, one-by-one from new to old, from specific dates, “older then N days and younger then X days”.
– Add auto-posts to the query that will be posted according to some specified rules (like “two posts per hour”)
– Select what image to use for “Image” and “Attachment” post types if post has several images
– App.net Support
– Custom URL for posts

“Pro” only Features.
– Schedule auto-post for the specific time
– Auto-repost existing random posts from from specific dates or “older then N days and younger then X days”.
– Limit random or one-by-one auto-reposting for specific days of the week and times. (like Monday-Friday from 8AM to 7PM Only)
– Reddit Support

New Release: Version 2.7.18

The new version 2.7.18 has been released.

It contains several improvements and fixes for recent changes in various social networks. Comments import issues and additional URL parameters issues has been fixed as well.

This will be the last 2.X.X release. Version 3 is almost ready.

Full list of changes since 2.7.14.

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[Version 3] Some News

We have some news.

1. Version 3 Beta 4 wasn’t as bad as Beta 3 in terms of new bugs and problems. Beta 5 will be available on Monday to all beta testers and then most probably Beta 6 will be public.

2. New Version 3 feature.

Due to many requests we have added the ability to share some different URL with autoposts.

You will be able to setup custom URL for all networks and for each one individually.

3. We set a separate blog and social networks accounts for API updates announcements.

You can always see the latest release news here: http://www.nextscripts.com/updts/

Follow any of our special accounts to stay in touch with API releases, news and updates:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NextScripts
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/nextscripts
Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/114111009058659350987/posts
RSS: http://www.nextscripts.com/updts/feed/

4. One more thing. Pinterest is rolling out new interface to everyone. Old interface become obsolete and unstable. Starting with API 2.8.0 we are no longer support old Pinterest interface. Please login to your Pinterest account and accept new changes, otherwise you will be getting 502 errors.