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Admin Tools

#32858 Facebook Disallowing Me To Enter My Page's Website URL (Says Invalid Link)

Posted in ‘Admin Tools for Joomla! 4 & 5’
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Environment Information

Joomla! version
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PHP version
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Admin Tools version
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Latest post by ryancdavis on Monday, 20 April 2020 19:31 CDT

Tuesday, 14 April 2020 14:31 CDT

ryancdavis
Hello -

I have encountered this issue with all of my customer's websites. Basically, Facebook will not allow me update the website URL for the Business Page within the Facebook configuration. It keeps saying it is an "Invalid URL" (see attached screenshot). This is the third business page I have setup that will not let me put in the link to their website within the Facebook Page configuration.

Can you please help me with this? I am guessing something is blocking Facebook from looking at the site to validate if it is a real website or not, but have no clue how to get this to work. I guess I could disable Admin Tools, link the page, and then enable Admin Tools again - but that kind of defeats the purpose and isn't a long-term solution.

Thank you for the help in advance and also for the amazing plugins. I use Admin Tools and Akeeba Backup on all my sites I create/develop for customers and it works great! Keep up the great work and I look forward to hearing back from you.
Edited by ryancdavis on 2020-04-14 14:31 CDT

Wednesday, 15 April 2020 03:03 CDT

tampe125
Hello,

Let's make sure that the problem is indeed caused by Admin Tools. In order to do so, try the following:

1. Try setting the Error Reporting level in your Global Configuration to "None". Many errors are caused by harmless PHP Notices and Warnings being output to the browser, breaking anything which requires HTTP header manipulation such as Joomla!'s session management, AJAX calls and download systems.

2. Try to replicate the issue after disabling the "System - Admin Tools" plugin. If you can still replicate the issue, it is not caused by Admin Tools. Disabling that plugin means that Admin Tools code (including the Web Application Firewall) is not running on your site.

3. If you suspect an issue with the .htaccess file, replace its contents with the contents of the stock htaccess.txt file shipped with every version of Joomla!. If you are on GoDaddy please wait for 1-30 minutes for the changes to be effective. Then, retry loading the problem page. If you can still reproduce the error, then it is not caused by .htaccess Maker.

If doing any of the above resulted in the issue still occurring, it's not related with Admin Tools and we can't help you. If doing any of the above did stop the issue from occurring, we'll have to do some troubleshooting.

First go to Admin Tools, Web Application Firewall, Configure WAF. Make sure "Log security exceptions" is set to Yes; if it's not, set it to Yes and click on Save. Now try reproducing your issue. Immediately after that, please go to Admin Tools, Web Application Firewall, Security Exceptions Log. The latest log entry at the top should have the date and time of when the issue occurred. Please copy the Reason and Target URL here so that we can further help you.

If, however, you do not see a log entry, or the Date and/or IP address do not match your last access, this problem is not caused by Admin Tools' WAF. In this case, you will have to do some .htaccess troubleshooting. You may need to read the general .htaccess troubleshooting page, as well as the page on finding out necessary .htaccess exceptions.

Davide Tampellini

Developer and Support Staff

🇮🇹Italian: native 🇬🇧English: good • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Rome (UTC +1)
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Wednesday, 15 April 2020 14:49 CDT

ryancdavis
Thank you for the quick reply. I will give these tests a try and report back my findings. I appreciate the help and will get back to you soon with an update.

Monday, 20 April 2020 19:31 CDT

ryancdavis
I figured out what was going on. It appears that if you have a Joomla site set to "offline" it will issue a 503 error. Facebook checks to see if it is a real website and available before allowing you to enter the URL of your website on the Facebook Business Page. So, I turned the setting Site Offline to "No", went to Facebook and entered my website's URL, it verified, and then went back to turn my site back offline until I am done updating it.

Hope this helps someone and thank you all for the assistance.

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