Social Auto Poster Addon

Social Auto Poster is one of the recent add-ons that we have produced for MEC. With these add-ons, you can automatically post events that you have published in MEC on your social media platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Meetup, and Instagram.

Social Auto Poster Addon has numerous features that enable you to add and edit your events to your social media. Below, we will examine its features one by one, so stay tuned.

Social Auto Poster Addon Installation

After installation and activation, a new feature called Social Poster will be added to MEC’s menu. Once you click on it, you will see this page:

On this page, we enter the data for the social platforms we want to connect to MEC automatically in their tabs respectively. Then, we select the type of account. Now, let’s go through them one by one.

Facebook

Create a Facebook App

First, we need to create a Facebook app to connect Facebook to Social Auto Poster Addon. Please visit this page, log in to your Facebook account, and click Create App.

On the next window, click on Other and then click the Next button.

A window opens up, asking you to select an app type. Choose Business, and click Next at the bottom of the page.

 In the next step, the basic information of your Web App is required as shown in the example, and once done, click on Create App.

On this product page, set up and configure the “Facebook Login for Business” Product

You will then be redirected to the “Settings” menu. If you see a warning on the page titled “Facebook Login for Business requires advanced access“, ignore it, it will not interfere with the process.

At this point, click “Quick Start” to complete the remaining settings.

Next, click on the Web option.

In the highlighted tab, enter personal information such as your website URL. Click on Continue, and in the final stage, you’ll be provided a code to copy. Ignore the rest and click on Next.

Click on App Settings > Basic on the left sidebar menu and enter your website address in “App Domains.”

Then, from the Facebook Login for Business menu on the left sidebar, click on Settings.

Return to your website and copy your redirect URL under M.E Calendar > Social Poster > Facebook.

Then, in the Valid OAuth Redirect URLs section, enter that address and save the changes.

Temporary Access Token

To create a temporary access token, go to Facebook Graph API Explorer. Find your application in the “Meta App” dropdown menu. Then, from the “User or Page” drop-down menu, select the “Get Page Access Token” option.

Note: Events can only be published to Facebook account pages and not to the main Facebook profile. Therefore, take note that before doing the steps above, you must create at least one page for the Facebook account, otherwise you will not be able to access the Access Token.

After clicking on “Get Page Access Token”, a pop-up window will appear asking you to confirm access to the Facebook account the App is built on. Click on the blue button.

Next, you need to select the pages you want the app to have access to from the available pages. Click the “Continue” button. You can select as many pages as you want and grant access to all of them.

Next, a list of required permissions will be displayed. Click on the “Save” button and then on “Got it“.

After that, you can see that the required permissions are added to the Permissions list and an Access Token is created.

Another permission must be added to the permissions list for smooth access. To do this, click on the “Add a Permission” drop-down menu, select “page_events” from the permissions list to add it to the list, and then click on the “Generate Access Token” button to create a new Access Token.

The new permissions that need to be added are:

• publish_video
• business_management
• page_events
• pages_manage_metadata
• pages_read_user_content
• pages_manage_posts
• pages_manage_engagement

Upgrade Your Token

Now, you need to upgrade your token to a two-month user access token.

Note: A temporary user access token is a one-hour valid access token, for which you must extend the expiration time.

Extend the Expiration Time

To do this, copy the code, go to the Access Token Debugger Tool, and enter it in the Debugger. Now click the Debug button and copy the Access Token Key.

Two-Months Access Token

To create a two-month access token, click on the “Extend Access Token” option at the bottom of the box where user/app tokens are placed.

The button will be disabled, and a new box will appear at the bottom of the page.

Click on the “Debug” button (with a gray background) beside the new Token.

As mentioned earlier, this will open up a new window or tab in your browser.

Then, you will be redirected to the Access Token Debugger, where your temporary user access token information is stated.
Verify the information for this new token. Ensure it is a Page Token that expires in two months and that all the permissions you previously selected are displayed.

Now, navigate to App settings > Basic through the left sidebar menu, input your website address in the App Domains field, and click Save Changes. Additionally, ensure to back up your App ID and App Secret for future use.

Copy the token at the top of the page (at the left of the blue “Debug” button).

Last Step

The last step is to generate the permanent user access token.

Graph API Explorer

Now, head over to Graph API Explorer after generating the permanent user access token and place it in the “Access Token Field.” (Paste the token you just copied (that expires in 2 months) in the “Access Token” field) And make sure all the permissions you previously selected are displayed.

Note that you should not click on the “Generate Access Token” button at this stage.

Finally, go to the About tab on the Facebook page you created. Choose “Page Transparency” there from the menu. Your page ID will be visible in the section on the right.

Copy the page ID and follow these steps.

Go back to your website again and go to  M.E Calendar > Social Poster > Facebook.

1. Account Status

Here, you can activate your Facebook account.

2. Account Title:

Here, Enter a name of your preference.

3. Facebook App ID:

This is the step where the App ID is required. Input the App ID you previously backed up into this field. (Available in App Settings > Basic menu.)

4. Facebook App Secret:

This is the step where the App Secret is required. Input the App Secret you previously backed up into this field. (Available in App Settings > Basic menu.)

5. Facebook Account ID:

In the new Facebook page that you’ve created, scroll down to the About section and copy and paste the page ID in this field.

6. Categories:

If you wish to filter posts that are posted to this account based on category, use this field.

7. Organizers:

If you wish to filter posts that are posted to this account based on the organizer, use this field.

8. Speakers:

If you wish to filter posts that are posted to this account based on the speaker, use this field.

9. Locations:

If you wish to filter posts that are posted to this account based on location, use this field.

Finally, click on Save, and you will see that your account has been added to the bottom of the page.

Now go to the General tab, and from the Account menu, select the Facebook API that we’ve created.

In the Default Schedules section, we can determine whether our events get posted on social media as soon as they are published on the website or after a specific period.

Also, on the Single Event page, we have added a new tab called Social Poster, where you can activate the settings.

Instagram

To set up a Social Auto Poster Addon for Instagram, you simply have to link your Instagram Business Account to the Facebook Page.
How to connect Facebook to Instagram.

Twitter

Note: right now, it’s impossible to show event images on Twitter.

To post your events on Twitter, first, you need to create a developer account on Twitter and then create a project to connect your website to Twitter’s API. Let’s see how.

To create a Twitter developer account, first log in to your account and then go to this address and click on Sign Up.

Fill in the form to create your account.

You will receive a confirmation email that you need to verify.

Once the developer account is created, go to your dashboard and click on Create Project.

Next, select Building Tools for Business and click on Next. In the third step, you can enter a project description if needed.

Here, we have to create an app. So enter a name for the app on the new page and click Next.

Now we have the info we need.

From the menu to the left, click on the app you’ve just created, and from User Authentication Settings, click on Setup.

Here, activate OAuth 2.0 and set the Type of App on the web. Enter the info for website redirection and save.

To enter your website redirection info, go to  M.E.Calendar > Social Poster > Twitter.

Copy the data and go to M.E. Calendar > Social Poster > Settings on your website and fill in the empty fields.

We will see the Twitter account added to the bottom.

Linkedin

To enable Social Auto Poster for LinkedIn, you need a LinkedIn account and a Business Page connected to your personal account. To create a Business page, please see this article.

To begin, go to the LinkedIn Developer page and click on Create App.

Fill out the form and click on Create App.

Here, we have to create two products:

1. Share on Linkedin

2. Sign in with Linkedin

After selecting the products, as you can see in the image, they will be added to the Products section.

Then, you have to go to the Settings tab and verify the LinkedIn page.

Then go to the Auth tab and copy the redirect address from your website from  M.E.Calendar > Social Poster > Settings > Linkedin and paste it into Authorized redirect URLs for your app.

Finally, go to M.E. Calendar> Social Poster > Settings > Linkedin and enter the API data that we received on this page.

Now click on Needs authentication to complete the verification.

Meetup

To enable the Social Auto Poster Addon for Meetup, you need a Meetup account. After creating an account, to create a new app, go to this link and click on OAuth Clients.

After that, go to this address and click on Create a New Client.

Next, fill in the info to create a new client.

Note: From your website, navigate to website M.E.Calendar > Social Poster > Meetup and copy the redirect address.

Once the form is completed, you must wait for API verification by Meetup.

Next, create a group in Meetup and get the group’s slug from the address after approval.

For example, if the group address is this:

https://www.meetup.com/mec-wordpress-plugins-group/

Then the slug would be this: mec-wordpress-plugins-group

Finally, after getting the Secret Key and API Key, go to your website to M.E.Calendar > Social Poster > Meetup, add a Meetup account, and verify.