Troubleshooting

Goal: This page will provide you a troubleshooting checklist and sources of information.

If something is not working, try these three steps first:

1. Update Facepager: Do you have the latest Facepager version installed on your device? Facepager is constantly updated since the APIs also change. Therefore, check first if you are using the latest version. The latest versions can be found at https://github.com/strohne/Facepager/releases. Open the arrow next to "Assets" and you will see the newest versions for your operating system.

2. Check the nodes: Did you insert a correct node? Please check whether the node is written correctly and whether there is any data available that can be fetched. Be aware that many platforms have numerical IDs as well as alphabetic names for pages and accounts. Particularly with regard to Twitter: check whether you need an ID (number) or a screen name (name) and whether you have chosen the correct parameter name. See also the wiki page on how to extract a suitable object ID from the URL.

3. Check the limits: Sometimes no data can be collected even though there is some. This is mostly related to the limitationss of the particular API:

• Facebook: The 600-post-limit caps the amount of posts you can fetch, even when the site published more posts. You will find more information about the limitation in the Facebook documentation. There is also a study by Justin Ho that discusses this limitation. If you are the administrator of a page, you can work around the 600-posts limit by using the published_posts endpoint (to do this, you must enter your own page's handle in the settings before logging in).

• Twitter: You can fetch the last 3,200 tweets of a user. See the documentation.

• YouTube: The YouTube Data API has a default limit of 10,000 units per day. See the documentation.

4. Read the API documentation: Have you looked up the reference of the API you are working with? Most importantly for working with APIs and Facepager is the documentation of the respective API. You should always visit the developer portal of the platform and find the documentation to know which queries are possible and which are not. The APIs change regularly, so you should take a look everytime something doesn't work anymore:

• Facebook: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/
• Twitter: https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs
• YouTube: https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/

If these steps are not helpful:

1. Facepager User Group: In the Facebook User Group you will find various instructions written over the years. Just enter your problem into the search bar and read through the issues of other users. The group is the first place to go to for any question! Not only the developers of Facepager, but also other users can help answering. So if you have a question, it is best to send a screenshot of your settings containing a visible object ID. Then we can reconstruct your problem and hopefully help quickly. Join the user group!.

2. Wiki: You are already in the wiki. Here you will find many more pages that can help you. Click through the wiki pages to learn more about the program.

3. FAQ in the wiki: There is also a FAQ page in the wiki, where the most important questions are summarized.

In case you find a bug in the Facepager program, first visit the user group and make sure it is a Facepager problem and not a problem about using APIs. Then please report it in the GitHub Issues section.