FB.ui Send Dialog 500 error... but only on link to my site?

Question

I'm using FB.ui to show the Send dialog. It works perfectly... unless I specify the link to the new site I'm working on.

This works (FB dialog displays, recipient receives message):

FB.ui({       
    method: 'send',
    name: 'Check out my new site!',
    link: 'http://nytimes.com/',
});

But it breaks when I change the link value to 'http://plumspotter.com/'.

When I change 'http://nytimes.com/' to the site I'm working on 'http://plumspotter.com/', it appears to work, but the recipient does not receive the message.

Using Firebug > Net panel I see that when FB.ui posts to facebook.com/dialog/send it's returns a 500 (internal server error).

Any idea why Facebook wouldn't allow me to use FB.ui to send a link to http://plumspotter.com/?

Answer 1

I recently faced the same problem. Facebook will analyse your page before sending a link, if it cant, it will throw a 500 error.

More info:

If your page does not return a 200 code, it will not analyse your page, and will throw up a 500 error.

Make sure the page you link does not redirect to any other pages, even if they are within your app. A redirect is 3xx code - which is not accepted by facebook.

Since your site has htaccess - facebook cant scroll through the page you linked - and hence will throw up an error.