Contents
Quick Publish
Publishing with Custom Branding
Overview
The ShortStack publishing process makes publishing your campaign as a Facebook tab quick and easy. There are two ways to publish your campaign:
Quick Publish: This is the fastest way to get your campaign on your Page. The campaign displays as a tab on the left side of your Page, and will be labeled "ShortStack." Only one Quick Publish campaign can be installed per Facebook Page.
Publish with Custom Branding: This method takes a bit longer, but you have more control over how the campaign is displayed, such as the tab name. Using Custom Branding also allows you to have more than one custom tab per Page.
Note: Quick Publish is only available for subscribers on our Business Plan or above, and the Publish with Custom Branding feature is available to the Pro Plan and above. Per Facebook's policy, you can only publish to Pages that have 2,000 Likes or more. Publishing to Facebook isn't available at all for campaigns built on S2 templates.
Quick Publish
Quick Publish is the fastest way to publish a campaign to Facebook. However, what you gain in speed you lose in customization capabilities. For instance, when quick publishing you cannot change the application name that appears on your Page. Because of this trade off, we recommend Publishing to Facebook with Custom Branding if you have access to it.
To Quick Publish a campaign to Facebook:
- Click Publish Campaign in the top-right corner of the Campaign Builder.
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Before proceeding, you will see a Campaign Checklist; the aim of the checklist is to help you make sure your campaign is as complete as possible. This step is optional, but we do highly recommend taking a look at any areas that might need attention. Once you're done, click the blue Next button.
Note: If you're a pro at building campaigns and no longer need to view the checklist when publishing, simply check the Skip This Step in the Future box in the bottom-left before clicking Next.
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In the publishing pop-up, click the Facebook Page button.
- This leads to a page where you can customize the URL for the campaign. Keep in mind that since you're publishing to Facebook, the only time any visitors would see this URL is when they're sharing it, or when mobile visitors visit the page (since Facebook doesn't display custom apps on their mobile app or site).
A walkthrough of customizing your URL (both subdomain and domain) can be found in our Publishing a Campaign help doc - but do note that Quick Publishing is not available for campaigns using custom subdomains.
When you have everything set up to your liking, click the blue Next button. - For the next step, click Use ShortStack App.
- You'll then see a list of the Facebook Pages that are available to you for publishing. These are Pages for which you have admin permissions. Click on the Page to which you want to publish the campaign, then click the blue Publish button.
Note: If you're not seeing the Facebook Pages on this list that you're expecting to see, check out our List of Facebook Pages to Install to is Empty help doc. - The campaign is now published to Facebook! Click the Campaign URL to visit the campaign. Click the Copy button to copy the URL. Click Close when finished to close the pop-up.
To access your publication URL after you close the confirmation dialog, click the bookmark icon in the top-right corner of the Campaign Builder to open the Publications Panel.
Publishing with Custom Branding
Publishing with Custom Branding gives you more control over the publication process; for example, you can determine the app name that appears on your Page. You can also publish the same campaign to multiple Facebook Pages, or multiple apps on a single Page.
Publishing with Custom Branding takes longer than Quick Publishing because the process creates a unique Facebook Application for the campaign. Only people with Facebook Developer accounts are able to create a unique Facebook application.
To Publish a Campaign with Custom Branding to Facebook:
- Click Publish Campaign in the top-right corner of the Campaign Builder.
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Before proceeding, you will see a Campaign Checklist; the aim of the checklist is to help you make sure your campaign is as complete as possible. This step is optional, but we do highly recommend taking a look at any areas that might need attention. Once you're done, click the blue Next button.
Note: If you're a pro at building campaigns and no longer need to view the checklist when publishing, simply check the Skip This Step in the Future box in the bottom-left before clicking Next.
- In the publishing pop-up, click the Facebook Page button.
- This leads to a page where you can customize the URL for the campaign. Keep in mind that since you're publishing to Facebook, the only time any visitors would see this URL is when they're sharing it, or when mobile visitors visit the page (since Facebook doesn't display custom apps on their mobile app or site).
A walkthrough of customizing your URL (both subdomain and domain) can be found in our Publishing a Campaign help doc.
When you have everything set up to your liking, click the blue Next button. - For the next step, click Use Your Own App.
- If you haven't already, you'll need to register as a Facebook Developer. You can click the link to get started on that process.
- Click the Create New Facebook App button. This will open the Facebook Developer app in a new browser tab.
- Click the Add a New App button.
- Add a Display Name for the app in the field provided, then click Create App ID in the bottom-right corner.
- After completing the security check, you'll be brought to the settings page for your new Facebook App. On the left side, click Settings, then click Basic.
- On the resulting page you'll see the App ID and App Secret. You'll need to copy and paste these into the appropriate fields in your ShortStack tab. Make sure to click the Show button (you'll be required to enter your Facebook password) to see the App Secret before copying it.
- After you've copied both bits over, also fill in the Default Page App Name--the name that will appear on the tab on your Page--then click Next.
- If you hadn't already set up API calls for your app, you'll likely get an error like the one shown below. This means we need to allow API calls in the Facebook Developer app. Switch back to your open Facebook Developer tab.
- Click Advanced under Settings on the left-hand side.
- Scroll down to the Security section, and find the toggle switch for Allow API Access to App Settings. Flip the switch to the Yes position. Then click the blue Save Changes button at the bottom of the screen.
- Click back to the Basic Settings page in your Facebook Developer window. Paste a link to your privacy policy in the Privacy Policy URL field. If you don't have your own link, you can use http://a.pgtb.me/privacy. Then, click Save Changes.
- At the top of the page, you should see a little slider switch labeled Status: In Development. Click the switch to set it to On.
- Choose a category for your campaign from the drop-down menu, then click Confirm. Then again click Save Changes at the bottom of the screen.
- Go back to your ShortStack window, clear the error message by clicking the X in the top-right corner, and then click Next. On the following section, we've already taken care of this step, so click Next.
- You'll then see a list of the Facebook Pages that are available to you for publishing. These are Pages for which you have admin permissions. Click on the Page to which you want to publish the campaign, then click the blue Publish button.
Note: If you're not seeing the Facebook Pages on this list that you're expecting to see, check out our List of Facebook Pages to Install to is Empty help doc. - The campaign is now published to Facebook! Click the Campaign URL to visit the campaign. Click the Copy button to copy it. Click Close when finished to close the pop-up.
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Return to step 1 if you'd like to publish to a different Page. You can go through this process multiple times to publish to multiple Pages.
To access your publication URL(s) after you close the confirmation dialog, click the bookmark icon in the top-right corner of the Campaign Builder to open the Publications Panel.