Note: This blog covers the classic Esri Story Maps. Story authors are encouraged to use the new ArcGIS StoryMaps to create stories; however, Esri will continue to maintain the classic templates for your use. For more information, see the Product road map.
This is an important announcement about how story maps are shared on Facebook.
What is the issue?
Recently there have been some changes to Facebook that have affected how social sharing works in Esri’s Story Maps apps. Sharing on Facebook using the button in a story map header often no longer works. We apologize for any inconvenience this issue may cause.
To avoid having your readers encounter this issue you can turn off the Facebook sharing button in publicly shared apps.
This issue affects story maps hosted on ArcGIS Online, Portal for ArcGIS, as well as any stories hosted on your own infrastructure. If someone clicks on the Facebook button in the header of a story map, this is what they will see.
What is not affected by this issue?
This issue does not affect your story’s content or any other features of the story map application. The Twitter and Link buttons in the header are unaffected.
The Facebook button in Story Map Basic is not affected.
This issue does not affect sharing a link to your story in a post on Facebook; pasting a story map link into Facebook fetches your story details from ArcGIS, and this is the recommended way to share your story on Facebook until this issue is resolved.
When will this issue be resolved?
We have already implemented a fix for all of our story map applications in our development environment, and this update will be pushed to the downloadable versions of our apps on Github soon. The fix will be deployed to the versions of our apps that are hosted on ArcGIS Online as part of the next release in mid-June 2016 and to an upcoming release of Portal for ArcGIS.
How do I remove the Facebook sharing button?
For stories created with Story Map Journal, Story Map Series, Story Map Tour, or Story Map Swipe/Spyglass open the Builder, go to Settings > Header, and uncheck Facebook.
What about apps I’m hosting on my own infrastructure?
If you have story maps that you are hosting on your own infrastructure, then please read this related post on the Story Map Developers’ Corner to find out more about how you can fix this issue on your hosted versions of the apps.
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