403 on facebook crawler

[tsitsiras]

The facebook crawler get 403 error 4-5 days now, my host provider check the server and didnt find any issues there and tell me that maybe is a cloudflare problem

the articles open in browsers but not in facebook

i upload a screenshot from facebook debugger

[sandro]

Does your server IP address end in 84?

[tsitsiras]

yes its ends in 84

[sandro]

Thanks for the confirmation. I am afraid your server is not properly configured and that may be the issue for that error.

I would pause Cloudflare and contact the host to get the site secured - Pause Cloudflare · Cloudflare Fundamentals docs

Once your site works on HTTPS, we could check again if that got fixed.

[tsitsiras]

i cant reproduce that error. try many browsers in incognito mode
i use cloudflare for ssl for years

[sandro]

Yeah, that’s an issue with your server, not Cloudflare. You need to pause Cloudflare and contact the host.

[tsitsiras]

I pause the cloudflare and check the ssl on my server,
Can you check again?
The crawler still get stoped with 403

[sandro]

Right, the server is secure now. You also need to enable encryption on Cloudflare. Make sure your encryption mode is Full Strict.

[tsitsiras]

so i must unpause cloudflare select full strict only? and it will work?
Also why facebook still get 403 error?

[sandro]

Right, first Full Strict, then unpause.

[tsitsiras]

Ok i follow your sugestion, the problem still exist! the facebook crawler gets a 403 error, can’t post any article on fb

[sandro]

So your encryption mode is Full Strict?

[tsitsiras]

yes

[sandro]

Can you post a screenshot of https://dash.cloudflare.com/?to=/:account/diavlos924.gr/security/events&user-agent~contains=facebook

[nikolay.dimitrov]

I am not using Cloudflare myself and I experience the same issues with the Facebook Sharing functionality for the past week or so.

I just tested and checked logs on my server and I can see the request from the FB bot and the successful 200 OK response:

173.252.87.2 - - [01/Mar/2024:13:18:37 +0000] "GET /some_path HTTP/1.1" 200 6079 "-" "facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)" "-"

[tsitsiras]

Sandro this is the screenshot

Nikolay I notice this 5 days now, my host provider dosent see any problem and tell me to check with cloudflare

[sandro]

And what about https://dash.cloudflare.com/?to=/:account/diavlos924.gr/security/events?

[tsitsiras]

[sandro]

There was nothing blocked on Cloudflare’s side, so this must be a server issue then I am afraid.