Hello and thanks for checking out my question.
<meta property="og:image" content="http://www.myurl.com/images/test.png"/>
I have an application that is intended to service multiple "campaigns", each having its own graphic and description I would like to show when someone likes the page. I can update the meta tags all I want but FB will still only use the most recently scraped data (from the nightly scrape or from the linter).
I read that I might be able to cURL to the linter to have it pull the new data right before the like is sent, but what happens when I am servicing hundreds+ of people and multiple campaigns?
Is there any way around this? I have not found any solid solutions after several hours of searching.
tl;dr
I want my posted likes to respect the current meta tags and ignore or update the FB cache for that data.
Each object / page needs its own URL, even if those URLs are handled by the same code -using a query string parameter in the URL to identify different objects is the most common way to achieve this, with server-side URL rewriting being another
Related
The problem i have is that i own a website where other people can post stuff ,creating new pages on my domain, but the problem that occured today is that all the new post pages created today are malfunctioning , sharing is not loading thumbnail picture and title and so on, but the weird this is that all the posts(new pages) created before today are all working fine
What caused an error to occur out of nowhere?
I also cannot debug any of the URL's of my website as the same error: Error parsing input URL, no data was scraped
The website im having problems with is here http://www.vabameedia.ee/vm/184/h%C3%A4da-ei-anna-h%C3%A4beneda.html
This is one of the sites where it says no error on page but facebook still cant reach it. http://www.vabameedia.ee/vm/178/craig-parks-%C3%BChek%C3%A4eline-krossisoitja.html
For people experiencing the same problem but for different causes, I discovered a few interesting things about how Facebook "scrapes" pages, checking the logs of the server while doing some trials.
First of all: if you never tried to share a page with FB, FB never tried to scrape it, and it will not try to do so if you only put the url in the Debug tool.
That's the first reason because you get the error: it just states that FB has no information on the page, you must "force" it to scrape the page.
The first time you try to share a page, FB scrapes it (asks your server the first 40k of the page and analyse the opengraph tags).
What can happen is that you do not see the image: Facebook Share Dialog does not display thumbnails one first load
The reason is that FB behind the scenes is still scraping your page and caching the image. The next time, in fact, you have also the image.
How to solve it? Pre caching: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/best-practices#precaching
or simply add
<meta property="og:image:width" content="450"/>
<meta property="og:image:height" content="298"/>
I was pulling my hair out trying to fix this issue. Hours and hours of troubleshooting to no avail. After speaking with one of our programmers about a topic unrelated I thought of something to try as a long shot.
Much to my surprise, it worked!!!
This is the reason behind the problem and my solution for it:
When you draft a post in WordPress it generates a link based on your article's title (unless you manually change it). The title of my article included special characters, however the auto-generated link didn't display these special characters, only hyphens to replace the spaces. Should be fine right? Wrong! Somewhere embedded in metadata and code in the WordPress platform are those special characters and they mess up the way Facebook pulls info from the article being linked to. This is a problem because certain special characters invalidate hyperlinks.
For example:
Article Title: R[eloaded]
Auto-generated hyperlink DISPLAYED in WordPress "Permalink" field: http://www.example.com/reloaded
Actual WordPress Auto-generated hyperlink: http://www.example.com/r[eloaded]
Those brackets will invalidate the link and Facebook will be unable to pull any information (ie pictures) from it.
Solution:
(1) Simply, manually change the WordPress hyperlink address to something that doesn't include any special characters (this will not change the title of your article).
(2) Click "Update" to change the post to include the new hyperlink.
(3) Click "Purge from Cache" in the WordPress window
(4) Refresh your Facebook browser window
(5) Paste the new hyperlink for your article
(6) Enjoy your Facebook post with a preview image and information
Sidenote: Don't pull your hair out over Facebook, it's not worth it. =)
If you're using Wordpress, edit the post in question to change the permalink (just alter it slightly), then update the post. Using the new permalink in the Facebook OG debugger should now work.
It's a weird fix, but I think it takes care of a problem caused by special characters being used in the title of a post, which is then used to make the permalink.
Its all about DNS issue, was having same issue and resolved it by updating domain name servers to actual name servers.
In my case my domain was pointed to ns1.websterz.net and ns2.websterz.net and on this server i had DNS redirect to my other server (where web site is hosted). I Just updated name servers of the domain to actual name servers where my web site is hosted on. This was account migration case i forgot to update name servers as of new server.
Everything works fine now.
Is it possible to have multiple og:title(etc) in a page?
I have 4 different products on same page (url: site/#theblock)
I want my users to share the product with the correct link on their FB.
I tried jquery but its not working.
Im using a wordpress cms.
Any idea how to do it?
Thanks
You need to use some server side technology to dynamically change the og tags based on query string parameters. Hash tags will not work since they are only used by the browser and are not sent to the server.
The reason to set the og tags server side is because Facebook's scraper does not run JavaScript and therefore your server needs to make the correct tags upon serving the page.
I've been at this for almost 3 days straight and now I can't even think clearly anymore.
All I'm trying to do is to get my featured image thumbnail to appear when I paste the link in Facebook.
I'm using the Wordpress Facebook Open Graph protocol plugin which generates all the correct og meta properties.
My thumbnail images are 240x200px which respects the minimum requirements and also respects the 3:1 ratio
I've made sure there's no trailing slash at the end of my post URLs
When I use the Facebook Object Debugger, the only warning is in regards to my locale, but that shouldn't affect it.
Facebook appears to be pulling the right image, at least the URL is correct, but the image appears as a blank square
I've gone through pretty much every thread I could find in forums, but all the information available is about using the correct og tags, which I believe I'm already doing.
Thank you very very much for any help, I'm desperate!! :)
You can troubleshoot the OpenGraph meta tags with the Debugger https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug - this can at least show if you're using the meta tags properly and if Facebook can 'read' the image.
I finally figured out that the root of my issue was the fact that I was using an addon domain (which is really a subdomain being redirected to the top level domain) and I read on eHow (of all places :) ) that Facebook has trouble pulling data from redirected domains.
Not sure if there was another way around it, but I simply ended up creating a seperate hosting account and everything is loading properly now.
one problem youre going to run into testing is that often the first time your page or post gets liked, fb keeps whatever img it finds in your meta tags or by searching your page. so, you'll keep changing your img meta tag and still it wont show the right pic. it's very anoying. One way to get around it is to change the slug of your post. now, it has a different url and to fb, it's a different page. The downside is you lose all the likes that go with your orig url. Not a problem with a new site.
I ended here googling another problem. Maybe this might help someone:
Please bear in mind that the facebook scraper works asynchronously and will need some time (during my tests around 10 minutes) to be able to display an image after seeing it for the first time.
For more information, here's a more thorough answer on a similar problem.
Indeed, as Andy Wibbels points out the FB debugger is a really handy tool.
I faced a similar issue with a server's og:image tag pointing to a secure subdomain which actually mirrors a CDN server,
<meta property="og:image" content="https://subdomain.pathToImage.jpg" />
<meta property="og:image_secure" content="https://subdomain.pathToImage.jpg" />
The FB debugging tool allows you to see the errors that FB encounters when trying to pull the image.
In my case the subdomain was not registered under the SSL certificate used by the HTTPS protocol. Hence FB was getting the following error,
Curl Error : SSL_CACERT SSL certificate problem: unable to get local issuer certificate
I've been reading guides and examples for a long time (hours) but I can't manage. I tried to use all html meta tag like title, description, and og:property. Also tried to use the link sharer and also to create a new blank page with just the info I want to share to facebook in order to test. Also I tried to generate an random url in php so to have always a different url variable (the url to share and also the url of the main page containing the script). I also grabbed (url linter) a lot of time the url to clean the cache of facebook. It always give me the title of the site domain as title or the url itself as the shared title and description. I don't know what to do.
The main web site is from joomla. In the code of index of joomla I put a php include if the url has the variable "articolo" id. This incuded php page has regulat head body etc. So maybe I facebook check the main meta of joomla first? So now I tried to open a popup with just the page for sharing. Look here: link
It's possible that the title is locked in, meaning that after X number of likes Facebook doesn't allow you to change it anymore. Can you give us an example URL you're having issues with?
EDIT
Ok, now the link you provided shows some very interesting output. http://modernolatina.it/wjs/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=96&Itemid=258&autore=6&articolo=6
First, you webserver, instead of sending back a 200 code, is sending back a 500 code.
Secondly the HTML your webserver is sending back has two HTML tags (Do a view source on the content returned)
Fix up those two issues and I think the linter will be happier with your page.
Test your page here:
http://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug
When someone posts a link on facebook, a script usually scans that link for any images, and displays a quick thumbnail next to the post. For certain URLs though (including mine), FB doesn't seem to pick up anything, despite their being a number of images on that page.
I read up that FB prefers the "image_src" rel tag for the image the user wishes to specify, but this does not generate that thumbnail either for my site.
My url goes directly to the DNS, and is not forwarded, so I don't imagine that could be the problem either.
Does anyone have an idea as to why FB can't generate any thumbnails from my site?
The easiest way is just a link tag:
<link rel="image_src" href="http://stackoverflow.com/images/logo.gif" />
But there are some other things you can add to your site to make it more Social media friendly:
Open Graph Tags
Open Graph tags are tags that you add to the <head> of your website to describe the entity your page represents, whether it is a band, restaurant, blog, or something else.
An Open Graph tag looks like this:
<meta property="og:tag name" content="tag value"/>
If you use Open Graph tags, the following six are required:
og:title - The title of the entity.
og:type - The type of entity. You must select a type from the list of Open Graph types.
og:image - The URL to an image that represents the entity. Images must be at least 50 pixels by 50 pixels. Square images work best, but you are allowed to use images up to three times as wide as they are tall.
og:url - The canonical, permanent URL of the page representing the entity. When you use Open Graph tags, the Like button posts a link to the og:url instead of the URL in the Like button code.
og:site_name - A human-readable name for your site, e.g., "IMDb".
fb:admins or fb:app_id - A comma-separated list of either the Facebook IDs of page administrators or a Facebook Platform application ID. At a minimum, include only your own Facebook ID.
More information on Open Graph tags and details on Administering your page can be found on the Open Graph protocol documentation.
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like
I know this question is old, but I recently dealt with the exact same problem and went round and round on it for a couple weeks. Multiple searches on Google turned up a lot of useful information, but most of it was focused on Open Graph tags, which I wasn't interested in using. Turns out my site had multiple issues, but here are some of the basics.
As EightyEight said, make sure your HTML is valid - and the same goes for your javascript and server-side code (PHP, ASP, etc.). I had a small PHP error in a piece of code that was executing as a separate call to the server from the main page. Due to a number of bizarre coincidences, that code was generating a 500 error - but ONLY for IE6 and strict parsing engines like the W3C validator and the Facebook page crawler. The problem didn't appear in modern browsers (Chrome 4, FF 3.5, IE 8, etc) so I didn't see it right away, but older/stricter clients were showing the 500 every time and that was the main reason FB wasn't crawling our page (when everything else seemed to be correct).
Regarding Randy's response, he's correct that Facebook will keep an old cached copy of your page long after you've updated it. FB claims it's only held for 24 hours, but I experienced much longer times than that. FORTUNATELY, FB has released their "URL Linter" tool that will show you a preview of how your page will appear when being shared on FB, and it will force FB to instantly update its cache of your page. This was a lifesaving tool. You can find it at http://developers.facebook.com/tools/lint/
Regarding the URL Linter tool, be aware that each variation of a URL is cached separately on Facebook, so "www.example.com" is not the same as "example.com". Also, unique capitalization is stored as well, so "ExampleOne.com" is not the same as "exampleone.com". (This led to a lot of confusion between my client and myself when it appeared to me that the cache had been updated just fine and the client claimed they weren't seeing the updates. Turns out I was looking at exampleone.com and had used Linter to update the cache, but they were looking at exampleOne.com which I hadn't submitted to Linter. As a result, I ended up submitting quite a few variations of the URL to Linter just to cover the bases.)
WyrdNEXUS's advice to use the image_src link tag is spot-on. This allows you to be sure that FB is scraping the best possible image for your page. There are some varying guidelines out there about what specs the image file should have, but I've successfully used a 128px square image and have seen a 130x97 image make it through as well. Here is Facebook's official documentation from http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/:
Images must be at least 50 pixels by 50 pixels. Square images work best, but you are allowed to use images up to three times as wide as they are tall.
Obviously, FB will resize a large image for you, but you'll almost always get better results if you resize it yourself beforehand.
Regarding Mike Cooper's link to the eHow article, avoid using step #1 in that article. It was valid advice when the article was written and when Mike posted the link, but it's now better to use the URL Linter tool for previewing how your page will appear when being shared. By using Linter, you won't cause FB to cache a (potentially) bad copy of the page before you get a chance to tweak it.
Use the facebook lintter available here. http://developers.facebook.com/tools/lint/
This will check your link and re fetch any images. this also clears any old cache.
Or try this - https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug
To change Title, Description and Image, we need to add some meta tags under head tag.
STEP 1 :
Add meta tags under head tag
<html>
<head>
<meta property="og:url" content="http://www.test.com/" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://www.test.com/img/fb-logo.png" />
<meta property="og:title" content="Prepaid Phone Cards, low rates for International calls with Lucky Prepay" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Cheap prepaid Phone Cards. Low rates for international calls anywhere in the world." />
NEXT STEP :
Click on below link
https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug
Add your URL in text box (e.g http://www.test.com/) where you mentioned the tags. Click on DEBUG button.
Its done.
You can verify here https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.test.com/
In above url, u = your website link
ENJOY !!!!
try this: http://www.ehow.com/how_4938148_thumbnail-show-up-facebook-share.html
Is the site's HTML valid? Run it through w3c validation service.
Actually, if you've already tried linking that page on Facebook BEFORE adding the "image_src" link, Facebook will keep using the old cached copy and not even see your changes. Try modifying the URL by removing or adding the 'www', or duplicate your page to test it.
I've noticed that Facebook does not take thumbnails from websites if they start with https, is that maybe your case?
had the same problem and figured out that my head closing tag was in the wrong place
Old question but recently I seemed to be running into same issue with thumbnail images from my link not showing in status updates on Facebook. I post for many clients and this is relatively new.
FB doesn't seem to like long URLs anymore — if you use a URL shortener such as goo.gl or bitly.com, the thumbnail from your link/post will appear in your FB update.
Try using something like this:
<link rel="image_src" href="http://yoursite.com/graphics/yourimage.jpg" /link>`
Seems to work just fine on Firefox as long as you use a full path to your image.
Trouble is it get vertically offset downward for some reason. Image is 200 x 200 as recommended somewhere I read.
If you used any plugin for seo then Check 1st your seo plugin settings.Then find out Noindex setting if Enable Media for Noindex then disable it.