Open Graph Meta Tags for Facebook and Twitter and all social media sites

[glennrocksvb]

I'm done and ready to test it. tearjerkers, please PM me the Order ID or your PayPal email so I can locate your order in my system and re-open it and send you an email containing the download link.

Here's the detailed changes I did which I will also add in the first post once I release it.

v1.5

• Added support to use the Group channel icon when a Group channel page is shared or when a post in a Group which has no image attachment is shared.
• Added support to use the Blog channel icon when a Blog channel page is shared or when a post in a Group which has no image attachment is shared.
• To support Facebook requirement of minimum image dimensions of 200x200, the mod checks the image dimensions and if less than 200x200, it skips the image and then checks the next available image. For example, let's say a Group post has 2 image attachments, the first attachment has 190x190 dimensions and the second attachment is 300x300. The mod will skip the first attachment and picks up the second one. If both attachments are less than 200x200, the mod will try to use the Group channel icon. But if the icon is also smaller than 200x200, then the mod will choose the last available image which is the configured default image. The mod doesn't check the size of this default image anymore since this is the last fallback image. So make sure the default image is larger than 200x200. This behavior applies to forum, blog, group and article posts but using the channel icon only applies to Blog and Group posts. For image attachments, vB generates 3 sizes: thumbnail, medium and large. The mod always use the large size.
• Changed the Open Groph Meta tags to be only generated on the page when there is no user session (meaning user is not logged in). When you share a link to Facebook and other social media sites, their scraper/crawler is not logged in to your forum. So it makes more sense to only generate the Open Graph Meta tags for logged out users. This means that there's a slight performance improvement for logged-in users since the mod no longer renders those meta tags on load of every page.

Note that Facebook and other social media sites cache the shared link on their servers. So if a link has been shared before this mod update, you'll have to clear the cache on their servers. For Facebook, they provide a tool to do that.

https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/

Enter a link and click Debug button to see the link preview with thumbnail and the Open Graph meta tags that Facebook sees. You will need to click Scrape Again button if it shows the link has been scraped long time ago to fetch the latest data.

[pablow]

is this still working? sorry for asking this here, but is there a cheaper way to do this with my forum? 25usd is a little too much for me at this moment. thanks!

[glennrocksvb]

pablow, yes this mod is still working. But the latest version 1.5 has not been released yet as the member who requested it has not come back to me yet.

You can use the default vB5/6 implementation at AdminCP > Settings > Options > Facebook Options > Show Open Graph Meta Tags as an alternative if you can't afford this mod.

[tearjerkers]

I'm sorry its been so long since I've responded to this - life detoured me for a while. I just noticed that the mod seems to be broken on my site after trying installing the test version. I swear it was working for a while, but I just tried to post something today and it doesn't post any image at all - not even the default image.



Here's the page I was trying to share to facebook: https://forum.tearjerkers.net/founde...-ready-to-ship

I was expecting (wanting) the image of the t-shirts in the facebook post, but nothing happens like it did before.

[glennrocksvb]

If you view the HTML source of that page, you will see these Open Graph tags generated by the mod:

<meta property="og:image" content="https://forum.tearjerkers.net/filedata/fetch?id=31131" />
<meta property="og:image:width" content="1024" />
<meta property="og:image:height" content="385" />

To debug what Facebook sees, use their debugging tool which I also mentioned in the mod instructions in the readme file.

https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/

When I debugged the post using this tool, it says that the post returns HTTP 403 status which means Facebook server is not authorized to access that page. It says you may be blocking Facebook in robots.txt


As an aside, you should be able to also use that tool to clear the cache on Facebook side. Facebook caches the shared URLs and if a post content changes after it has been shared on Facebook, you must clear the cache on Facebook so that they can fetch the latest changes

[tearjerkers]

Very strange, since I dont ever remember configuring the robots file. I believe its been corrected.

So here's another link, which is really the reason I asked about updating the mod in the first place: https://forum.tearjerkers.net/chapte...e-star-chapter

That is one of our Groups (chapter). So the topic content is members-only, but the group image is public. So for that link (or any topic/post posted inside that group) I would expect to see the chapter logo, but it instead returns the default logo.

And for further testing, here is a link to a members-only topic inside that group: https://forum.tearjerkers.net/chapte...i-m-still-here

[glennrocksvb]

tearjerkers, please PM me the Order ID or your PayPal email address so I can locate your order in my system and re-open it and send you an email containing the download link of the upcoming version that you can test.

[tearjerkers]

Message sent.

[glennrocksvb]

I have re-opened your order. You should receive an email shortly.

[glennrocksvb]

tearjerkers, please note that Facebook caches previously shared URLs. So if you've already shared a Group channel page or Group topic page on Facebook before, you need to clear the cache on Facebook end to see the latest changes generated by the mod. You can do that using this Facebook Share Debugger tool

https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/

Enter the URL in the Sharing Debugger tab and click Debug button. You should see date and time when the URL was last scraped by Facebook. Click Scrape Again button to let Facebook fetch the latest changes. You should see the updated image in the Link Preview section. From there, whenever that URL is shared on Facebook, it will fetch that cached open graph information.