caching issue?
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Hi all!
OK, so it’s been at least 24 hours since I updated my Upcoming Events page on my website. I have an Upcoming Event on August 21. That event was previously Sold Out, but then over 24 hours ago I updated my Upcoming Events page to show that 2 seats indeed remain available.
I then decided to test out the Sharing function for that particular page, by sharing it in my own Twitter feed. (This was my first time trying to Share one of my own pages…)
Can you please take a look at the Tweet pinned to the top of my Twitter page? Directly under the Tweet’s image, you’ll see the language is for some reason indicating that my August 21 event is Sold Out, even though once you click on that link and come back to my WP Upcoming Events page, you’ll see it says no such thing. It PREVIOUSLY did say the event was Sold Out, but I changed it from ‘Sold Out’ to ‘Two seats still available’ a full 24 hours or more before I just Shared the page to my own Twitter feed.
Is there some type of disconnect…. a cashing issue?….and how can I ensure that anytime any of my WP Pages are being Shared, that indeed the most current version of the Page is being Shared?
Thank you!!
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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I just tweeted that page after your change (and deleted the tweet) and my tweet also showed the dinner as being Sold Out. So I do agree there is caching going on somewhere, but I don’t know where.
I’ve tagged your thread for Staff input and assistance.
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Hi there,
Like with Facebook, link previews on Twitter is cached by them the first time you share a link, so they don’t need to fetch the preview again every time the link is shared. This saves them a lot of bandwidth, but it also means if the content of the link changes, the preview on Twitter’s end doesn’t update because they don’t check the link again for any changes.
You should be able to clear Twitter’s cache by running the link through the Twitter Card Validator:
https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator
I’ve run your Upcoming Events page through that, and it’s now showing the updated preview when I tweet that link, so it should do the same for any new tweets you make with that link.
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ok thank you…I think I get what you’re saying in general…
I’m not sure I’d be able to understand how to do the whole ‘Validator’ thing or be able to follow any steps it might involve, but at least it sounds like for the meantime, you did it FOR me, for my Upcoming Events page, and on Twitter. Thanks for that!!
So is that to say then that, I need to run each of my other Pages through this same Twitter Card Validator, in order to ensure that going forward, any Shares to Twitter will always look for the most recent versions of my pages to show in Tweets? And is that to say that there is also a Facebook Card Validator, through which I also need to run my FB home page, FB Events page, FB photos page, etc?
There’s no one way to simply ensure that any/all Shares are looking for most current page content?
Thanks.
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So is that to say then that, I need to run each of my other Pages through this same Twitter Card Validator, in order to ensure that going forward, any Shares to Twitter will always look for the most recent versions of my pages to show in Tweets?
Not necessarily. This is more the place where you go to fix it if you see that the preview is not correct. If you’ve never shared a particular page on Twitter, it also won’t be an issue, as Twitter won’t have any info cached for that link.
To use the validator, just visit that page, paste in the post or page’s URL, and click the button.
For Facebook, their tool to do this can be found here:
https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/
There’s no one way to simply ensure that any/all Shares are looking for most current page content?
We don’t control the previews that other services show, so no. If those services are caching your data, the only way to refresh the data is to use those services’ tools to do so.
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…to follow-up on this, as mentioned above, someone here was nice enough to run my Upcoming Events page url through the Twitter card validator, and said that once they’d done so and then tried to Share my page on Twitter, the current page info was indeed finally displaying.
What’s disheartening however is that when I myself tried to Share that same page to Twitter, it was once again showing old info. I ran the url through the Twitter validator again, and then it was fine. But all that’s because I now know I apparently need to run a TEST, before I actually Share any of my pages on Twitter or FB. But visitors to my page are not going to do that…they will simply Share my page, and the content may once again be outdated info. It seems there’s just no way to fix this?….maybe I’ll just need to periodically run my individual pages through the validators every so often??
I then tried doing the same with the FB validator for my first time. I assume I was supposed to select the Batch Invalidator tab? (I only saw INvalidator…not Validator…) I then chose the action to Debug, since that seemed the only option to select. It then said something about Images Too Big and then something about a url they ‘scraped’ (seemed to display old data) and another section with ‘based on raw tags, we constructed the following open graph properties (seemed to show the correct and current data). Not exactly sure how to interpret all that but suffice to say that when I then do Share that page on my FB page, it IS now showing correct and current text from the top of the page, but the photo associated with it is a very random photo from elsewhere on the page.
If I’m going to have Twitter and FB Share buttons on my WP pages, I really need to know they will be posting current and correct info/images on Twitter and FB as otherwise it will just look like a mess and it makes me look like my webpage is not being properly maintained… ;-)
Thanks for any further help!
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But visitors to my page are not going to do that…they will simply Share my page, and the content may once again be outdated info.
Running your link through the validator clears the Twitter cache for that link, not for the person validating it, so anyone who shares your link after you’ve done that should see the updated info. However, exactly how this works is up to Twitter. The validator is their tool, not ours, and we also can’t control how the preview appears from our side, as I explained before. I suggest you maybe reach out to Twitter support as well on this.
I then tried doing the same with the FB validator for my first time. I assume I was supposed to select the Batch Invalidator tab?
The Batch Validator in Facebook is if you want to run several links at a time. For only one link, go to the link I gave above, enter your URL and press Debug. Then click Fetch New Scrape Information once the debugger loads. That will force Facebook to fetch new info from the post/page.
However, once again what info they choose to display is up to them. We tell them to use the featured image, or otherwise another image from the post, but in the end it’s Facebook’s algorithms that make the decision. There is no way to control it from our side.
See: https://en.support.wordpress.com/facebook-image-thumbnail/
If I’m going to have Twitter and FB Share buttons on my WP pages, I really need to know they will be posting current and correct info/images on Twitter and FB as otherwise it will just look like a mess and it makes me look like my webpage is not being properly maintained
I completely understand this. Unfortunately there is no way to control this, unless Facebook and Twitter completely changes the way they fetch previews from sites.
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