Images for Publicize and Follow
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When content is posted with a featured image that image does not get used for Publicize to Facebook or to the the email sent to the site followers. The post below was published today. Email followers got a text only email. Facebook followers saw a big WordPress logo instead of the featured image – or any image. Twitter used the feature image as expected. The site is using the Goran theme.
According to the publicize documentation it should have picked some image. Here is the order of preference:
1. Featured image
2. The first image of a Slideshow within the post
3. The first image of a Gallery within the post
4. An image attached to the post and inserted
5. Any other image in the post (not attached but perhaps linked)Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/eliotneighborhood…
clintThe blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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I setup Publicize for my test blog on a test Facebook account in order to test this. I connected Facebook to my test blog in the sharing settings and then scheduled a post containing some text and a featured image. My post published normally using the featured image in Facebook. Because of this, I don’t think the issue is widespread and will need more information from your side as I am unable to reproduce the issue in testing on my side.
Has this happened just one time or is it something that happens consistently over time?
Was the post scheduled or published by hand by clicking the Publish button while editing from WordPress.com directly?
Have you ever tried disconnecting and reconnecting Facebook in your blog’s sharing settings as a troubleshooting step?
https://en.support.wordpress.com/publicize/#reconnecting-services -
Thanks for the reply and for trying to duplicate!
1) This happens regularly and has for at least 6 months. Other similar occurrences: 7/2, 6/30, 6/22. Because of the issue, usually I will try to have an image somewhere else in the post when I use Featured Image – even if I don’t really want another image. That other (non Featured Image) is what shows in Facebook. Today I did not have another image, I had a gallery.
2) The post was scheduled.
3) I have disconnected and reconnected. About 3 – 4 times a year the connection breaks and I have to reconnect it. -
This happens regularly and has for at least 6 months,
And, to clarify, does it happen for scheduled posts every single time or does it seem to be random, happening sometimes but not others?
Thanks for the confirmation about scheduled and the disconnect/reconnect, those things are helpful to note.
Is there any chance you could publish a few of your next posts without them being scheduled (i.e. maybe the next three?) and then check to see if the problem where Facebook does not pick up the featured image happens each time even if the post is not scheduled. If you don’t want to try the test, that’s cool. There are a few people testing from our end as well, but so far not everyone can reproduce the problem so far in testing so it has been hard to pin down the exact cause—because of that, getting help testing from people experiencing the problem is extremely helpful if you are able to take the time to do it.
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Almost all of the posts to the site are scheduled. I only use featured image on 1 out of 5 or so posts to make certain posts stand out and to add a bit of variety to the blog listing. I think it is safe to say it happens for every scheduled post that has a featured image but I don’t know for a non-scheduled post. I could try to publish a featured image post not scheduled to see what happens.
I have gone back and compared the posts with featured images to the posts on Facebook for 2015. There does not appear to be any older than May 31 that have the problem. However I am pretty sure when they publicized to Facebook originally either an alternate image or the WordPress logo was used.
I do believe this has been happening for a long time (though evidence suggests otherwise) and normally I just work around it by making sure the post has at least one other image beside the featured image. OR if I have only one image I don’t use Featured Image. Of course I would like to not have to do that.
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Following up to let you know that an update was just made that may help this case. Please keep an eye out to see if the problem still happens for you after your next post is published and shared to Facebook.
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@designsimply- There have been many forum posts that have described a similar problem of blank or no image being shown when publicizing/sharing to Linked In or Facebook over several months. Please have a look at the tags on this post, particularly Facebook Image and Facebook Image Thumbnail. TIA
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Thanks for the updates. I have scheduled a post for tomorrow morning with a Featured Image that will publicize to Facebook. I hope it works!
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@clundmark, I noticed the post http://eliotneighborhood.org/2015/07/25/williams-ave-art showed up today so I checked https://www.facebook.com/eliotneighborhood and it looks like the featured image was picked up normally by Facebook this time. https://cloudup.com/cvDDOG3oenx
@justjennifer, there has been some recent work done on Publicize but I am not familiar with all of the changes yet. Also, from what I understand it’s a bit hard to debug which makes sense because it involves a number of different social media networks working reliably together for everything to go right and each network can change suddenly or experience a glitch at any time.
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@designsimply Would it be appropriate then to tag each such thread for Staff to debug? FWIW facebook seems to be the primary social network involved.
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I confirmed the Facebook post has the featured image. Looks good! Thanks for the help. I will keep an eye on it over the next month and post if there is a problem.
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I confirmed the Facebook post has the featured image. Looks good! Thanks for the help. I will keep an eye on it over the next month and post if there is a problem.
Oops. Logged in with different account. Thanks.
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@designsimply, not sure why I didn’t check on Saturday. The Facebook post looks fine, with the featured image part of the Facebook post. However the follow blog email did not have the featured image – just text.
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