Social Post Sharing Out of Whack
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Hi. Every time a scheduled post publishes, it appears in full form on Facebook & Twitter, but earlier posts just featured a title and a link to the post. What is going on? It isn’t a new update, because I see other WordPress users tweets are just fine. Please help. Thanks.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there! We did recently update the way Publicize works with Facebook and Twitter.
Can you link me to your posts and the posts you’re comparing them to?
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Do you mind if I listen in on this one? Because as of today the featured images of my published posts are not shown on Facebook, instead it shows a random image.
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@mostlymecertainothers – Sure! Can you link me to one of these Facebook posts? You can get a direct link to a Facebook post by clicking on the timestamp of the post.
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@shawnajroberts On FB, I edited the posts so that they looked normal- so no links, sorry. But here are the links for Twitter and my website. It was only for the two most recent posts, so here they are.
These two are weird: https://twitter.com/shrinknews/status/603523819618205697
https://twitter.com/shrinknews/status/602067813503664129
and this tweet is fine:
https://twitter.com/shrinknews/status/600262772467761153Here are the three posts they refer to (respectively):
http://herecomestheshrink.com/2015/05/27/want-to-save-get-a-job/
http://herecomestheshrink.com/2015/05/23/memorialday/
http://herecomestheshrink.com/2015/05/18/secretmix/Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks so much.
@mostlymecertainothers That happened to me a while back- my published posts showed the flag of Spain on FB for some reason. Waited it out, and now it is back to normal.
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Thanks @jaredgoodman!
It looks like this is happening because of our move to sharing the full URL instead of the shortened wp.me URL. What you see on the older tweet is what’s called a Twitter Card. Twitter ‘whitelists’ site URLs for Twitter cards on a site-by-site basis instead of just applying them to every URL shared.
It’s super easy to ‘apply’ though! You do it by submitting your URL here:
https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator
You will need to validate and apply for each different type of card Twitter offers. There are six different cards:
- Summary Card: Title, description, thumbnail, and Twitter account attribution.
- Summary Card with Large Image: Similar to a Summary Card, but with a prominently featured image.
- Photo Card: A Card with a photo only.
- Gallery Card: A Card highlighting a collection of four photos.
- App Card: A Card to detail a mobile app with direct download.
- Player Card: A Card to provide video/audio/media.
- Product Card: A Card optimized for product information.
All of our posts are already set up to use the correct type of card, so you don’t need to worry about any of the code that they tell you about.
Here’s some more info about Twitter Cards:
https://dev.twitter.com/cards/getting-started
Let me know if you have any more questions! :)
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OK- couple more questions. :)
I tried putting in my url (www.herecomestheshrink.com) and it said, “Unable to render Card preview.” So I tried the link to a specific post, and that worked, but how will that help me? It can’t find the link to future posts, obviously, because they aren’t out there yet, and published posts have already been shared. I don’t seem to understand.
Thanks so much for your patience! -
It happened again this morning and it really annoys me. What’s the point of scheduling my posts if I have to put them through the Facebook debugger after noticing it shows the wrong featured image again?
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Also, I don’t quite understand why in general WP is pointing a finger towards Facebook for this problem (as I have seen I am not the only one who is complaining about this) while you say it has something to do with an update on WP’s end with the Publicize function? Sounds to me like this is in actual fact a WP issue.
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I am sorry to keep banging on about this but I have scrolled back some on my Facebook page (this is a business page btw, not a personal one) and I see from May 22nd on the ‘card’ started to look different also. Before it just gave the correct image and the wp link, from that date on it started showing a complete excerpt from the post and a direct link. I missed that before. This must be something that changed on WP’s end. I certainly didn’t change anything.
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@shawnajroberts – let me see if I understand then.
Every site owner on WPcom now needs to vet 7 different types of twitter card directly on twitter in order to use these cards for their site posts Publicized to twitter?
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@jaredgoodman – I apologize. It looks like Twitter does not require whitelisting for anything other than Player cards anymore. My saved response about Twitter Cards is out of date at this point.
@justjennifer – This was my mistake in this thread. Although, this is what used to have to happen. We were working through all of the sites on WordPress.com, but if someone wanted Cards and we hadn’t already put their site through for whitelisting via our code, they would have to do that. Total pain, right? I’m very glad they’ve removed that series of steps, although I wish I’d noticed before responding last night! :/
It looks like our new way of publicizing isn’t adding the links in a way that Twitter is reading to add the Cards. I’ll chat with our developers about this.
@mostlymecertainothers – I don’t think anyone here has “pointed the finger towards Facebook” in this issue. I’m closing your duplicate thread here:
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/featured-imagescorrect-card-not-showing-on-facebook
Because I’m already helping you in this thread.
I do need a link to an actual Facebook post so that I can see what is happening though. Can you please grab me a link to one of these Facebook posts that isn’t displaying the correct image?
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Alright, so what do I do at this point? I can live with the way that Twitter shows my new posts, but it doesn’t show my featured image, only a random one. And FB shows a full excerpt. How do I correct these problems?
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How do I get such a link? Do you mean go to my Facebook of to my blog? I removed the faulty posts from today and yesterday but there are a few older ones showing the wrong featured image AND the wrong card. Can you explain to me what link you would like?
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With refards to ‘pointing fingers”: I had a chat with someone from support and he did actually say this was solely a Facebook issue and that nothing could be done. Also read that on several other topics.
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Is this perhaps the sort of link you want to see:
This blogpost should show an image of Jewel and just the link but instead it shows a random image from my Instagram feed and a large part of text.
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@shawnajroberts-Thanks for the clarification. In which case the Support doc on Publicize will need an update. :)
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Hey all! I apologize. I had to go offline for a few days. I’m working on testing and reporting this to our developers now.
@jaredgoodman – I took a look at the images from the posts you linked above.
This is showing your Featured Image for that post.
Your Featured Image for this post is 587 × 166 pixels. Generally social media sites like an image that’s at least 300 x 300, or larger. When the Featured Image isn’t large enough, it grabs a different image from the post.
Do you have other Tweets that grabbed non-Featured Images that you want me to look at?
As for the excerpt, are you saying you want the excerpt added to your tweet, or removed from your Facebook share? Either way, you can override the default by adding your own custom content to your sharing settings for the post before publishing.
@mostlymecertainothers – That’s exactly the link I needed. Thanks! I do see the image discrepancy here. Do you by any change know where the image of the sand and rocks came from? Was it in your Instagram widget? Or is it the Featured Image of another one of your posts? I’m asking because I don’t currently see it on that page anywhere and it will help me understand what’s happening here if I know where Facebook found the image. :)
With refards to ‘pointing fingers”: I had a chat with someone from support and he did actually say this was solely a Facebook issue and that nothing could be done. Also read that on several other topics.
Thanks for clarifying. :) I was just surprised to read your comment since I hadn’t mentioned anything about Facebook. I’ll look up your chat transcript and read through it.
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