"Top Posts and Pages" widget suddenly not working

  • Unknown's avatar
    dublinlitterblog · Member ·

    Hi,

    This widget has done its job perfectly on my site for years.
    However, over the last week or 2, it has started displaying the same thumbnail image for all the Top Posts it is displaying. A random, incorrect thumbnail.

    I made no changes or edits in any way to the setup.

    Can someone advise ?

    thanks & regards

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    timethief · Member ·

    I see the widget and it’s updating properly.

    Due to roadworks the poor dumpers now have to cross the St to dump.Aw -> Ballybough Rd, D3. Oct 14 2015

    Try clearing your browser cache https://en.support.wordpress.com/browser-issues/#clearing-your-browser-cache please and if you are running an outdated version upgrade here http://browsehappy.com

  • Unknown's avatar
    dublinlitterblog · Member ·

    Hi Timethief

    Thanks for your reply. Not sure whether you are a WP Support person or a fellow blogger, but either way thanks for checking.

    However the widget is still not working for me, even after clearing cache as you suggest. It’s still displaying the same picture for all posts, in the sidebar.

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    Hi @dublinlitterblog, what browser are you using? If you switch that, do the correct icons appear? I’m seeing the correct images here.

  • Unknown's avatar
    timethief · Member ·

    dublinlitterblog please provide this info to supernovia:
    (a) Exactly what kind of device you are using to connect to the internet and to WordPress.com.
    (b) Exactly which browser (and version of it) you’re using by checking here if necessary http://supportdetails.com/

  • Unknown's avatar
    dublinlitterblog · Member ·

    Hi,

    I have tried on 3 browsers on a Mac
    – Safari Version 8.0.8 (10600.8.9)
    – Chrome 45.0.2454.101
    – Firefox 41.01

    and I have tried on 2 mobile browsers on an iphone
    – Opera 11.0.0.96155
    – Chrome 45.0.2454

    All of them displayed the problem.

    My site also has a twitter feed & automatically emits a tweet for each post. All these recent tweets are also displaying the same incorrect image.

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    Today I see some duplicate images, and I noticed the affected posts do not have featured images specified. Please use these steps to add a featured image to each post, then let me know when that’s done.

    Featured Images

  • Unknown's avatar
    dublinlitterblog · Member ·

    Hi Supernovia,

    thanks for your suggestion. I added featured images to a couple of posts, but it made no difference.

    My posts have never contained featured images. They all contain a gallery of images – and usually the gallery contains just one image.

    Something must have changed on the WP side within the last few weeks, as I have not changed anything on my side.

    Note that the site’s twitter feed also suffers from the same problem. The tweets sent out by the WordPress plugin contain a random, incorrect image.
    https://twitter.com/dublinlitter

    Maybe that info provides some clue as to what is going wrong ?

    thanks & regards

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    This code hasn’t been changed recently. When you don’t specify a featured image, it has to fall back on something, and that something can be a bit random.

    Did you add featured images to the top posts? I added them to a few and that seemed to help.

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    Also, re: your Twitter Timeline, we don’t actually control the images there. But it should be showing your twitter icon if you tweeted, or the twitter icon of anyone you retweet (using the retweet button).

  • Unknown's avatar
    dublinlitterblog · Member ·

    Re the tweets. These are tweets emitted by the WP plugin so you guys do control the tweets.

    I don’t mean the user icons; I mean the embedded images from the posts. So for instance these 3 tweets
    https://twitter.com/DublinLitter/status/654026974185189377
    https://twitter.com/DublinLitter/status/654021062779211776
    https://twitter.com/DublinLitter/status/654017444692946945

    are all displaying the same, incorrect random image from the WP site, from my ‘uploaded media’ section.

    Whereas these 3 tweets from a month ago are showing the correct image, namely the image embedded within the corresponding blogpost.
    https://twitter.com/DublinLitter/status/648592130475081728
    https://twitter.com/DublinLitter/status/647521801203879936
    https://twitter.com/DublinLitter/status/647138314244390912

    I hope this clarifies things. Every tweet and every image within those tweets is generated by the WordPress.com twitter plugin. Which has worked perfectly well for a number of years now, up until about a month ago, when things started going wrong. thanks.

  • Unknown's avatar
    dublinlitterblog · Member ·

    Re the featured image aspect. What I did was to set the featured image on this post
    http://dublinlitterblog.com/2015/10/14/due-to-roadworks-the-poor-dumpers-now-have-to-cross-the-st-to-dump-aw-ballybough-rd-d3-oct-14-2015/

    to be the same as its original embedded Gallery image.
    And then, when I clicked on ‘view Post’, it seems like that newly set featured image was now the random one getting chosen for all the other posts.

    I would attach screenshots showing this but there doesn’t seem to be a way to attach images to a Support thread. (if there is, please let me know).

    There are 2800 posts on the site so its not feasible for me to go and manually retrofit a featured image to all of them.

    Surely something has changed on the WP side as if nothing else you have introduced the new system for Posts?

    thanks for your help

  • Unknown's avatar
    dublinlitterblog · Member ·

    Ps. In case it is relevant, I create posts using the wordpress.com REST api, not by hand in the browser. All posts contain a gallery with one or more images. The images go up as MIME attachments to the REST http POST.

    FYI I had a previous support case about a year or 2 ago, where your wordpress.com support person was able to identify what had changed on the WP side with the REST api and could tell me what I needed to do.
    Here is the thread in case it is relevant again
    https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/twitter-cards-have-stopped-working-for-my-wordpresscom-site?replies=18#post-1536960

    thanks.

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    Would you be willing to test whether the correct image shows if you craft it in a browser instead?

    Also, I can only troubleshoot from the timeline, but I clicked “Show Photo” on several tweets and compared it against the photo I found with that same tweet directly on twitter. They seem to match.

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    Also, while you can’t attach to a support thread, I would recommend using Cloudup.com — you can easily add the images there into a single URL.

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    Okay. I think I understand the Twitter Timeline thing now. I thought you were referring to the widget, but you are referring to the actual publicized posts going out — as those are indeed showing the same photo on several.

    It seems like this is a fairly recent problem, too, since photos before October 9 seem alright. And a few other photos seem okay, too. Any idea what makes those different?

    Also, you can use the rest API to set a featured image, and that would help a bunch in controlling what image displays. Here’s how if you’re interested:
    https://developer.wordpress.com/docs/api/1.1/post/sites/%24site/posts/new/

  • Unknown's avatar
    dublinlitterblog · Member ·

    Hi Supernovia

    >>It seems like this is a fairly recent problem, too, since photos before October 9 seem alright. And a few other photos seem okay, too. Any idea what makes those different?

    Actually all tweets emitted by WP look bad to me, from Oct 9 on.

    Note that there are some regular retweets in there which don’t involve WP, and they are OK, but of course they’re not relevant to this problem.

    The very latest WP tweet is good, but as you can see its source blogpost is from May 2014. Not sure why that old post is emitting a tweet again – maybe you were doing some testing on your side ?

    I can look into changing my usage of the REST API. Could you ask the relevant developers whether the API has changed ?

    But even if I am able to successfully change the REST calls to specify a featured image, what about all the 2800 older posts ? “Top Posts and Pages” will keep choosing a selection of those older posts, and as mentioned I can’t retrofit a featured image to all of them.

    Can you ask the relevant developers what Top Posts and Pages is going to do when choosing from a bunch of Gallery image posts that have no featured image set?

    >>Would you be willing to test whether the correct image shows if you craft it in a browser instead?

    I would be willing, for testing, but it’s sort of irrelevant as I need the REST api to work.

    Reason for that is, the content (image,address,date) is also POSTed to another service, a municipal cleanup service.
    So crafting WP posts in the browser isn’t going to work.

    thanks & regards

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    Thanks. I’ll keep digging with what I’ve got and will let you know what we find out.

  • Unknown's avatar
    dublinlitterblog · Member ·

    Hi Supernovia,

    have you got any update from your side ?

    FYI I tried to upload posts with a featured image via the REST API. This didn’t work out, as it seems that the featured image needs to be a previously uploaded image, not the attachment image that’s getting posted up in the REST request.

    I was able to verify that
    1) The tweets emitted from a post with a featured image do contain that featured image, not a random image from the media library
    2) The Top Posts and Pages plugin is still broken though – still displaying random, incorrect thumbnail images whenever I hit Refresh on the site.

    thanks

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    Hi @dublinlitterblog, they’ve found the issue, so it’s just a matter of finding the best fix. I’ll update you as soon as I hear more.

    And thanks, I’ve passed along that feedback re: the featured image as well. That’s helpful.

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