Posting to Facebook

[Ianardo]

I'd love to be able to post individual stories to my blog to Facebook, however, whatever I do (other than faff around with bitly and tinyURL) works properly.
Links only paste to the front page of the blog - not the individual stories.
The Spreadly plugin does the same.

I just want to promote individual stories, along with a graphic.

Any suggestions?

[yellowled]

Any suggestions?

IFTTT works pretty good for me. Posts any blog post automagically to FB.

YL

[bernd_d]

I just want to promote individual stories, along with a graphic.

Automatic postings (like with IFTTT) are a little bit tricky. If Facebook doesn't find og:image within your header, it uses another picture of your entry, for example an ugly smiley.

Within S9y it currently is not possible to set an automated og:image.

One solution could be to use header-plugin to set a static og:image for your whole weblog (maybe your favicon in better resolution).

Another solution could be to use individuel entry-fields and individually paste an link into this fields. But then there is the problem, that there is no plugin/code, which generates og:image meta-tags for this link.

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

We have the serendipity_event_facebook plugin that enriches the pages with tags. It also adds i.e. an og:image attribute for the first image within an entry. So if your first picture is not a smilie, that graphic is used

Also note that Facebook really doesn't like links with "?" in the URLs, so if possible your blog should use URL Rewriting!

HTH,
Garvin

[bernd_d]

We have the serendipity_event_facebook plugin that enriches the pages with tags. It also adds i.e. an og:image attribute for the first image within an entry. So if your first picture is not a smilie, that graphic is used

If you don't use any images within a posting, smiley is also used. In my case, this happens often.

Currently i try to write an event-plugin, that generates dynamic og-images depending on some content-informations (title, tags, date). Here is an exemple with static content and without plugin-functionality, for the moment it just generates an image.

[Timbalu]

Very nice!
You should make this plugin (name and usage) more general, since this is a nice Idea for other non-facebook usage scenarios too!

[bernd_d]

Very nice!
You should make this plugin (name and usage) more general, since this is a nice Idea for other non-facebook usage scenarios too!

Ideas are welcome.

[Timbalu]

Hm, it may be worth opening another thread for this, when you are ready to go.
Without having thought about it in deep, I could imagine showing these fancy entry images on a blogs startpage, as some sort of "gallery" HTML5 media "flash" Design replacement for entry summaries, which could help to invent some interesting new S9y Templates, in or w/o connection to staticpages. Or use this image for posting to other services too, etc.... Isn't that thinkable?

[bernd_d]

Isn't that thinkable?

Everything is thinkable. There is only a person needed, who can do it.

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Hm, the current event_facebook plugin already inspects $GLOBALS['entry'][0]['body'], so it should find the og:image tag. It might be interesting to debug that plugin if it does not work for you...maybe $GLOBALS['entry'] is not properly defined in your case.

Do you have an example blog entry where you use an image, and no smilies? I'd like to see/check what is used as og:image on that page.

Regards,
Garvin

[bernd_d]

event_facebook

Sorry, but (i think) we don't talk about this plugin. I don't use it.

The problem with missing og:image occures, if i use automated postings to Facebook (like IFTTT or something else). In this case, FB tries to use a lare image of the page (randomized i think, it seems not to be always the first one). But if there are none, it takes one of the smaller images (smilies) as you can see within Object Debugger.

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

event_facebook

Sorry, but (i think) we don't talk about this plugin. I don't use it.

Ah, ok. Why not? It would fix your issue.

Regards,
Garvin

[bernd_d]

event_facebook

Sorry, but (i think) we don't talk about this plugin. I don't use it.

Ah, ok. Why not? It would fix your issue.

No, it doesn't. (As far as i can test it)
Facebook still uses an random smilie-image, because there is no larger/first one within entry.

[garvinhicking]

No, it doesn't. (As far as i can test it)
Facebook still uses an random smilie-image, because there is no larger/first one within entry.

If you're up for some testing, let me know. You'd need to install the plugin, post an entry with a bigger picture and then we'd investigate to what the og:image gets set and optimize that, if it doesn't work as of now.

[Timbalu]

Look what I found this morning:

Code: Select all

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html
lang='de'
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
xmlns:og="http://ogp.me/ns#"
xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml">
<head>
....

Following these links you'll find yourself here:
http://ogp.me/ and http://graph.facebook.com/schema/og/#_=_

I asked myself (without further personal need and interest) if that might help here?!