Hi Elizabeth!

I do often get tickets from customers, and looking through your ticket history, I do have a few of yours (I just went through and updated several; sorry for the spam! :).

But, I don't see anything about Facebook. If you could email me the ticket number (cmasters@townnews.com) I can look into it in more detail.

Again, we can't do much about how Facebook chooses to deal with the og_image, or if they have bugs or improvements to be made, but we can definitely do things to improve the meta data that the BLOX system sends to Facebook.

When these things happen, you can view source and look at the og_image meta tag that's on the page. That's the image that TownNews.com "sends" to Facebook to use.

If there is a problem with the og_image, we can fix that (i.e. too small, wrong size, wrong image, etc.). Please send it to us.

f the og_image tag is correct but Facebook isn't using it - hopefully the debugger will fix that, or at least will tell you why it doesn't like the og_image. If there is an error or some other complaint there, please also send that to us as well. There may be something like the app id or some other issue that we can fix.

I've added this to our product backlog.

Also, does it have to be an article asset? You can create HTML assets with a preview image, and the preview doesn't show on the "details" page.

You'd have to make sure your blocks are set up to show HTML assets.

I've had two other request for this, so it seems popular. It is in our backlog already so I'll see if I can bump it.

Closest thing you can do now is to put the photo inline at the bottom. So it will still be there, but just as an afterthought at the bottom.

Hi Sarah!

http://community.townnews.com/topics/433-facebook-refuses-to-pull-child-images/

In addition, see my best practices in that link above. If you as an editor (or anyone in the newsroom) triggers a Facebook share when the page is not ready, Facebook will give an error which leads to the issue above.

We have several initiatives to workaround the scraping mechanism changes from Facebook. But for now, you can go to:

Hi guys! I just wanted to give you a quick update on this... We've identified some things that we think will improve this process. We haven’t changed anything with our Facebook sharing in a few years, but there appears to have been some updates with Facebook that are causing issues. It is possible Facebook may address these things on their side, but until then, we have some ideas and improvements that we think will help:

Firstly, it appears that even though we pass an og_image, Facebook is refusing to accept anything smaller than 200px by 200px. Again, we've been doing the same thing for years, but we think FB has changed something about this.

For now, we're going to NOT pass through the image if it is less than 200x200 px. We'll fall back to the og_image default (defined in site settings or URL properties). This will be in our next update for both Zen and Flex (in a week or so).

In the future, we're going to look at using our image proxy technology to create a special image for Facebook that takes the small child image and sizes it up. It will only be used for the Facebook og_image, however. We are looking into how this will need to happen, and several aspects of our system will need to be updated to support this, so it is likely a few months away.

In addition, we have found some new information about Facebook pre-catching. Basically, Facebook says that the first time someone shares the page, they may not see the image because of asynchronous loading (this may happen more frequently to newsrooms where they are often posting the content themselves and looking right away to make sure it worked). Facebook now provides some new image tags that will allow us to send this information to Facebook and it will more likely work the first time. This will also be added to both Zen and Flex in a few weeks.

And lastly, while troubleshooting all of this, I’ve found a few best practices to share with you:

1. Ensure you’ve got an appropriate backup og_image (documentation for Zen, Flex). This is usually the site logo, but you can create a section-specific one per section because they can be applied at the URL level on both Zen and Flex platforms. Make sure this image is larger than 200px in both height and width.

2. Instruct the newsroom to upload images that are larger than 200px in both height and width. Some of the steps we are taking (above) will reduce the need for this eventually of course, but even if BLOX is automatically sizing up images, it may be better for the newsroom to do this themselves. This will ensure there is optimum image quality (or if you don’t want to size it up you can letterbox it instead). We know that this isn’t possible for all newsrooms, so we’re working to automate this as best we can (as explained above).

3. Do not share from a non-live or preview page. We are going to take steps to further prevent this from happening, but if Facebook attempts to try to scrape your page before it is ready, you’ll get an error. This error will appear as an item with very minimal information on Facebook (no photo, title or description). To fix this error, you can use the Facebook debugger to re-scrape the page.

4. The Facebook debugger is a great tool for your newsrooms to know, in case there are errors or fixes that need to be made on the Facebook shares. For example, when an image or headline needs to be fixed after it has been shared (maybe a typo in the headline), even if you fix it in BLOX it will not update on Facebook until the page is re-scraped.

I hope this helps! Also, please let me know if you have any other best practices or ideas on our to improve this process. Thanks! =)