Specifically what is not working and specifically what gallery are you trying to post to facebook from?
When I copy a link to a Smugmug gallery and paste it on Facebook I get no thumbnail if the smugmug gallery is right click protected. This happens if I copy the link from the address bar or if I use the Share on Facebook button on my toolbar. I've always had my Smugmug galleries right click protected and was, until recently, able to paste a smugmug gallery link and have the thumbnail show up from right click protected galleries. Now to get a thumbnail to show up on Facebook I first have to turn of right click protection, paste the gallery link on facebook, then go back to smugmug and turn right click protection back on. Kind of a hassle.
Be Social works fine, but this only pastes links on your facebook profile, sometime I want to paste gallery links to other pages and need to paste on link on facebook.
When I copy a link to a Smugmug gallery and paste it on Facebook I get no thumbnail if the smugmug gallery is right click protected. This happens if I copy the link from the address bar or if I use the Share on Facebook button on my toolbar. I've always had my Smugmug galleries right click protected and was, until recently, able to paste a smugmug gallery link and have the thumbnail show up from right click protected galleries. Now to get a thumbnail to show up on Facebook I first have to turn of right click protection, paste the gallery link on facebook, then go back to smugmug and turn right click protection back on. Kind of a hassle.
Be Social works fine, but this only pastes links on your facebook profile, sometime I want to paste gallery links to other pages and need to paste on link on facebook.
By copying and pasting a gallery link for a gallery with right-click protection turned off, SmugMug (edit: should be Facebook) gives you a choice of 17 thumbnails (for me, one of the thumbnails is an image in my header; the rest are all from the gallery).
It gave me a choice of the first 16 photos in the gallery (plus my header image). My gallery is sorted on file name, so I tried resorting by file name in reverse order but still got the same 16 photos to choose from. Then I remembered someone said something about caching by Facebook, so I picked a new gallery, turned off RCP, sorted the gallery backwards and -- voila -- my choices were now the resorted first 16 photos (plus my header image, which always comes up as the second choice in the thumbnails).
It would seem to me if you wanted a particular image as a thumbnail, do a temporary sort so that the image appears near the beginning of the gallery, copy and paste the link, choose the thumbnail you want, and then resort your gallery back to its original order.
I have same problem with some of my galleries (unlisted + not protected + external ok).
Btw, wouldn't it make sense to use (optionally) the featured image of the gallery becoming the FB thumbnail by using the og:image meta property (details here) ?
Spi,
Thanks for that link. That is a great bit of info. I love this part " One of the reason why you get no thumbnail, or unrelated thumbnail is because facebook’s script is not smart enough. " Sounds like what I have seen.
I will pass this along to our Social Feature programmer.
Even when pasting just my main URL (http://www.pmbimages.com/) I used to always get my self-portrait (found on my "About pmb" page), or any random pic from any gallery and either way was fine before. Now it's nothing at all.
Glad to find this thread.... similar problem for me not being able to link to a gallery on FB fan page and have a thumbnail or list of thumbnails provided.
Confirmed external links are allowed, protected 'no' (I thought at one time it worked with protection turned off). I get no thumbnail
Especially for FB fan pages (or pages as I believe they are called now)... this is my preferred way to share images rather than uploading them straight to FB.
Also, I noticed in thumbnail style gallery it no longer pulls the description into Facebook (which is a win in my book). However, it does still pull in the gallery description with SmugMug style galleries.
I also noticed that the thumbnail choice is limited in SmugMug gallery style but at least includes some of the gallery photos.
You do not need to keep posting about this We will announce changes in our release notes, promise. You'll want to subscribe to our Release Notes blog, so that you don't miss a single update from SmugMug http://blogs.smugmug.com/release-notes/ at the bottom, there's a link for Entries (RSS) - put that in your favorite feed reader.
We're working on some new stuff with Facebook Nicole.
You do know that you can simply click in that area on Facebook and replace it with anything you want, yes? Please do that
I do, but not everyone knows that. I am testing these features so the people that visit my site can easily share on facebook.
The text that shows there really isn't a big deal to me, but if there was a simple code I could use to control it that would be great. But I believe you already told me that doesn't exist, so no worries.
With these Facebook things, please remember that it's not just the fact that we SmugMug site owners might know how to do something or post something correctly on Facebook that's important. I know & believe you're working on this, and that it'll all get figured out eventually. But it really rubs people the wrong way if you're telling them "this is the work-around & it's not that hard." Many of us are less worried that WE can post something on FB correctly, or even figure out how to do it at all... we may be much more worried that friends/guests get stuck on step #1. We gotta stop thinking of FB connections as being made only by the site owner themselves. I've seen this theme in a lot of other Smug-FB threads too... "well, you can just do it this way instead", etc. That just won't wash with the general public.
With these Facebook things, please remember that it's not just the fact that we SmugMug site owners might know how to do something or post something correctly on Facebook that's important. I know & believe you're working on this, and that it'll all get figured out eventually. But it really rubs people the wrong way if you're telling them "this is the work-around & it's not that hard." Many of us are less worried that WE can post something on FB correctly, or even figure out how to do it at all... we may be much more worried that friends/guests get stuck on step #1. We gotta stop thinking of FB connections as being made only by the site owner themselves. I've seen this theme in a lot of other Smug-FB threads too... "well, you can just do it this way instead", etc. That just won't wash with the general public.
Anna Lisa. I was merely pointing out a feature of the Facebook website, that you can edit the description area by clicking on it. WE cannot send anything different there - FB grabs the album description, or in absence of that, the Site Meta.
Anna Lisa. I was merely pointing out a feature of the Facebook website, that you can edit the description area by clicking on it. WE cannot send anything different there - FB grabs the album description, or in absence of that, the Site Meta.
Thank you.
I wasn't just talking about this exact feature-- there have been others. And, well, I thought in the past it sounded like you were eventually going to be able to do something about the description problem? But now it sounds like you're saying that SmugMug can't do anything about the problem in SmugMug-style galleries? So FB is the one doing something different now, which "fixes" the description-posting problem the thumbnail-style galleries had? Ok, well, if that's the case, I hope FB can fix how it grabs the SmugMug-style galleries too.
Anna Lisa. I was merely pointing out a feature of the Facebook website, that you can edit the description area by clicking on it. WE cannot send anything different there - FB grabs the album description, or in absence of that, the Site Meta.
Thank you.
Andy, you're being a bit dramatic here. You could control what FB gets for the description if you wanted to, just like you are now controlling what FB sees so that it gets the right thumbnails. As I recall, there are also FB-specific meta data tags that can be set to to control this.
The real question for Anna Lisa I think is this. Smugmug tried to pick a reasonable default value for the description of the page in the generic metadata and that is the contents of the gallery description (if there is one). Given that the only two pieces of text that are gallery specific in that page are the name of the gallery and the gallery description and the name of the gallery is already in the title of the page, making the gallery description be the "description" of the page seems pretty reasonable. If you have a better suggestion for what they should do as a default, please propose it. What started off this thread was that Nicole had a giant description for that gallery. That was Nicole's choice and, as it turns out, that choice doesn't work that well with FB. Given the way things are, I'd suggest that Nicole make a different choice for what to put in the description that takes into account all the things the description is used for, not just one of the things it's used for.
Meanwhile, if any of you have suggestions for how Smugmug could better handle this issue of giant gallery descriptions, please provide them (and probably file a specific feature request). I've seen a lot of complaining about the way the description shows up in FB, but no practical suggestion for how it could be done better.
The only suggestion I can think of right now is that Smugmug add a separate field to the gallery settings that is the "page description" and that is what goes in the meta data and that is what FB grabs as its description. This would work not only for FB, but also for what text shows in Google search results. Smugmug will probably resist that idea because they seem to always resist adding new configuration options on UI complication grounds. My response has always been that they need a two level UI for gallery settings so there are beginning things and advanced things and beginners don't have to see advanced things until they choose to. This would obviously be an advanced thing.
As a work-around, it's possible to put the FB/Google text into the gallery description and then use JS to change the gallery description to what you want to show for page display. But, that's obviously a hassle and a bit of a maintenance headache. But, it is doable if someone is feeling desperate to solve this.
What about simply adding a new field to the gallery setup page for a "brief description" set to a reasonable size limit so one does not induce the problems? This should be a very easy solution on SM ends of things. Yeah it adds to their storage overhead but hey, it's in the clouds already, right?
I have been wondering if an optional verbose description along side a brief search engine friendly description would work better for a while now, not that I am even using descriptions at all right now. Too lazy I suppose. Anyway, SM could then point these other services to the summary description when needed. Perhaps even allow the user to decide on a gallery by gallery basis which description field to actually use as the page's main description.
I have actually used this method for product records in databases...it gives nice control for different venues or situations. I don't see why it would not be untenable for SM here. Then again, if not many users are using long verbose descriptions then, well it's maybe a different situation. Still I would love to have a field to use which is specifically for good SEO blurb along with being very friendly for places like FB.
What about simply adding a new field to the gallery setup page for a "brief description" set to a reasonable size limit so one does not induce the problems? This should be a very easy solution on SM ends of things. Yeah it adds to their storage overhead but hey, it's in the clouds already, right?
That's what I suggested in my fourth paragraph of previous post.
That's what I suggested in my fourth paragraph of previous post.
hahahaha...d'oh!! sorry I missed that part, but yes then I completely agree that seems to sensible thing for SM to do...i don't feel the current data works for the newly added services so changes need to be made rather than using a sledge hammer to make it work sort-of...
hahahaha...d'oh!! sorry I missed that part, but yes then I completely agree that seems to sensible thing for SM to do...i don't feel the current data works for the newly added services so changes need to be made rather than using a sledge hammer to make it work sort-of...
Yeah, Smugmug needs to remember this lesson. Every time, they try to use an existing display field for some other purpose, it never really works very well.
For a long time in their history, they used the text you put in your bio as the meta description for your site (what Google shows in the search results). After years of customer unhappiness and many tries at work-arounds, they finally relented and added a dedicated field in the advanced customization so one could set this field explicitly.
This is another example of the same thing. They're trying to use the gallery description display field for a different meta data purpose. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. When it does not, there is no easy work-around. A separate field would let the advanced users make it just the way they want it (like you would do if you had your own web site and controlled your own page content).
Yeah, Smugmug needs to remember this lesson. Every time, they try to use an existing display field for some other purpose, it never really works very well.
For a long time in their history, they used the text you put in your bio as the meta description for your site (what Google shows in the search results). After years of customer unhappiness and many tries at work-arounds, they finally relented and added a dedicated field in the advanced customization so one could set this field explicitly.
This is another example of the same thing. They're trying to use the gallery description display field for a different meta data purpose. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. When it does not, there is no easy work-around. A separate field would let the advanced users make it just the way they want it (like you would do if you had your own web site and controlled your own page content).
John,
Wow and thanks for the deeper history about these issues. I find it a pretty big let down to know history keeps repeating itself. That the same type of issues happen with every new "feature" added. I feel even more like a beta tester than ever before. If I, who has been out of the serious development game, perhaps since many of the current staff was in diapers, can see the issue but they can't or, perhaps, won't, is discouraging.
I do appreciate your detailed observations. You helped me a great deal.
A separate field would let the advanced users make it just the way they want it (like you would do if you had your own web site and controlled your own page content).
We have one. It's in site meta. If no gallery description, we'll use that. What am I missing, John?
We have one. It's in site meta. If no gallery description, we'll use that. What am I missing, John?
What you're missing is that if there is a gallery description that is carefully crafted to display what you want to display in your gallery, then there is no way to separately control what FB and Google display as the summary of the gallery. If one has their own web page, these can be separately controlled to optimize the web experience for that page.
Same reason it didn't work to automatically grab data from the bio for the site meta description, it doesn't always work to automatically grab data from the visible gallery description for gallery meta description - they are slightly different functions and using one piece of data for both will not always give an optimized experience.
Comments
http://help.smugmug.com
My Gallery: Digital Images by Ron Skinner
Specifically what is not working and specifically what gallery are you trying to post to facebook from?
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
When I copy a link to a Smugmug gallery and paste it on Facebook I get no thumbnail if the smugmug gallery is right click protected. This happens if I copy the link from the address bar or if I use the Share on Facebook button on my toolbar. I've always had my Smugmug galleries right click protected and was, until recently, able to paste a smugmug gallery link and have the thumbnail show up from right click protected galleries. Now to get a thumbnail to show up on Facebook I first have to turn of right click protection, paste the gallery link on facebook, then go back to smugmug and turn right click protection back on. Kind of a hassle.
Be Social works fine, but this only pastes links on your facebook profile, sometime I want to paste gallery links to other pages and need to paste on link on facebook.
Thanks,
Ron
My Gallery: Digital Images by Ron Skinner
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It's does it with all my galleries.... I picked this one at random
http://ronskinner.smugmug.com/Nature-Preserves/Headlands-Dunes/Headlands-Dunes-Winter-2010/11175366_vy45W#783494877_YDnkP
My Gallery: Digital Images by Ron Skinner
By copying and pasting a gallery link for a gallery with right-click protection turned off, SmugMug (edit: should be Facebook) gives you a choice of 17 thumbnails (for me, one of the thumbnails is an image in my header; the rest are all from the gallery).
It gave me a choice of the first 16 photos in the gallery (plus my header image). My gallery is sorted on file name, so I tried resorting by file name in reverse order but still got the same 16 photos to choose from. Then I remembered someone said something about caching by Facebook, so I picked a new gallery, turned off RCP, sorted the gallery backwards and -- voila -- my choices were now the resorted first 16 photos (plus my header image, which always comes up as the second choice in the thumbnails).
It would seem to me if you wanted a particular image as a thumbnail, do a temporary sort so that the image appears near the beginning of the gallery, copy and paste the link, choose the thumbnail you want, and then resort your gallery back to its original order.
The Railroad Photographer
www.railroadphotographer.com
I have same problem with some of my galleries (unlisted + not protected + external ok).
Btw, wouldn't it make sense to use (optionally) the featured image of the gallery becoming the FB thumbnail by using the og:image meta property (details here) ?
Spi
Thanks for that link. That is a great bit of info. I love this part " One of the reason why you get no thumbnail, or unrelated thumbnail is because facebook’s script is not smart enough. " Sounds like what I have seen.
I will pass this along to our Social Feature programmer.
http://help.smugmug.com
http://www.pmbimages.com/Animals/Birds/Bird-Kingdom/6017783_7vpLY
Even when pasting just my main URL (http://www.pmbimages.com/) I used to always get my self-portrait (found on my "About pmb" page), or any random pic from any gallery and either way was fine before. Now it's nothing at all.
Film/TV Stills Photography
"When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt." ~ Henry J. Kaiser
Link to gallery.
http://www.jharrisonphoto.com/Landscapes/San-Francisco-Fleet-Week-2009/9912081_bB5EZ
Confirmed external links are allowed, protected 'no' (I thought at one time it worked with protection turned off). I get no thumbnail
Especially for FB fan pages (or pages as I believe they are called now)... this is my preferred way to share images rather than uploading them straight to FB.
Thanks!
John
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Yosemite-and-Bay-Area-Nature-Photography-by-John-Harrison/190152125697
Happiness is shooting a Nikon outside and posting on SmugMug!
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
http://photos.humansafterall.com/
My first two galleries have the same exact settings.
However, if I post the first gallery link into Facebook:
http://photos.humansafterall.com/Nightlife-and-Music/SitePremiere/11593044_dHaEX#816970833_xNC6z
I have the option of 295 different thumbnails.
And if I post the second gallery link:
http://photos.humansafterall.com/Nightlife-and-Music/WMC2010/11710314_PrbwM#1018861546_VpgLo
I get an option of 5 thumbnails - none of which are photos from that gallery.
Also, I noticed in thumbnail style gallery it no longer pulls the description into Facebook (which is a win in my book). However, it does still pull in the gallery description with SmugMug style galleries.
I also noticed that the thumbnail choice is limited in SmugMug gallery style but at least includes some of the gallery photos.
You do not need to keep posting about this
We're working on some new stuff with Facebook Nicole.
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
(or at least for me - it's just my long description)
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
I do, but not everyone knows that. I am testing these features so the people that visit my site can easily share on facebook.
The text that shows there really isn't a big deal to me, but if there was a simple code I could use to control it that would be great. But I believe you already told me that doesn't exist, so no worries.
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
Anna Lisa. I was merely pointing out a feature of the Facebook website, that you can edit the description area by clicking on it. WE cannot send anything different there - FB grabs the album description, or in absence of that, the Site Meta.
Thank you.
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
The real question for Anna Lisa I think is this. Smugmug tried to pick a reasonable default value for the description of the page in the generic metadata and that is the contents of the gallery description (if there is one). Given that the only two pieces of text that are gallery specific in that page are the name of the gallery and the gallery description and the name of the gallery is already in the title of the page, making the gallery description be the "description" of the page seems pretty reasonable. If you have a better suggestion for what they should do as a default, please propose it. What started off this thread was that Nicole had a giant description for that gallery. That was Nicole's choice and, as it turns out, that choice doesn't work that well with FB. Given the way things are, I'd suggest that Nicole make a different choice for what to put in the description that takes into account all the things the description is used for, not just one of the things it's used for.
Meanwhile, if any of you have suggestions for how Smugmug could better handle this issue of giant gallery descriptions, please provide them (and probably file a specific feature request). I've seen a lot of complaining about the way the description shows up in FB, but no practical suggestion for how it could be done better.
The only suggestion I can think of right now is that Smugmug add a separate field to the gallery settings that is the "page description" and that is what goes in the meta data and that is what FB grabs as its description. This would work not only for FB, but also for what text shows in Google search results. Smugmug will probably resist that idea because they seem to always resist adding new configuration options on UI complication grounds. My response has always been that they need a two level UI for gallery settings so there are beginning things and advanced things and beginners don't have to see advanced things until they choose to. This would obviously be an advanced thing.
As a work-around, it's possible to put the FB/Google text into the gallery description and then use JS to change the gallery description to what you want to show for page display. But, that's obviously a hassle and a bit of a maintenance headache. But, it is doable if someone is feeling desperate to solve this.
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What about simply adding a new field to the gallery setup page for a "brief description" set to a reasonable size limit so one does not induce the problems? This should be a very easy solution on SM ends of things. Yeah it adds to their storage overhead but hey, it's in the clouds already, right?
I have been wondering if an optional verbose description along side a brief search engine friendly description would work better for a while now, not that I am even using descriptions at all right now. Too lazy I suppose. Anyway, SM could then point these other services to the summary description when needed. Perhaps even allow the user to decide on a gallery by gallery basis which description field to actually use as the page's main description.
I have actually used this method for product records in databases...it gives nice control for different venues or situations. I don't see why it would not be untenable for SM here. Then again, if not many users are using long verbose descriptions then, well it's maybe a different situation. Still I would love to have a field to use which is specifically for good SEO blurb along with being very friendly for places like FB.
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hahahaha...d'oh!! sorry I missed that part, but yes then I completely agree that seems to sensible thing for SM to do...i don't feel the current data works for the newly added services so changes need to be made rather than using a sledge hammer to make it work sort-of...
For a long time in their history, they used the text you put in your bio as the meta description for your site (what Google shows in the search results). After years of customer unhappiness and many tries at work-arounds, they finally relented and added a dedicated field in the advanced customization so one could set this field explicitly.
This is another example of the same thing. They're trying to use the gallery description display field for a different meta data purpose. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. When it does not, there is no easy work-around. A separate field would let the advanced users make it just the way they want it (like you would do if you had your own web site and controlled your own page content).
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John,
Wow and thanks for the deeper history about these issues. I find it a pretty big let down to know history keeps repeating itself. That the same type of issues happen with every new "feature" added. I feel even more like a beta tester than ever before. If I, who has been out of the serious development game, perhaps since many of the current staff was in diapers, can see the issue but they can't or, perhaps, won't, is discouraging.
I do appreciate your detailed observations. You helped me a great deal.
We have one. It's in site meta. If no gallery description, we'll use that. What am I missing, John?
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
I'm sorry you feel this way! You haven't filled in your site meta, so if you have no gallery description, you get SmugMug default stuff.
If you fill that out, you'll be way better off, FB, and SEO wise! More: http://smugmug.com/help/search-engines
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Same reason it didn't work to automatically grab data from the bio for the site meta description, it doesn't always work to automatically grab data from the visible gallery description for gallery meta description - they are slightly different functions and using one piece of data for both will not always give an optimized experience.
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