FB link; No Thumbnails

rashbrook

If I post a link to my most recent photos on FB using the following link:

http://www.ashbrook-photography.com/date/2011-01-15/2011-01-16

I get no thumbnail. I've seen an issue like this in these forums which was ultimately fixed by someone from smugmug.

Can someone help me with this? Can we either:
1) make it so that a thumbnail appears with a link like this? -OR-
2) can someone tell me another way to post a link that will show only my most recent shots (without creating another new page on my site) which will give me a thumbnail in my FB feed?

Thanks for any assistance ;-)

Andy

Dunno how to get thumbs from that link. I'll ask our sorcerer.

Allen

rashbrook wrote: »

If I post a link to my most recent photos on FB using the following link:

http://www.ashbrook-photography.com/date/2011-01-15/2011-01-16

I get no thumbnail. I've seen an issue like this in these forums which was ultimately fixed by someone from smugmug.

Can someone help me with this? Can we either:
1) make it so that a thumbnail appears with a link like this? -OR-
2) can someone tell me another way to post a link that will show only my most recent shots (without creating another new page on my site) which will give me a thumbnail in my FB feed?

Thanks for any assistance ;-)

First, paste in the thumb photo link you want to show. It will appear below.
Then delete the thumb link and paste in some text and the actual date
gallery link.

The thumb link will look like this.
http://www.ashbrook-photography.com/photos/1157995616_CdLdu-Th.jpg

SamirD

Allen wrote: »

First, paste in the thumb photo link you want to show. It will appear below.
Then delete the thumb link and paste in some text and the actual date
gallery link.

The thumb link will look like this.
http://www.ashbrook-photography.com/photos/1157995616_CdLdu-Th.jpg

Cumbersome, but good to know.

rashbrook

That does kind of work, I do appreciate it - and it is cool, but I think the problem with doing it that way is that, people see a link with a thumbnail in your FB feed, and its human nature to click on the most colorful, or largest clickable area - the thumbnail. And when I tested the method you mentioned above, it worked, but the thumbnail ended up with a link directly (only) to the thumbnail itself, and the text link went to the place I wanted it to go. People arent going to click on the text link most of the time, and that means theyll end up at the thumbnail on my site scratching their heads ;-)

I still think that if you can post a /date link, there should be a way to figure out how to generate a thumbnail with that - that has the right link with it. Andy - any word?

I also tested using the share feature - for a single photo, and that worked well going to my fb account's feed. Issue there is, that I now have a fan page that is linked within my personal FB account, and that link doesnt land in the feed of my fan page. Is there a way (can someone tell me) what link is being sent behind the scenes to my personal feed when I use the share>be social link, so I can paste it in manually on my fan page wall/feed? I have to think that there must be a way. ;-)

Thanks again all!

SamirD

I've been doing A LOT of research on fb lately in preparation for marketing. The problem with a lot of the stuff that doesn't work is that it was working 'by chance' in the first place.

If you want to see what a link will look like on fb, you need to see what fb will see. And luckily the fb developers have a tool for that--the url linter:
http://developers.facebook.com/tools/lint

Put in your gallery url and see exactly what will be pulled out of the link and from where. For a resource on how the meta tags work, see this doc:
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/

As far as what the share button is getting, I think this fb doc may shed some light on it:
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/share

The main problem you'll see if you view the source code on a gallery is that there aren't any fb og: meta tags, which is the current opengraph protocol that fb uses. And these are what influence the picture and links. Without these, the share won't be perfect.

Now, the Like button is supposed to be better for sharing, especially for fan pages. But as far as I know, when you're liking something, it is as yourself, not your fan page. Unless you have a separate login for your fan page, which is illegal under fb terms, but the only way to truly separate business and personal. The caveat is the only way to do this is have a fan page before a personal page and keep them completely separate. But the disadvantage to this is that you can't add any html or custom code to your fan page until you have a personal account connected to it. So many details that it makes your head spin...

rashbrook

I appreciate all of the great information.

Upon further experimentation - here's my workaround.

Go to your gallery, find the picture you want to post to FB, and click on it to view it large or xl, etc. your choice. Take the link from the address bar on that link, and paste it into FB. Then remove or manipulate the description and title of the link to be what you like, and scroll through the thumbnails that are available (hopefully its there) until you can select the one that represents the image you would like to post. Then share.

So far it's working for me - but it should be easier than this. If someone can get around to looking at a better way to post a single image on a fan page with a thumbnail, that would be great. Until then, let's hope the thumbnail keeps appearing when doing this manually. ;-)

SamirD

rashbrook wrote: »

I appreciate all of the great information.

Upon further experimentation - here's my workaround.

Go to your gallery, find the picture you want to post to FB, and click on it to view it large or xl, etc. your choice. Take the link from the address bar on that link, and paste it into FB. Then remove or manipulate the description and title of the link to be what you like, and scroll through the thumbnails that are available (hopefully its there) until you can select the one that represents the image you would like to post. Then share.

So far it's working for me - but it should be easier than this. If someone can get around to looking at a better way to post a single image on a fan page with a thumbnail, that would be great. Until then, let's hope the thumbnail keeps appearing when doing this manually. ;-)

Interesting. What does your the link you're pasting look like in the linter?: http://developers.facebook.com/tools/lint

I'm specifically interested in seeing if there are any 'image' meta tags that it's picking up.