Publish to Facebook

brocot · August 12, 2016

When i want to Share a Picture in Facebook, the general link appears but not the picture itself. What is it that i do wrong? :wink

It is all about this Galery https://erikgodderis.smugmug.com/Nature/Insects/

brocot · August 12, 2016

Strange,
It is working fine, only not for this one (the bees) https://erikgodderis.smugmug.com/Nature/Insects/i-kC7sBGC

Teach · August 12, 2016

Can you please give the exact steps you are taking when sharing to Facebook so we can try replicating your steps?

brocot · August 12, 2016

1/ Share button
2/ Select Social
3/ Click on Facebook.

No picture here, only the link.

Chasing Daylight · August 12, 2016

A feature image for the gallery needs to be selected first. After you do that, when you use the social/facebook share feature, you should see the photo you are sharing show up in the post. To add a feature image to a gallery, go to the gallery > customize > gallery settings > set a feature image and save. Refresh your page and then use the share feature to share a photo to Facebook. If you still don't see it showing up, let us know.

Allen · August 12, 2016

Out of the first eight photos in the gallery only photo No.2 will not show, other seven show.

brocot · August 13, 2016

@ Chasing Daylight : there was a feature image. I have changed it but still the bees are not showing up like Allen said.

But please don't break your head about that little problem. The other picture working fine.
Thank You for the replay.

Chasing Daylight · August 13, 2016

I believe I was able to fix and should work now

.

Try sharing this link again, https://erikgodderis.smugmug.com/Nature/Insects/i-kC7sBGC, on Facebook. I tested it just now and did see it, so you should too. I had to have Facebook scrape the link so it would show the photo. If that happens in the future with another link, go to this link on Facebook and scrape the link: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/sharing/

WinsomeWorks · August 15, 2016

Is this typical (2nd photo in gallery won't show on FaceBook Gallery Share)?
I'm just wondering whether the problem described here (by Erik & Allen) is typical behavior in these FB gallery shares? I haven't used Publish to FB in awhile (not even sure if this is the same thing) and want to have a smooth post as it'll be wedding photos. I'd like to know what to expect. The problem I'm talking about is the one where the 2nd photo in a gallery (if it has been previously selected as the feature photo for that gallery) won't show up in the FB post.... Chasing Daylight, when you say you've fixed it, do you mean you've only fixed it for Erik's gallery or post, or are you fixing it for everyone, if it's something that's been happening?

herojosie · August 16, 2016

Hi Anna Lisa,

Sometimes if there is an issue like mentioned above, we just have to use the Facebook debugging tool to help update links with Facebook. Here is a link to that so you can use it if you run into any similar issues.

https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/

If you have any other questions about that, please let us know.

brocot · August 16, 2016

Chasing Daylight wrote: »

I believe I was able to fix and should work now .

Try sharing this link again, https://erikgodderis.smugmug.com/Nature/Insects/i-kC7sBGC, on Facebook. I tested it just now and did see it, so you should too. I had to have Facebook scrape the link so it would show the photo. If that happens in the future with another link, go to this link on Facebook and scrape the link: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/sharing/

The picture is showing up. Works fine for the moment.

WinsomeWorks · August 18, 2016

Josie, would you mind explaining this in more detail? I don't exactly understand how debugging or scraping works, & specifically when you use this link and/or what the precise result is. In other words, are you saying that I would do the "Publish to FB" post as usual, & then only if the thumb doesn't show up, I"d go to this link & do something that fixes it? These types of things need to be explained here by heroes with the understanding that only a few of us are techies as you are!

Also, I'm not hearing an answer to my question about the underlying problem. It sounds like this is something that happens only when the 2nd photo in the gallery has been pre-chosen as the "Feature Photo". Is this correct? Furthermore, if that's so, is there something SmugMug could do to fix it now, instead of our needing to go to some debugging link (& 1st find it buried somewhere here in the forums) after the fact?! I think I've seen this issue crop up for a long time now...

herojosie wrote: »

Hi Anna Lisa,

Sometimes if there is an issue like mentioned above, we just have to use the Facebook debugging tool to help update links with Facebook. Here is a link to that so you can use it if you run into any similar issues.

https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/

If you have any other questions about that, please let us know.

herojosie · August 18, 2016

Hi,

The debugger just helps clear Facebooks cache so that it crawls your site again to index that new information or update you've made. So if you have one feature image and then change it to another, Facebook doesn't always have that information right away. Using that link clears out the old information and then looks for the new updated information. As for the initial question, I'm not aware of that being an outstanding issue.

If you do see it arise again, before debugging the link, just let us know at help@smugmug.com and we can look into it for you. But I'm not aware of a regular issue with that.

If you have more questions about that, please let us know.

leftquark · August 19, 2016

WinsomeWorks,
The Feature Image works exactly as it should, for any Feature Photo. There's nothing about the second image that works differently from the first, third, fourth, etc.

To expand on what Josie wrote.... Facebook tries to be smart with regards to links. Imagine someone posts a link to a front page article on the New York Times. A few seconds later another person posts a link to the same article. Within minutes hundreds of thousands of people post that same article. Every time someone posts that link, Facebook could reach out to the New York Times and grab the details about that link. That would be extremely repetitive and wasteful on their part (and very costly). So what they do instead, is they "cache" or save the information the first time someone posts the link. The next time someone posts it, they already retrieved all the information, so they just use what they previously saved.

The same thing happens with SmugMug photos. If you had PhotoABC as your Feature Image and you, or someone else shares a link to the Gallery, Facebook looks at SmugMug and see's PhotoABC as the image and saves that. Any time someone shares a link on Facebook in the future, Facebook checks its database and dispalys PhotoABC, even if you've changed the Feature Image to PhotoXYZ.

Enter the "debugging tool." The debugging tool on Facebook lets you tell Facebook that you want it to delete what it had stored, and re-get the information about the link. So if you ever share a link on facebook, then change the Feature Image, and you want facebook to fix the Feature Image, you'll need to go debug the link and tell facebook to re-download the information.

WinsomeWorks · September 1, 2016

Getting a Feature Photo to show on FaceBook with "Publish" tool
Well, I published a gallery to FaceBook today using the "Publish" tool, & I've been unsuccessful in getting my featured photo to appear in the post. But I think we've been conflating various methods of posting to FB in this thread? And yes, I had already chosen a featured photo awhile before I tried to publish the gallery / album, refreshed, etc. I hadn't ever had a different one, either. Same featured photo from the beginning. My method: I didn't just paste a link into FB. I used the method where you go into the organizer while in the gallery you want to share. I hit the "Select All" button, de-selected the photos I didn't want included on FB, then the "Share" option was lit up, so I hit that & chose "Publish", which brought me to FB Publish, where I entered an album name & description, etc. When I hit "done", it wasn't long before I saw on FB that the post was there. There's my album title & description & several photos in the post. But my featured photo isn't one of them.

I even went into the album on FB & edited it, choosing the option for the photo I wanted as the "Album Cover" as it's called on FB. It still doesn't show up in the post. If I go to my "Albums" on FB, yes, that photo is now the thumb for the album. I also tried the debugging thing, although I don't think it's really meant for this exact issue. I think the others in this thread were sharing to FB in a slightly different way, by sharing a link to a photo or link to an album.

Incidentally, I had to paste in several different links before anything would even get scraped or crawled again, because the instructions in this thread never said exactly what to paste in. I finally went back here to my SmugMug gallery & pasted in that link & told to to "Scrape again", & then on that debug page, the featured photo I wanted showed up right away as a thumb. BUT it doesn't show up on my profile (timeline). Bummers.

So does anyone know a foolproof way to get a gallery's feature photo to show up in the post when you do "Publish" to FaceBook? I'm also very disappointed with the results of Publish to FB since the site changed over. There are no links anywhere to my gallery on SmugMug, only to SmugMug's homepage (not mine). So there's no way for a person to opt to visit my gallery to see more, buy prints, download, etc. Also, when entering an album title & description, we used to have the option to just use the ones we had here on SmugMug. Nope, I had to back out & copy & paste them in. There are also no tagging options, & no option to have a gallery or photo link in its caption on FB, etc. etc.

I can't even edit my post on FB the way I usually can. There's no edit option at all. (I thiought by editing, I could perhaps edit it to include a link to my gallery on my SmugMug site, but I can't do that either). I sure hope there will be some improvements to this tool, as we're now stuck with tool that has few options, & is harder to use than the one we had on our old sites.

leftquark · September 1, 2016

Hi Winsome,
There's a number of things here at play

WinsomeWorks wrote: »

I used the method where you go into the organizer while in the gallery you want to share

There's a big difference between "Sharing" to Facebook and "Publishing" to Facebook. Sharing a link to your SmugMug site is exactly that, FB gets a link to your smugmug site and pulls all its necessary information from what SmugMug provides to FB. "Publishing" to Facebook is very different; we take your photos and actually upload them to Facebook. From there, it's on Facebook to control what to do with them. They're no longer on SmugMug and Facebook sees them as if you had just taken the JPG's and uploaded them directly to FB.

WinsomeWorks wrote: »

I even went into the album on FB & edited it, choosing the option for the photo I wanted as the "Album Cover" as it's called on FB.

Since you've now posted images to FB (they're no longer pointing to SM), setting the FB "Album Cover" would be the proper way to set its main featured photo. It's out of our hands at this point, since you did a "publish" and FB is using its own photos/Albums tools to do all the work.

WinsomeWorks wrote: »

I'm also very disappointed with the results of Publish to FB since the site changed over. There are no links anywhere to my gallery on SmugMug, only to SmugMug's homepage (not mine). So there's no way for a person to opt to visit my gallery to see more, buy prints, download, etc. Also, when entering an album title & description, we used to have the option to just use the ones we had here on SmugMug. Nope, I had to back out & copy & paste them in. There are also no tagging options, & no option to have a gallery or photo link in its caption on FB, etc. etc.

I really wish there was something we could do about that. We used to have all of those features you asked for but Facebook changed their policies and no longer allows any of that. We are not allowed to add links, link back to anywhere, or automatically tag for you. Facebook should read the Title/Caption of the photo from your metadata in your photo, but that's about all we can do. I always encourage SmugMuggers to write in to Facebook and let your voice be heard - let them know you'd like us to be able to add links for you!

My recommendation would be to take the URL from your SmugMug site and just paste it as a link into Facebook. Should work every time and I never have any problems! Worst case, you may be to use the tool if you (or one of your visitors) had previously shared a link with the wrong Feature Image, but that should be infrequent.

Publish to Facebook

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