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Greetings! I hope this is the right place to ask about a FB sharing issue I've been having. Every so often, a link will show up as in the attachment, with no preview and just a generic link to NAS. No matter how many times I refresh, it will still show like this. I've also tried different browsers with no luck, as well as different forms of the link (i.e., copy-and-paste, short link). I appreciate any help someone can offer. Cheers!

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Screen Shot 2018-02-22 at 12.53.55 AM.png (79.44 KiB) Viewed 3076 times

This is an issue we encounter daily. To solve it, we use the facebook developers' debugging tool: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/

Past your link into the box, hit 'debug' in the blue box to the right of the screen. If the debugger doesn't find your link on a previous facebook post it will offer a button marked 'fetch new information' - press that button and you will go to the details screen. If your image is already detected as previously shared on facebook you will be taken straight to the next screen which should show a preview of your image along with the details of what is being shared. If your image still doesn't appear hit the 'scrape again' button until the preview shows your image in full (usually takes 2 or 3 times at most).

This should fix your issue. If you need any help with it give me a shout.

Glad you asked, Ashley, I already wanted to message you on Facebook.

When sharing on Facebook & Co. (which we encourage all photogs to do frequently ), please use the short link provided underneath your image.

So for this photo:


Please use this link:
https://www.netairspace.cc/pic/117208/

Not the long one, as Facebook will mess that one up. And also not the URL of the image file, as we cannot count your views then.

Hope that will work.

I've noticed this in the past but only with shots that are in the DBQ but it's maybe just a coincidence

Good deal, I will do that next time I'm sharing some NAS links on FB--probably later tonight! I didn't know about the FB debugging tool and will try the short link as well. In the past, I've just given up, but this time, I just went to the image and copied the image link. Now I have a couple more fixes in case this happens again, which I've noticed on probably one out of every 20 shares. Thanks again!

I just did a test link for the KLM shot on FB, and it works with the short link. What was happening was that I was clicking on "Short Link" but copying the text in the address bar without checking that it was indeed the short link. I went and highlighted the text to copy, and that works. Is there a way for NAS to show the short link in the address bar to copy easily (after you click on the short link)? No worries if not, as you can still highlight the text. I am just a bit clumsy with the cursor sometimes.

md88dawg wrote:Is there a way for NAS to show the short link in the address bar to copy easily (after you click on the short link)?

I doubt it. There are very good security reasons why we're not allowed to mess with that.

If you click in the short-link box, it should highlight, then right-click and Copy should grab it. Is that not working?

I didn't realise you were using the full URL rather than the short link. The same problem does sometimes occur with the short link (due to facebook tomfoolery) so you can still use the debugger if you encounter any issues with short links.

Loving the Martinair shot on the FLAP group BTW

I've always used the short link and probably have the issue 4/5 times - the shot I posted today simply wouldn't post until I used the debugger today (not the first time I've tried, either) properly, hence it languishing in my bookmarks for so long!

Oddly seems to be more of an issue with photos on the NAS page, on occasions when I post my own it seems to go trouble free.

mhodgson wrote:I've always used the short link and probably have the issue 4/5 times - the shot I posted today simply wouldn't post until I used the debugger today (not the first time I've tried, either) properly, hence it languishing in my bookmarks for so long!

Oddly seems to be more of an issue with photos on the NAS page, on occasions when I post my own it seems to go trouble free.

Facebook auto-debugs images hosted on flickr, Smugmug and several other large hosting sites, as well as many of its larger verified accounts. Without going too deep into the inner workings of our social media output, it is an option I'm exploring for us after successfully sorting a similar issue for another page I'm also an admin of.

I usually share using the Facebook icon in the upper right corner, but other times I'll copy the link from the address bar. In my browser, clicking on the "short link" only opens a window with the full link, but I did try out right-clicking and copying the link, which works. I'd had this problem a few times before, but it seems to be happening more frequently as of late.

JLAmber wrote:
Loving the Martinair shot on the FLAP group BTW

Thank you! I was disappointed at first that we didn't have sun, but I saw that the rain could make for some neat effects I'd not gotten before.

JLAmber wrote:Facebook auto-debugs images hosted on flickr, Smugmug and several other large hosting sites, as well as many of its larger verified accounts. Without going too deep into the inner workings of our social media output, it is an option I'm exploring for us after successfully sorting a similar issue for another page I'm also an admin of.

On Flickr, if you replace the image with an updated one, the preview will not show on FB. I was wondering if that was similarly the case here, but I had not tried to replace the KLM shot. Thanks again for the alternatives--I'll be resorting to those should the usual share options not work.

md88dawg wrote:On Flickr, if you replace the image with an updated one, the preview will not show on FB

That's interesting. I presume a reposted link will be ignored as facebook's algorithms will see it as an auto-debugged link and assume it is already showing correctly in the preview. Also an issue to watch out for should our status with facebook change, particularly in light of our re-upload function. I bet you could manually force through an updated preview in such cases. I'll have to give it a try.

On a related note, your sharing of recent shots is working well. You're pretty much a staple of the 'most viewed shots of today' brick over the last couple of weeks

JLAmber wrote:That's interesting. I presume a reposted link will be ignored as facebook's algorithms will see it as an auto-debugged link and assume it is already showing correctly in the preview. Also an issue to watch out for should our status with facebook change, particularly in light of our re-upload function. I bet you could manually force through an updated preview in such cases. I'll have to give it a try.

On a related note, your sharing of recent shots is working well. You're pretty much a staple of the 'most viewed shots of today' brick over the last couple of weeks

That's neat to know, thanks! I'll keep an eye out if any other sharing issues arise. I have a Twitter account but very rarely post there, so my experiences have been limited to FB. It would be interesting if these issues translate similarly to Twitter or if it is just a FB-platform matter.

md88dawg wrote:

JLAmber wrote:That's interesting. I presume a reposted link will be ignored as facebook's algorithms will see it as an auto-debugged link and assume it is already showing correctly in the preview. Also an issue to watch out for should our status with facebook change, particularly in light of our re-upload function. I bet you could manually force through an updated preview in such cases. I'll have to give it a try.

On a related note, your sharing of recent shots is working well. You're pretty much a staple of the 'most viewed shots of today' brick over the last couple of weeks

That's neat to know, thanks! I'll keep an eye out if any other sharing issues arise. I have a Twitter account but very rarely post there, so my experiences have been limited to FB. It would be interesting if these issues translate similarly to Twitter or if it is just a FB-platform matter.

The issues do seem to be restricted to facebook. Of all the images we've shared on twitter since image previews were added to tweets there has only been one that was a problem, and that was because some of the description contained terms identical to a twitter profile which was confusing their preview generator.