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jpc · July 1, 2015

I have a description entered in my Homepage Meta Description and yet the default Smugmug description is still displayed when I link to one of my galleries in a FB post.

It was my understanding that my Homepage Meta Description should be used for all galleries that have blank descriptions. Is that not correct?

Here's the link: http://www.jpcirre.com/OnLocation/Rochester-Subway/

Here's a screen capture of the thumbnail display in FB:

Help?

herojosie · July 1, 2015

Hi,

It may help to debug the URL you are using with the Facebook debugger. That should help get that information updated with Facebook so it is displaying the most current updates you've entered.

You can find that debugging tool here:
https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/

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

jpc · July 1, 2015

That didn't work. Here's a capture from the FB debugging tool page, after using the tool.

Allen · July 1, 2015

I just copied a gallery browser link and pasted it into a FB message. The gallery generated just
below and the photo I was on showed. I could click on any text/description below that photo
and change it.

BTW, this is using Smugmug style gallery that has the photo as part of the browser url.

After it generates delete the pasted in link and type in your text.

jpc · July 6, 2015

Thanks, Allen. I didn't realize the text was editable (duh), so that's the fix! However, this is still not the correct behavior, right? If I have a description entered in my Homepage Meta Description, shouldn't that appear below the thumbnail?

leftquark · July 6, 2015

When I copy any of my links, including gallery links, Facebook properly grabs the gallery description or photo caption I set in SmugMug. I cannot get the behavior to work with your own site. Let me dig some more and talk to a few of the engineers and get back to you

leftquark · July 6, 2015

jpc wrote: »

I have a description entered in my Homepage Meta Description and yet the default Smugmug description is still displayed when I link to one of my galleries in a FB post.

It was my understanding that my Homepage Meta Description should be used for all galleries that have blank descriptions. Is that not correct?

Help?

There are some rules that we follow with regards to what gets pulled in by Facebook:

Title:
- First, we look for the Photo Title.
- If that doesn't exist, we drop back to the Gallery Name.
- If that doesn't exist, we will pull your accounts Display Name

Description:
- First we look for a photo's caption.
- If that doesn't exist we look for a Gallery Description (set from the Gallery Settings)
- If that doesn't exist, we pull the Homepage Meta Description

If you or someone else pastes this link into facebook before any of these are set, it will drop back to the "SmugMug is ..." description and Facebook will cache this information so they don't have to continuously poll the website to grab it. Even if you change the settings on SmugMug, the Facebook cache will still have the old description, and will continuously pull the old information. They do have a page where you can reset the information: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/og/object?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jpcirre.com%2FOnLocation%2FRochester-Subway%2F

I reset the information and it looks like it pulled the proper description. I also did a test where I created a new gallery on your site with no Gallery Description and pasted the link into Facebook; it properly pulled in your Homepage Meta Description.

You should be all set going forward but you may need to clear Facebook's cache from some of the old/bad link information that it has.

jpc · July 8, 2015

I posted a link to this gallery in FB. It returned the "hosted by Smugmug" description. Again, the gallery has no description, so it should revert to my Homepage Meta Description as you confirmed.

I then used the "fetch new scrape info" FB tool, which should update the FB cache, but it did not. The description did not change. Your description of the process makes sense, but something seems very wrong with this behavior.

leftquark · July 9, 2015

jpc wrote: »

I posted a link to this gallery in FB. It returned the "hosted by Smugmug" description. Again, the gallery has no description, so it should revert to my Homepage Meta Description as you confirmed.

I then used the "fetch new scrape info" FB tool, which should update the FB cache, but it did not. The description did not change. Your description of the process makes sense, but something seems very wrong with this behavior.

The code to display the gallery, on our end, is dropping in a "og:description" of the "Hosted by SmugMug" description, which it shouldn't be doing. I'll take this back to our Engineers and see if we can get to the bottom of it.

jpc · July 20, 2015

Any luck with this?

leftquark · July 20, 2015

jpc wrote: »

Any luck with this?

Our engineer most knowledgable with the facebook integration was on vacation but is now back. I should have some more information for you tomorrow. Stay tuned!

leftquark · July 21, 2015

jpc wrote: »

Any luck with this?

It looks like we've narrowed down the culprit, which is a bug that occurs when using a collected image (from another gallery) as the Feature Image for this gallery. We're working on a fix and I'll try to let you know when we've got it patched up!

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