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Topic-icon Control data published to Facebook via JFBConnect?

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9 years 7 months ago #59814 by parrotbob

alzander wrote: Again, please let us know a URL that you're having issues with and, preferably, one that works. Also, leave the {SCOpenGraph description=xxx} tag on the page so we can see why it may not be showing and let us know which URL is working and is not along with any other details you can provide.


Here is the page Mel originally looked at -- it has the og:description tag in it (I have not been able to get any page to generate an og:description tag) view-source:http://rescueparrots.org/available-birds/corey-blue-and-gold-macaw

This is a page in which I manually placed the {SCOpenGraph description=Description} tag which does not show up in the source when I bring up the page:
rescueparrots.org/available-birds/canary-wing-bee-bees

This is an unformatted page in which I just put "testing" and the SCOpenGraph tag and it's not showing up either:
rescueparrots.org/available-birds/test-article



It would seem that Joomla is stripping the {SCOpenGraph} tag out of the page when it renders, but I can't find anywhere to make that stop (or where it says to do it).

I will PM you credentials to get onto the site, should you feel the need to.
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9 years 7 months ago #59827 by mel
I opened the Test Article in the background and you have the following easy-tag.
{SCOpenGraph description=Canary Wing Bee Bees available for adoption from Northeast Avian Rescue}

Then I opened the page on the frontend. Our JFBCSystem plugin replaces the SCOpenGraph tag with the appropriate og:description tag on the page. It is present on the test page:
<meta property="og:description" content="Canary Wing Bee Bees available for adoption from Northeast Avian Rescue"/>

So I'm not sure what you mean when you say the description is missing. You will not see {SCOpenGraph...} but will see the og:description meta tag.

Also, one thing that I did was create an object in our JFBConnect backend > Open Graph > Objects area for all articles. This will allow JFBConnect to use the first words in an article to set for og:description instead of you having to set the SCOpenGraph easy-tag manually in each article. I removed the tag from the test article and enabled the Open Graph object so that you can see the description updated to use the article text.

Please remember that you will need to manually re-scrape the pages on Facebook until FB scrapes all your pages periodically.
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9 years 7 months ago #59839 by parrotbob

mel wrote:
Then I opened the page on the frontend. Our JFBCSystem plugin replaces the SCOpenGraph tag with the appropriate og:description tag on the page. It is present on the test page:

<meta property="og:description" content="Canary Wing Bee Bees available for adoption from Northeast Avian Rescue"/>



So I'm starting to wonder if you have some sort of magical qualities I don't possess. You have opened three articles and you see the og:description tag in the front end. But when I set up these pages (logged into the site chose "post" in the panel on the lower left and posted to facebook), checking on page via "social meta" button and the source of the page, there was no such og:description tag. Now I have two pages I have posted to Facebook:

rescueparrots.org/available-birds/izzy-blue-and-gold-macaw

rescueparrots.org/available-birds/adopt-...a-cherry-head-conure

As of right now neither shows an og:description tag, though I have gone through the process of posting them both to facebook.

I'm obviously not doing something right .. should I be doing something on the back end to get the og:description tag to populate or should it automatically populate after I "post" to social media via the front end?

I'm sorry to be dense on this, but it's frustrating -- I can't replicate what you're seeing until after you have been there!
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9 years 7 months ago #59859 by alzander
I don't think we have super powers or magic, though that would be awesome if we did.

Here's the rundown:
* On the pages that you've used the {SCOpenGraph description= ...} tag, there is an og:description tag on the page and it can be seen by the Facebook Debug Tool or the Social Debug tool. Example:
rescueparrots.org/available-birds/canary-wing-bee-bees
developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/shar...canary-wing-bee-bees

* On the pages that you haven't used that tag, there is no og:description tag:
rescueparrots.org/available-birds/izzy-blue-and-gold-macaw
rescueparrots.org/available-birds/adopt-...a-cherry-head-conure

So, the {SCOpenGraph description=...} tag from JFBConnect is working, you likely just need to use it on more of your pages.

I'm obviously not doing something right .. should I be doing something on the back end to get the og:description tag to populate or should it automatically populate after I "post" to social media via the front end?

You need to use the {SCOpenGraph description=...} tag in your content. If you're adding that tag to a page that's already been live or shared on Facebook, you should use the Facebook URL Debug Tool to have them re-scan the page. Once Facebook scans a page, they cache all the contents they see for 30 days, which means that even if you add the og:description tag later, it won't work until they re-scan or you manually run the page through the Facebook URL Debug Tool.

I hope that helps get to the bottom of things.

Thanks,
Alex
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9 years 7 months ago #60001 by parrotbob
Ok.. I'm sorry for the delay, I'm just coming back to this issue now. I missed a critical piece from Mel's last response... that is that I won't see the {SCOpenGraph description=...} tag on the page -- that it doesn't actually render, but inserts an og:description tag using the information contained in the SCOpenGraph tag.

After finally getting that into my head, I think I now understand what's going on here. The SCOpengraph tag will force the og:description tag to be placed in the page. Facebook STILL may not pick that change up until it has an opportunity to organically rescrape the subject pages -- however I can force the rescrape at any time using the facebook debug feature.

I have done the above and the output is as I would expect it to be (yay!).

I still don't understand why even a rescrape of the page is not automatically picking up the description tags as they are automatically generated, but knowing that I can control this myself using the SCOpenGraph tag, I am not going to pursue it.

Thank you guys very, very much for your patience as I got this at my own pace!!!
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9 years 7 months ago #60018 by alzander
Your description above nailed how things work. I definitely understand how it can be hard to wrap your head around putting text on the page which then disappears automatically. :)

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by:

I still don't understand why even a rescrape of the page is not automatically picking up the description tags as they are automatically generated, but knowing that I can control this myself using the SCOpenGraph tag, I am not going to pursue it.

If you want more clarification here, we'll gladly try to provide it. There are plenty of nuances in how Facebook works that even we don't fully understand though, I'll readily admit. Of course, the things we do understand are always up for change with any update that Facebook makes as well.

I hope things go smoothly for you from here with JFBConnect and your site, but should you need anything else, just let us know.

Thanks,
Alex
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