Publicize sends wrong image to Facebook

Hi there,

Publicize automatically selects an image to associate with your post on Facebook, and follows these steps:

1) If you’ve selected a featured Image, it will be used on FB
2) If you included a slideshow into your post, we’ll pick an image from there
3) If you don’t have a slideshow, we’ll look for a gallery
4) We will then look for other images attached to your post
5) If you use an image that’s not hosted on your site, we’ll use it
6) Finally, if you didn’t use any of these images, Publicize will fall back to your Gravatar Profile image.

Can you point me a couple of FB posts that you believe aren’t using the right image? I’ll take a look to see if I can find out why for you.

Hi Richard,

Thanks for your response. Here are a few examples:

https://www.facebook.com/CloudAve/posts/508033295901139
original at
https://www.cloudave.com/27528/thrive-for-precision-not-accuracy/

https://www.facebook.com/CloudAve/posts/143825695790512
original:
https://www.cloudave.com/27398/how-the-bell-system-missed-the-internet-1/

https://www.facebook.com/EnterpriseIrregulars/posts/239936306150267
original:
https://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/60508/cloud-to-enterprise-resistance-is-futile/

All the originals have featured images. The “salesforce cloud” logo that got picked up at Facebook does not come from within the post, but from a side widget the blogs run (“Sponsored posts” on the right side).

I’ve only noticed this behavior a few weeks ago, until then everything ran smoothly. And even now it’s not consistent, a few (unfortunately very few) posts show up with the correct image, and I can’t tell what is different in those posts … Pls. let me know if you need admin access to WP.

Thanks a lot,
Zoli

Another it of info: the trouble started on March 19th. If you scroll down here:
https://www.facebook.com/EnterpriseIrregulars and
https://www.facebook.com/CloudAve
you’ll see that until March 18th the proper images got picked up.

Thanks,
Zoli

Hi,

Facebook changed what they do, and they now use Open Graph meta tags, even for Publicize. Your site uses the WordPress SEO plugin, so Jetpack doesn’t output the OG meta tags. You shoud take a look at your WordPress SEO settings to see if you can output the right meta tags with it. Hope that helps!

Richard,

Thanks, I did not know that. But there’s something I don’t undertand. I disabled auto-publishing, and am using the share buttons at the bottom of each post. Those buttons are also generated by JetPack, yet psoting this way finds the proper images… isn’t that strange?

Thx

I have the same issue that also changed around the same time in late March. It worked perfectly for months pulling image from post and if no image it would pull avatar. Now it pulls random image from right navigation? I also use SEO plug but have no clue what Richard is talking about “so Jetpack doesn’t output the OG meta tags.” Sorry

I also find that Publicize also comes unlinked from Facebook sometimes?

https://www.facebook.com/SanElijoLife
https://sanelijolife.com/

I had to do it manual recently so you would need to study last week etc.
https://www.facebook.com/SanElijoLife

Hi ewp007, I looked at your site, and as suspected, you use the WordPress SEO plugin. Have a look at it’s settings, under “Social”, and click “Add OpenGraph meta data”, that should fix it for you.

I don’t have the WordPress SEO plugin, and I’m seeing the same behavior.

I am, however, using 3.6b2, so I haven’t been too mad about it.

I am having the similar difficulties – my post images aren’t defaulting to my gravatar when I don’t have an image available – they are defaulting to a google plus image instead. You can see it here:

https://www.facebook.com/electrasteph/posts/10151371795331695

I have a gravatar image set up and it should show that as a default, but isn’t.

I’m not using the SEO plug in, and my word press is up-to-date, as is my Jetpack plug in.

I’m having a similar problem on my blog https://alex.clst.org/dbd, but it has been happening ever since I started using Jetpack in early February. What gets displayed as the image appears to be a activity indicator, I have not the slightest clue where it is even getting that unless perhaps it is what the Gravatar system is returning when the avatar lookup possibly hangs or something (see indicator for hovercard loading to notice where I’m getting that hypothesis). A screenshot showing this is at https://alex.clst.org/machelp/fbjetpackpub.jpg. I think a good way to bypass this problem would be for an update to Jetpack to bring us a choice of which image source to prioritize first from that list Richard has from a month ago. That way we can all just force it to Gravatar avatars, or even a custom image we provide in the Publicize settings.

I’ve just worked around any failings of Jetpack’s Facebook Open Graph metadata by manually replacing Jetpack’s auto generated og tags with ones I included in the theme itself (as my site uses a custom theme I maintain this works well, but I realize some of you may not be as lucky to have access to modifying the theme/knowing PHP). Here is what I did in step-by-step instructions:

1. Add remove_action('wp_head','jetpack_og_tags'); to your theme’s functions.php file to disable Jetpack from generating the header metadata that is coming up with the wrong image. This plugin may work, but I always prefer to manage the code myself if at all possible: https://github.com/sgthemes/Remove-Jetpack-Open-Graph-Tags
2. I followed the code method of this page, but the plugin may work just as well: https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-themes/how-to-add-facebook-open-graph-meta-data-in-wordpress-themes/
3. If you use the code method and don’t really want any default image then make a blank/transparent 100×100 px png to use. I used a version of my site’s favicon, but you can easily upload your Gravatar manually to use too.

Hi Electrasteph,

Are you still have issues? The link you provided doesn’t work for me. If you still have difficulties with this, please start a new thread and I’ll take a look.

Alex: Thanks for your detailed steps! As for your suggestion, I’ve filed a Trac ticket for it, here: https://plugins.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/1725

You can add yourself to it or modify it if you’d like!

In my case the images it pulls by mistake were from a Widget — e.g. “Popular Posts” thumbnails get snagged by mistake. I disabled any widget that shows an image as an interim solution.

Hi KVEMORY,

Could I have a link to a page on your site, and could you turn that Widget back on, so that I can have a look? Thanks.