Integration with vBulletin - More Open Graph Images (Free) by BOP5

Brought to you by BirdOPrey5 / Qapla.com

If you don't know what Open Graph is, it is a standard which Facebook and other big social networking sites use to extract information from a web page being shared/posted on their site.

Open Graph meta tags tell Facebook the URL of the page to share, the title of the page, the type of content, and also one or more images to be used as the thumbnail when a page is shared.

A major limitation of vBulletin 4.x has always been the image. The only option vBulletin has is to enter the URL to 1 image in Facebook Options in the Admin CP, and the same image would be shared every time any page from your site was posted to Facebook. This would usually be your site's logo. While it was OK, it was really annoying you couldn't get a picture that had more to do with the exact thread being shared. For example if the thread was about Jeeps and had pictures of Jeeps in the thread it would be better to show one of those pictures instead of the site logo.

Now you can.

Live Demo: http://www.qapla.com/mods/showthread...e-images-tests (View the HTML source code)

This Free version will find-

• All images included via the [IMG] BBCode in the entire thread page
• All Embedded YouTube Video image thumbnails used on the thread page
• All Image file attachments (full size or thumb nails) on the thread page*

And add ALL of these as possible og meta tags on your thread page.

The Pro Version available on Qapla.com works on Blog Entries and CMS Articles as well, but is otherwise the same.

Note: The "Pro" version is bundled with my More Share Options TNG Pro mod, a subscription to one gives access to both.

Important Notes - This mod only promises to add the images, youtube videos, and attachments (if enabled) to the list of available of meta tags and this can be confirmed working by viewing the HTML source of the page or using the Facebook Debugger to see all images and other content scraped form your page: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug

This mod cannot promise Facebook will actually use these images! It is important to understand that giving these pictures as an option to Facebook is as far as any modification can go. After that it is up to Facebook's scraping algorithm to determine which, if any, images will be presented to the users as an option when sharing the page. Facebook does not publish strict details on how they make these choices. Search on Google and you'll quickly find many answers to the question but each one different.

Facebook does say that images should be (not must but should be) at least 200 by 200 pixels but they prefer even more a 1500 x 1500 pixel image. They prefer images closer to square than very long or tall. They will auto resize or crop as needed.

*It appears Facebook will never use vBulletin attachments even though the Facebook Debugger does pick them up and show them. I suspect the reason is because attachments are not to actual jpg/gif/png images but instead are links to attachment.php. Nevertheless I included the attachment option because Facebook may change this behavior one day and other social networks may not have this limitation.

There does not seem to be any ham in presenting multiple images to Facebook, they will choose what they want.

I have had more luck getting the option to choose between different thumbnails when using the older "Facebook Share" button as opposed to the "Facebook Like" (or Recommend) button that is default in vBulletin. If you use the free or Pro version of my More Share Options TNG mod you can easily change to the Facebook Share button.

Finally this mod knows how to deal with both https and regular http images. The og meta tags are slightly different for each, the correct one will be used based on the image source found.

Also, this mod is designed to work with or without the Facebook Platform enabled.

For use on vBulletin 4.x.x only. Tested on 4.07, 4.2.0, and 4.2.1.

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Please "Mark as Installed" if you use this.
Donations always appreciated. :up:
Nominate MOTM if you LOVE it!

[NeutralizeR]

VBSEO fix = Edit functions_vbseo.php:

find:

PHP Code:

$r_tags .= '|img'; 


replace with:

PHP Code:

$r_tags .= '|img|meta property="og:image"'; 


find:

PHP Code:

$r_tattr = 'href|src|action|url|\.open|\.location'; 


replace with:

PHP Code:

$r_tattr = 'href|content|src|action|url|\.open|\.location'; 


[dariyos]

this mod only generate og:images like this:

<meta property="og:image" content="http://www.sps-forum.de/attachment.php?attachmentid=32693" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://www.sps-forum.de/attachment.php?attachmentid=32694" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://www.sps-forum.de/attachment.php?attachmentid=32692" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://www.sps-forum.de/attachment.php?attachmentid=32573" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://www.sps-forum.de/attachment.php?attachmentid=32575" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://www.sps-forum.de/attachment.php?attachmentid=32574" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://www.sps-forum.de/attachment.php?attachmentid=32517" />

Facebook can't read that ...

Facebook want it like this:

<meta property="og:image" content="http://www.sps-forum.de/image.png />

do you have an other solution for this?

If I post external links with the IMG-Tag, it works, but I see only ONE Image when I click on "SHARE" ...
Can't change between the images when I have more than 1 external images.

[BirdOPrey5]

I see no difference between what the mod makes and what you say works.

However, please see in my original description of the mod:

*It appears Facebook will never use vBulletin attachments even though the Facebook Debugger does pick them up and show them. I suspect the reason is because attachments are not to actual jpg/gif/png images but instead are links to attachment.php. Nevertheless I included the attachment option because Facebook may change this behavior one day and other social networks may not have this limitation.

Using attachments simply isn't going to work. Facebook doesn't use them for whatever reason. Other services that use og:images might, so I left the option in the mod, but Facebook does not.

[dariyos]

thats bad,

at google+ it works, but I can't change the image in the sharer window, there is only one image available, no arrows to change the image. I think the "sharer" window picks only the first image from the quellcode... any ideas?

I use DBSeo

How can I rewrite the attachment-urls from

http://domain.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=1234

to

http://domain.com/attachments/1234/originalbildname.png

?

[BirdOPrey5]

Even rewriting the URLs using DBSEO or VBSEO doesn't help. Facebook knows it's not a "real" link somehow (likely because of the redirect involved) and just doesn't use it. I've tried for months, feel free to keep trying, but ultimately it is of my opinion attachments will simply never work with Facebook.

As for the Google issue, I can't imagine any way to specify which would be the first image for every single thread on your site.

The first image will be the first image using [IMG] in a post on the page, you could add an image to the first post using an [IMG] tag to force it to be the first one created by the mod. Maybe created a custom BB Code to hide the image using CSS display:none so regular users don't even see it, but seems like a lot more work to me then it is worth.

[dariyos]

Google+:

When I activate the mod, and delete the static picture to show on every thread, the sharer displays the first image, and this is my Logo from the header - not from the post-content.

is it not possible to show all pictures in a row - with arrows I can change the pictures?

[BirdOPrey5]

It would be up to Google to show arrows that can change the picture, not this mod.

If you want to move the extra pictures by this mod below the picture included on every page in your Facebook settings so Google sees that one first, do the following-

1) Edit your headinclude template. Add this code at the very bottom of the template:

<!-- Extra og images -->

Save changes.

2) Edit the plugin Insert Open Graph Tags find the line:

$bpfind = '<meta property="og:type" content="article" />';

Change it to:

$bpfind = '<!-- Extra og images -->';

Save changes.

That should do it, the default Facebook image will be the first og:image on every page.

[dariyos]

When I set a Facebook Image here:

Settings -> Facebook Connection -> Logo URL

then this image is the first image that will show on every site.
when I delete that URL, then my first Image is the Header-Logo. <- thats wrong.

I want it like this:

If a thread has no external Image included, then show the default Facebook Logo.
If a thread has an external Image included, then show the included image, NOT the FB-Logo.

when I set a default Facebook Logo, then it shows always the Facebook Logo, on every site.

[BirdOPrey5]

I'm sorry but if Google finds your header logo first, that's the way their algorithm works. There's no way I know of it control what order the pictures are chosen other than the ordering they are written to the page. The header-logo and such is beyond my control.

[VICOS]

The FB OG Debugger complains about the meta tags being outside of the <head></head> section and refuses to consider them:

Your page has meta tags in the body instead of the head. This may be because your HTML was malformed and they fell lower in the parse tree.

Please fix this in order for the tags to be usable.

I believe the HTML standard also prohibits this.