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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[BirdOPrey5]

The default image if there are no other images is set in the Admin CP -> Settings => Options -> Facebook Settings

[chikuru]

Originally Posted by BirdOPrey5

The default image if there are no other images is set in the Admin CP -> Settings => Options -> Facebook Settings

Hmm, looks like that doesnt work. If theres no image, the image that appear is one of the image from the theme

[BirdOPrey5]

Does the image show up in the open graph codes in the source code of the page? If it does then perhaps Facebook simply hasn't cleared its cache or doesn't like the image you chose (too small, too big, too wide or tall, etc...) Google "Facebook Debugger" and use that to check what Facebook is seeing. You can also force Facebook to re-scrape the page.

[ikymbo]

Why doesnt works with https images?

[bmwfans]

Perfect!!! Thank you very much, works great on 4.2.3!!!!

[bmwfans]

Originally Posted by VICOS

I just confirmed this issue when using SSL for your forum. The FB debugger loses it mind and FB actual refuses to see the images.

As soon as I comment out ":secure_url" in the plugin, FB debugger is happy and FB actual sees ALL images and lets you choose which one you want.

It even works when using attachment images, i.e. the image url is:

attachment.php?attachmentid=###

BTW, I am using vB 4.2.3 PL2.

Originally Posted by ikymbo

Why doesnt works with https images?

Unfortunately the same here! We recently applied SSL and with https the issue came up!
Any suggestions?

[bmwfans]

With the following modification on the plugin, now everything seems OK again

previously:

   if(strtolower(substr($thisimg, 0, 5)) == 'https') //If https site
      $secure_og = 'secure_url';
    else
      $secure_og = '';

    $bop5_og_tags .= "<meta property=\"og:image$secure_og\" content=\"$thisimg\" />\r\n";

now:

 if(strtolower(substr($thisimg, 0, 5)) == 'https') //If https site
      $secure_og = 'secure_url';
    else
      $secure_og = '';

      $bop5_og_tags .= "<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"$thisimg\" />\r\n<meta property=\"og:image$secure_og\" content=\"$thisimg\" />\r\n";