Display Photos for page links?
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When a copy the address bar link for a property page in my website, and try to post it in an email or link on a forum, I don’t get a picture. Is there a way to specify which picture is used for each page when posted on social media or other sources?
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Here’s a photo of what I’m seeing now…
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Hey Jenny,
Generally speaking, when you share a link on a social website (eg: Facebook, Twitter, etc) they will inspect the page you are sharing and look for an “og:image” meta tag. The value of this meta tag will be used as the image when sharing. By default, we will add an “og:image” meta tag for you on all websites, using a relevant image from your site design. Alternatively, you can customize this on a per site basis by setting a custom “og:image” meta tag with your own image url. You can do this from the website administration section of the MyVR application.
When I look at the page you reference, I see it’s using this image in it’s “og:image” meta tag, which should be the image used anytime you share it. Can you clarify where you are pasting a link to your property detail page? Wherever you’re sharing it may not honor the “og:image” meta tag.
Cheers,
Mike
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@Mike-Stachowiak This example was in my email client (Mac email)
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Hi @Jenny-Oest ,
I just want to follow up and say that if this is still an issue whenever you post a link to your website, please let us know with a bug report. As Mike mentioned, other websites and apps should be able to find a photo to use when expanding a link to your website into a little preview.
Cheers,
Danny
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@Mike-Stachowiak - is there only one og:image tag for the whole website, or can I specify one for an individual page within the website? For example, if I want to link to a specific PROPERTY page, I’d like the PROPERTY picture.
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Hi @Jenny-Oest,
MyVR doesn’t currently have the ability to set a different
og:imagemeta tag per each individual page. It can only be done site-wide.Best,
Danny
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@Danny-Eiden - I like to provide links directly to a property page when I run a special. But if I list 2-3 properties, they all have the same generic picture in the preview pane. Is there a better way around that?
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Unfortunately our current tools don’t support adding custom header tags on a per-property basis for multi property websites. As a result, I don’t think there is a way to get a different image for each property.
I do think it’s a good idea, though! It would make a great feature request
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@Danny-Eiden - I suppose this would require a separate Landing site or property website then.
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I’m afraid so. You could create separate single property MyVR websites for each of your properties to accomplish this. You could also create an external intermediate site that has separate pages for all of your properties. This site would need to have a different
og:imagetag on every property page. It could use Javascript to immediately redirect to your actual website once someone clicks through a link. This, however, would be a fragile solution. You would also lose any SEO benefit that you would normally get by posting links to your properties around the web.Cheers,
Danny
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@Danny-Eiden - perhaps I could find a way to attach a link to a different photo within the social media platform?
Would I lose the SEO benefits if I did the pages as subdomain pages? ex: [property_name].premiumbeachcondos.com, where the site redirects to the property page, but I have the subdomain og:image tag set correctly?
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Perhaps I could find a way to attach a link to a different photo within the social media platform?
Maybe! Please let us know if you find anything! If the social media platform supports markdown or HTML, you should be able to accomplish this.
Would I lose the SEO benefits if I did the pages as subdomain pages?
This is a bit above my personal SEO knowledge, but I would guess that you would still retain some SEO benefits so long as the links you are posting have the same root domain as your main site. That said, I really don’t recommend going down this road. Redirects aren’t a great user experience, and you would need to maintain separate web pages corresponding to every property you have in MyVR.
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@danny-eiden - how do I determine what value to put in next to the og:image meta tag? Is there a code number within the site for the photo? I tried the file name but it didn’t work. The default is a photo unrelated to my site.
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@jenny-oest og:image meta tag should be filled with a full URL that points to an image. You’ll need to find the full URL of the image that you’d like to be displayed. This is one example of a URL for a photo that’s being hosted by MyVR
http://image.myvr.com/682dd6fb6d061f81/b377085b3625eb0a/calypso20140214-444hdr-landscape.jpgUsing this image as the open graph image would be done like so
<meta name='og:image' content='http://image.myvr.com/682dd6fb6d061f81/b377085b3625eb0a/calypso20140214-444hdr-landscape.jpg'>
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@danny-eiden so where do I get the full name then for my uploaded photos?
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MyVR doesn’t have a tool that provides the full URLs to the photos we’re hosting. You can use chrome’s developer tools on your website to find the URL of a MyVR-hosted photo like so
- Right click on the image you would like to use and select inspect
- Copy the URL in the HTML. It will likely start with
image.myvr.com
Alternatively, you can host an image yourself by uploading a photo an image hosting service
- Right click on the image you would like to use and select inspect
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@danny-eiden - Thanks - I’ll try that
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@danny-eiden - since the MyVR photos appear in the banner, there doesn’t seem to be anything with image.myvr.com. So I"ll try adding a page with just a photo, not navigated in the menu bar, and use that?
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Hi @Jenny-Oest,
You can definitely try that. The image URL in the banner will likely still work even if it doesn’t start with
image.myvr.com. If you see something that starts with//and ends with.jpg, then it’s a working image URL!Best,
Danny
