Force Facebook to re-scrape a shared link

If an image is not explicitly provided in the SEO tab of ExpressionEngine's content, Facebook will try and find an image to display when you share a link. Most of the time, this works out fine, but sometimes it picks an image we don't want to use. We must first make a change in ExpressionEngine, and then tell Facebook to re-scrape the url.

ExpressionEngine...

Log in to ExpressionEngine and edit the page in question. Click the "SEO" tab.
Click the "Add File" button for "SEO Image". Technically, we can do it for "Facebook OpenGraph Image", but unless we want a separate image for Facebook and Twitter, it's easiest to just upload it to "SEO Image" and let that cascade down to both.
Select or upload an image and save the page. ExpressionEngine now has an image to create the appropriate OpenGraph data for Facebook.

Facebook...

Open an internet browser and navigate to https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/
Make sure the "Sharing Debugger" tab is selected (it should be selected by default).
Enter the URL in question in the text box and click "Debug".
In the "When and how we last scraped the URL" section, there should be a button labeled "Scrape Again". Click that button.
Facebook should instantly re-scrape the page and show you what link will look like the next time it is shared.

Note: If a link was posted to Facebook before these steps were completed, that link may need to be removed from that person's Facebook account and be re-shared.

Creation date: 6/12/2024 10:12 AM Updated: 6/12/2024 10:12 AM