Facebook “excerpt” on a cloned post

  • Resolved PolyWogg

    (@polywogg)


    4 years, 1 month ago

    I’m seeing an odd interaction between YOAST, excerpts, and Facebook. I use YOast and have for some time. I frequently am doing reviews and things based on earlier post formats, so I often just use the NEW DRAFT feature to duplicate a previous review, change all the images and texts, and then post the new review which I then share to FB.

    So you know how FB sometimes “caches” your info and shows it to you even when you’ve edited a post? Like where you’ve posted something, shared it on FB, FB grabbed the title, picture and excerpt, and shared it. Later you realize it was the wrong image, for example, you have to go back and tell FB to “rescrape” the page to update the content. The URL is the same and FB wants to share the old cache until you tell it not to.

    Well, I’m getting the same thing with DUPLICATED posts…I created a review for Star Trek Picard Season 1:

    https://polywogg.ca/star-trek-picard-season-1-pwtvr00013/

    I then later used NEW DRAFT to create a copy of that, wrote a review for Star Trek Enterprise Season 1:

    https://polywogg.ca/star-trek-enterprise-season-1-pwtvr00014/

    I don’t write manual excerpts, they’re autogenerated. But somehow, when I share the second link to FB, it scrapes the info correctly for the title AND the images (so it’s not the normal FB cache problem) BUT it is pasting the excerpt from the first link.

    That seems like a WordPress problem, but I don’t see how it can be a regular caching problem. I have Litespeed Cache FWIW. It’s a new post, totally different URL, changed all the content, the Excerpt fields are blank, but somewhere between:

    a. YOAST and New Draft
    b. WordPress Excerpts
    c. Litespeed Cache
    d. Facebook pasting

    It is inserting the OLD excerpt. I thought at first it was my browser cache but others see the wrong preview too.

    Any thoughts?

    Paul

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Thread Starter PolyWogg

    (@polywogg)

    Curiouser and curiouser. Disabled LS, put in a manual excerpt, cleared browser cache, forced rescrape of post — excerpt doesn’t update, still thinks it’s the old one.

    If I can’t fix this, regardless of where in teh workflow the problem lies, it will mean dropping the plugin, it’s useless to duplicate a post that I can’t share properly…

    P.

    Hi @polywogg,

    Thanks for explaining the issue. The %%excerpt%% snippet variable is auto-generated and takes the first words from the text of the current post. The %%excerpt_only%% snippet variable gets replaced by the post excerpt you manually enter, so that would not be updated after you duplicate a post.

    Which Yoast excerpt snippet variable are you using in the duplicated post? Can you confirm that the first text on the page is different when you publish the post?

    We also see that you’re using an excerpt plugin, so there might be a conflict.

    Just to be sure, you can do a test to see if this still happens if you?deactivate all non-Yoast plugins and switch to a standard theme?like?Twenty Nineteen.?

    We recommend doing this on a staging site or using the?Health Check & Troubleshooting?plugin.

    We have a step-by-step guide here:?How to check for plugin conflicts.

    Thread Starter PolyWogg

    (@polywogg)

    Thanks, I think. If you had actually clicked on the links, you would have seen that they are in fact two completely different pages with different content throughout.

    I have disabled everything, set to Twenty themes, cleared FB debug, cleared browser cache, site cache is already off and cleared. Tried it again with completely new “copy” of a post, same result.

    Whatever Yoast is doing in the background, it is copying the excerpt somehow when it is duplicated and when I share it to FB, it is remembering the OLD excerpt. I had to create a whole new post to avoid it. I’ve even tried creating new manual excerpts, and the YOast duplicated post ignores it.

    PolyWogg

    Thread Starter PolyWogg

    (@polywogg)

    The part that is really confusing is that in the YOAST settings, I have it copy title, content, FI, template, format, and menu order. I do NOT have it even copy the excerpt. Somehow the excerpt is still going with it though.

    Thread Starter PolyWogg

    (@polywogg)

    Long rabbit hole, looks like a conflict between YOAST and OPEN GRAPHITE. I think, but cannot be sure, that OG is telling FB what the post is (a semi-permanent token) and when YOAST duplicates a post, it takes that token setting with it.

    PolyWogg

    Plugin Author Enrico Battocchi

    (@lopo)

    Hi @polywogg,
    probably the Open Graphite plugin sets a custom field to keep track if the post has been already shared on social media. Yoast Duplicate Post copies this custom field so the resulting copy is believed to be already posted as well.
    You would probably be able to fix this by inserting the name of the custom field in the “Do not copy these fields” textbox in the Duplicate Post settings: so our suggestion is to contact the Open Graphite support team to explain the issue and ask for the name of the custom field.
    They could also enforce compatibility with Yoast Duplicate Post out-of-the-box by using this filter to prevent the copying of the custom field automatically.

    We hope this helps!

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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