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1. kerrycrocker
   Member
   May 26, 2011, 7:53 PM

   Two problems with the FB dialog box/page (the one that has "Post to Profile" at top and "Share" and "Cancel" at bottom) generated by clicking the 'share' button:

   1) I changed my blog address from adoptkittens.wordpress.com to adoptnutmeg.wordpress.com. Now, when I click 'share' the url shown in the dialog box is adoptkittens.wordpress.com, which is old data.

   2) Do I have any control over the description (excerpted text) that gets displayed in the dialog box? The first time I clicked "Share" the content displayed was the 4th paragraph from my web page, which is not the most relevant. I've even deleted that 4th paragraph from the page, updated, and clicked 'share' again and it still displays the 4th paragraph content which no longer exists. I shifted other paragraphs around just to see if the 'share' dialog would ever show anything different and it never does. I turned the "Share" functionality off and on to see if it would reset something--it didn't. How can I control this? If I look at the page source I don't see anything either wrong or that would distinguish what would be used for the description, like some metadata that got generated. I know when you have a FB connect app you can control this, but since this is wordpress.com I don't know if wordpress.com or facebook is controlling the selection of this content, and even if I did I can't figure out how to change it. Been searching for hours.

   Thanks!

   The blog I need help with is adoptnutmeg.wordpress.com.

2. raincoaster
   Member
   May 26, 2011, 9:26 PM

   2) none whatsoever. What you can do if you want to control what posts is copy what you want and put that in the open posting box that is associated with the link.

3. kerrycrocker
   Member
   May 27, 2011, 7:04 PM

   So, after much fiddling, it appears that the algorithm that chooses what text to grab for the description has to do with the length of paragraph (or other block element, presumably). It looks for the first chunk of a certain length. I made my key info into a paragraph instead of a bullet list and moved it up so it was the first paragraph of the necessary size for it to be considered relevant, so it is now utilized in the fb share dialog....but...so it seems clear that the first time you ever click the Share/Facebook button (implemented thru Settings>Sharing menu) it grabs the url, page or blog title, description excerpt and photos for thumbnails. Any subsequent time you ever click that button you will get the same data regardless of whether any data has changed on your page/post. The solution is to delete the page entirely and build it again and make sure everything is exactly how you want it before ever clicking the Share/Facebook button, because once you do, it's set in stone.

   The exact order I did it was: 1) create new page with new page title and new slug (copy/paste content from the old one), 2) Trash the old page and delete it from the Trash, 3) re-title and assign the slug you want to the new page you created (because you probably want it to be the name/slug you started with), 4) make sure the excerpt you want it to use is the first sizable paragraph of content on the page 5) test the Share/Facebook button.

   Hope this is a useful workaround for anyone who comes across this problem in the future.

4. raincoaster
   Member
   May 27, 2011, 10:51 PM

   That's very interesting. Thanks for sharing that.

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