3

I am creating a Facebook iFrame tab application that features weekly interviews and uses a CMS to manage the interview content. I would like to be able to post a link to my newsfeed that points to the application tab and will show a preview with metadata in the newsfeed. Currently, there is no metadata showing up and it is just a blank link. How can I get Facebook to show a preview of the link to the application tab, the same as it would show a preview of a link to any website when posting to my newsfeed?

Jeff
  • 103
  • 5

2 Answers2

4

I know this was asked a long time ago but I figured I'll share more details on how I went about solving this issue:

Facebook does not read metadata from iFrame or application tabs. In other words, when you share a link of a Facebook tab, Facebook will override the meta data values of the iFrame page with the Page’s default ones. In order to work around this limitation, you can set up a redirect page with custom open graph meta tags. Here is how:

  1. Create a redirect page called redirect.php with meta data information:

    <html>
<head>
<title>Name of App</title>

<meta property="og:title" content="" /> 
<meta property="og:description" content="" /> 
<meta property="og:image" content="" />
<meta property="og:url" content="" />


<!-- This is a page redirect -->
<meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" content="0; url=URL_OF_FACEBOOK_APP">

</head>
</html>

  2. Use Facebook URL Linter to scrape page (https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug) Enter the address of your app’s root URL.

  3. Use Google Shortner and enter the address of the redirect.php that you set up. http://goo.gl/

  4. Now you can share the new Google Shortner link

Ori
  • 259
  • 2
  • 8
  • 27
1

Facebook doesn't read metadata from your iframed tab, but you can set up a redirect page with custom Open Graph meta tags as described in the Facebook Developers Forum here: http://forum.developers.facebook.net/viewtopic.php?id=96146

UPDATE 2012.05.20: forum.developers.facebook.net has been replaced by facebook.stackoverflow.com. The link I provided no longer works, but there are some helpful related threads on the new forum:

jhiro009
  • 576
  • 4
  • 13