Jetpack: Publicize: Facebook does not use the "Excerpt" content

[hunterhogan]

Website: www.hunterthinks.com
When I create a new post (not a custom post type), if I set the "Excerpt" field, when Publicize posts the content to Facebook, it does not use the information in the Excerpt box. Instead, it behaves as if the excerpt did not exist.

Example from Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hunterthinks/posts/826086950777004
For comparison, the same post on Google+, with the Excerpt value displayed: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+HunterHogan/posts/Z76xwubhiVA

Until recently, this issue was trivial. However, I have started to restrict access to some posts, including the post listed above. I do not want some of the content of the post to "leak" because of the Publicize feature. I want the Publicize module to respect the Excerpt feature.

I looked for settings that might affect this but I could not find any. If there is a setting, please advise. If this issue is beyond your control, please advise.

Thank you for your time.

[hunterhogan]

I used Facebook's Open Graph debugger, and a few more things seem odd to me.

https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/og/object?q=www.hunterthinks.com%2Fmy-life%2Ftowards-optimism-day-7-21

First, the debugger has the correct OG:Description (the Excerpt). Second, the debugger shows the correct canonical URL but Publicize uses the WP short link. (I actually do not like that it uses the shortlink because it might affect SEO and it certainly defeats the purpose of having URLs with meaningful names.)

Maybe this additional information will make it easier to isolate the issue.

[georgestephanis]

Howdy, Hunter!

As I'm looking at the source of the page in question, this is what the OG tags look like:

    });</script>

<meta name="robots" content="noodp,noydir"/>
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.hunterthinks.com/my-life/towards-optimism-day-7-21"/>
<meta property="og:locale" content="en_US"/>
<meta property="og:type" content="article"/>
<meta property="og:title" content="Towards optimism, day 7 of 21 | HunterThinks.com"/>
<meta property="og:description" content="The optimism exercise continues, and it is more challenging today than before."/>
<meta property="og:url" content="http://www.hunterthinks.com/my-life/towards-optimism-day-7-21"/>
<meta property="og:site_name" content="HunterThinks.com"/>
<meta property="article:publisher" content="http://www.facebook.com/hunterthinks"/>
<meta property="article:author" content="http://www.facebook.com/hunterhogan"/>
<meta property="article:section" content="My life"/>
<meta property="article:published_time" content="2014-10-11T15:51:39+00:00"/>
<meta property="fb:app_id" content="546863875395080"/>
<meta property="og:image" content="http://www.hunterthinks.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cotton-swab.jpg"/>

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="HunterThinks.com &raquo; Feed" href="http://www.hunterthinks.com/feed"/>

But as you can see in the code here, we actually mark ours with a html comment that looks something like this:

<!-- Jetpack Open Graph Tags -->
<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
<meta property="og:title" content="Readability Test" />
<meta property="og:url" content="http://gsteph.wpsandbox.me/blog/2008/09/05/readability-test/" />
<meta property="og:description" content="All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another fl..." />
<meta property="article:published_time" content="2008-09-05T07:27:25+00:00" />
<meta property="article:modified_time" content="2008-09-05T07:27:25+00:00" />
<meta property="article:author" content="http://gsteph.wpsandbox.me/blog/author/themedemos/" />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="George Sandbox" />
<meta property="og:image" content="https://s0.wp.com/i/blank.jpg" />
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@gstephtestuser1" />
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary" />

We normally don't provide OG tags if you're running any of the plugins on our OG Tags Conflicting List --

https://github.com/Automattic/jetpack/blob/master/class.jetpack.php#L133-L186

Are you running one of those plugins? We normally omit our OG tags provider, because if there are duplicate OG tags in the HEAD, Facebook's parser can get cranky and not properly share your content. So to be safe, we back off.

[georgestephanis]

Also, here's the line where we use the excerpt if it exists, rather than pulling from post content:

https://github.com/Automattic/jetpack/blob/8050b59885627a56ebd4b1b14d759ec2ae62d879/functions.opengraph.php#L68-69

And you can see that if the post requires a password, it even changes so it just says to visit the post for more (in the subsequent line) because the conditional on line 68 shorts it out.

[mikeyarce]

In my tests I get the same error - on initial crawl Facebook does not use the og:description from Jetpack with the excerpt, but later on it does. Other social networks I publicize to work fine, just not FB.

[jeherve]

Also suggested here:
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/publicize-includes-long-text-excerpt-and-coding?replies=1&view=all

[richterd]

Hi, I have a similar issue: The first time "Facebook crawls the page" or "Jetpack sends the content to Facebook" (I don't know what method is used here), the post content includes shortcode tags. Later on everything works fine... Proposed solution: add a filter that can be used to filter the content on ones own...

[jeherve]

Also suggested here:
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/publicize-posting-quirks-to-facebook-and-twitter?replies=6&view=all

[jeherve]

As reported in https://github.com/Automattic/jetpack/issues/508#issuecomment-125183772 , this issue also applies to posts that are broken up with the More tag.

[leotulipan]

Just to add my 2 cents: we have the same "bug" on our Wordpress installation. It always generates it's own excerpt and adds [??? more words] on the end. As our blog is not in English this is annoying for our readers so now we are back to posting articles to facebook manually until this issue is resolved

[jeherve]

Also suggested here:
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/remove-xxx-more-words-from-facebook-post-shorter-facebook-excerpt?replies=1&view=all

[blissio]

Any news on getting this fixed?

[jeherve]

@blissio No yet, but we'll update this issue as soon as we make progress on this.

[jeherve]

Also reported here:
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/reduce-excerpt-when-sharing?replies=4&view=all

[sergiopvilar]

I have the same issue, any news about the fix?

[jeherve]

@sergiovilar No news here, but we'll update this issue when we make some progress on this.

[sergiopvilar]

@jeherve I wanna help, could you give me some tips to solve or look for the issue?

[jeherve]

@sergiovilar I'm afraid you won't be able to help here, since the Publicize code generating that content lives on WordPress.com.

[annezazuu]

reported here #2148408-t

[AlbertoTurmina]

No solution?

[annezazuu]

brought up in 2764553-t

[scarstocea]

brought up in #2771083-t

[stappjno]

Is there a working Workaround for this? If we have to live with the more words thing it would be really nice if we can translate it because our website is in german and the english "more words" looks really ugly.

[jeherve]

@stappjno The phrase should be translated into your site's language, as set under Settings > General in your dashboard. If that doesn't seem to work, could you send us an email with more information about your site so we can take a look?

In the meantime, if you wanted to remove this from your Facebook updates, you could use the Publicize box appearing right above the Publish button; if you specify a custom Publicize message there, it will replace the automated excerpt.

I hope this helps.

[stappjno]

@jeherve Thank you! We have set the language of the wordpress-installation to de but that doesn't translate the "more words" part. But we are confident with the solution to write the small exerpt. If there is a such solution, why is this issue still open?

[jeherve]

that doesn't translate the "more words" part.

Could you contact us via email, so we can take a closer look at your site and its Jetpack settings?

Thanks!

If there is a such solution, why is this issue still open?

The solution I offered is only a workaround. Ideally, whenever you use the "Excerpt" meta box appearing below the visual editor, that custom excerpt should be used instead of the automated excerpt currently generated by Publicize. Once that's how Publicize behaves, we'll close this issue.

[jeherve]

Also reported here:
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-to-limit-the-words-or-characters-displaying-as-descrtiption-into-fb-post?replies=1

[jeherve]

Also suggested here:
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/jetpack-posting-to-facebook-with-xx-more-words/#post-8179626

[jenhooks]

2854260-t

[lamdayap]

Brought up here: 2854416-t

[annezazuu]

2883450-t

[jeherve]

Also reported here:
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/get-rid-of-xxx-more-words-in-publicize/

[gregwp]

Also here: 2945568-t

[rmens]

This is kinda crazy. A plugin that is vetted by WordPress as preferred solution lacking this kind of features for years....

[bvolpato]

+1

[lamdayap]

3066467-t

[rmens]

For anyone reading this and looking for a solution. I installed "NextScripts: Social Networks Auto-Poster" as gap-filler for Facebook. This plugin isn't as sleek as jetpack, but get's the job done.

Regarding: https://github.com/Automattic/jetpack/issues/1183#issuecomment-207316449. Outsourcing a basic function as getting an excerpt to the WordPress.com cloud is crazy. There are literarily fields in the WordPress posts database for that. What was the developer thinking?!

[annezazu]

3174542-t

[jeherve]

Also reported here:
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/remove-just-xxx-more-words-with-a-filter/

[SiobhyB]

624643-z

[rmens]

Just received a glowing _Jetpack year in review_ e-mail talking about "social media scheduling".

How come all these new features are developed while basic functions like this are ignored?

[gravityrail]

890187-zen

[BenjiBaird]

Is there any word on this being updated anytime soon? Or even a way to remove publicize generating any excerpts at all for the mean time while a solution is being found?

Seems like a pretty basic bug that should be addressed on a plugin of this calibre!

[jeherve]

We are not working on Publicize right now, but when we do this issue will be one of the ones at the top of our to-do list.

We'll comment on the issue once we make progress on this.

Or even a way to remove publicize generating any excerpts at all for the mean time while a solution is being found?

Unfortunately no. Right now the only work-around is to manually specify a custom message as I explained here:
https://github.com/Automattic/jetpack/issues/1183#issuecomment-240988458

[sarahblackstock]

Requested in mobile app support. internal ref: #260594-h

[jeherve]

Also in 956516-zen

[bikedorkjon]

Also in 969963-zen

[mzakariya]

Reported in 998383-zen

[silentdragoon]

Any ETA on this fix?

[jeherve]

@silentdragoon Not at the moment, but we'll update this issue once we start working on Publicize again and make progress on this.

[julsyd]

reported in 1174076-zen

[cezariuszmarek]

Please fix it or at least let us translate the "xx more words" text.

[jeherve]

@cezariuszmarek You should be able to translate the string in your own language here:
https://translate.wordpress.com/

Here is the (already translated) string in Polish, for example:
https://translate.wordpress.com/projects/wpcom/pl/default/?filters%5Bstatus%5D=either&filters%5Boriginal_id%5D=41085&filters%5Btranslation_id%5D=1329456

If that translation does not appear for your site, could you contact us via this contact form and give us more details about your site, so we can investigate?

Thank you!

[julsyd]

1187746-zen

[brezocordero]

1226327-zen

[Uranbold]

Come ooon! +1 Get Rid of the Content and only Title URL

[Uranbold]

Guys any Developer Documentation on this section? I have looked over the publicize codes and can't find the correct section. I wanna help and fix this issue

[jeherve]

@Uranbold The code behind this feature lives on WordPress.com, so you will not be able to help fixing the problem I am afraid.

We will update this issue once we start working on this.

[jeherve]

Coming back to this, I believe this can now be closed. This issue is no longer relevant now that we cannot use Publicize to publish posts to a personal Facebook Profile, where a custom excerpt was previously built by Publicize.

On Facebook Pages, such an excerpt is not built nor displayed anywhere:

[jeherve]

Reopening as automated excerpts are still generated in some scenarios.

[jrmain]

In response to your officious little stalebot: speaking only for myself, I long ago grew weary of waiting for this problem to be fixed, and found workarounds. I'd be happy to go through the process of demonstrating the problem again if I thought there was any chance you'd be fixing it.

[samjhamdy]

Requested again in #2648546-zen

[kraftbj]

@jeherve

Reopening as automated excerpts are still generated in some scenarios.

To be clear, which scenarios are you referring to? I want to make sure we're parsing out if this issue is with our Publicize code or the situation where Facebook will scrape a site the first time it is shared, but not yet process the og information, resulting in unexpected results for the first share only.

[jeherve]

To be clear, which scenarios are you referring to?

Sure thing! Try the following:

• Connect to a Facebook Page.
• Create a new post with the following content:
  https://gist.github.com/jeherve/72c1f74ac724b994793967d0e66207dd
• Save your post as a draft.
• Add a custom excerpt.
• Save again just to be sure.
• Publish it. Do not set a custom Publicize message.
• The post will be published on your Facebook Page with an automated excerpt instead of the custom excerpt you created (that excerpt properly appears in OG tags, but that's not what we push to Facebook):

[rmens]

I can confirm the scenario in https://github.com/Automattic/jetpack/issues/1183#issuecomment-577072297

[itsTallulah]

Reported in VIP, #102395-zd-wordpressvip - Generated excerpts are overriding the manually set Publicize excerpt in cases of posts with <ol> in their first few lines on one site, and doing it with no specific pattern on another.

[mewt]

the issue still happening in my site. We can't custom this message?

[jeherve]

We can't custome this message?

You should be able to customize the message that gets posted to Facebook by filling in the Publicize description field as explained here:
https://jetpack.com/support/publicize/#how-to-add-custom-excerpts

The bug reported here (an automated excerpt being used instead of the manual excerpt, when you don't use the custom Publicize description field) still exists.

[mewt]

We can't custome this message?

You should be able to customize the message that gets posted to Facebook by filling in the Publicize description field as explained here:
https://jetpack.com/support/publicize/#how-to-add-custom-excerpts

The bug reported here (an automated excerpt being used instead of the manual excerpt, when you don't use the custom Publicize description field) still exists.

Thanks for reply.

I already use this kind of method. In my facebook pages, the content that render to facebook or share to facebook is full of post also with [words number]. Isn't like twitter share. The twitter share is fine.

[mewt]

I solved this problem using https://wordpress.org/plugins/always-use-jetpack-open-graph/ . The problem casue by double open graph (yoast , rank math , etc).

[ady001]

The issue with the nagging text content must be fixed! I can't believe that after 6 years is not resolved.
How hard can it be to have a simple option in the Publicize settings to choose what it should share and/or a word count limit ?!
People want automation, the custom Publicize description field is not a solution, because is only for the WP.com interface.. It needs to work in the site back end as well or just be configurable to less words.

[ady001]

I solved this problem using https://wordpress.org/plugins/always-use-jetpack-open-graph/ . The problem casue by double open graph (yoast , rank math , etc).

NO, it does not work! the long text is not related to the open graph data, Publicize gets the text directly from the article.

[rmens]

Is it possible to bump the priority of this bug to ‘high’? It’s been 6 years and this ticket is still active with complaints. There never seems to be time for tickets with priority ‘normal’.

[JustinFreid]

Also bumping this to hopefully get a fix...

[LondonAppDev]

This feature would be much appreciated.