Does Alloy Create A Unique URL & Meta Info for Use In Social Media?

You will forgive me for what might be a very simple question but can you tell me if Alloy creates a unique blog URL that when I post into the likes of Facebook for example, picks up the meta tag info, page description & images etc in much the same way that Foundry does ?

I have done some tests and my Alloy blog only shows the parent blog meta tag info in Facebook and not the individual child blog info( indivdual articles ). Kind Regards | Justin

Hi @DinkyPixel just grabbed this info from the docs.

Social Media Tags
GENERATE SOCIAL MEDIA TAGS
Enabling this feature will create meta data tags for each individual blog post. These meta data tags are Open Graph and Twitter Card tags, and will help with SEO in regards to social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc.

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Thanks for the ‘heads up’ @egomade .One day on from activating the ‘generate social media tags’ and providing Alloy with both my FaceBook and Twitter ID’s I’m still only getting the meta info in support of the blog main page and NOT the individual blog posts. On a similar but slightly different note I’m also finding that my individual blog posts in feedly are not displaying the topper images provided and as such I’m only seeing the text in my RSS feed. Any advice and/or support would be much appreciated #notquitethereyet. Kind Regards | Justin

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If you have a URL we can take a look at that would be helpful. Without it we can only make vague suggestions. Send over a live URL to your blog and I’ll take a look.

Topper images are not included in the RSS feed. The RSS feed includes any images in your post itself, but not the Topper Image. The Topper Image is a decorative piece for the site itself.

Hi Adam - and thanks for getting back to me so quickly. The blog home page in question you can find here When I copy and paste the URL in support of any particular blog entry into Facebook rather than getting the meta info & image in support of that article what I get instead is the meta info & image in support of the level above ( blog home ). Your thoughts? Also and after just inserting a couple of images into my blog articles I am still unable to see any complimentary images to support the text in Feedly. Any help and support would be much appreciated.

Please see attached a screenshot of what I can see in Feedly.

Have you inserted your own meta data on the page or are you having RW generate your meta data for your blog page? If so then that is likely what is overriding the meta data for Alloy. If you look at the code Alloy has added meta data for the post to the page:

The highlighted code there is where Alloy has indeed created the appropriate meta data for the individual blog post, but unfortunately you have additional meta data with similar tags on your page overriding it. So Alloy is doing exactly what it is designed to do.

Have you tried other RSS feed readers as well? Just curious.

In your posts it looks like the image comes further down in the post. I assume Feedly is not automatically parsing that as a cover image for the post. Feedly may be looking for a specific image assigned for the thumbnail in the XML’s <image> tag. Alloy does not generate an <image> tag for the RSS feed as a whole.

Hi - the good news is that after refreshing my Feedly account all is now working as it should. With regards to the meta data not showing in Facebook - could it be because I have two instances of Alloy both providing support for Social Media Tags. My file structure a the moment has the ‘Editor’ page as a child of my ‘Blog’ page. Which one should I activate the ‘Generate Social Media Tags’ feature in . One or both ? Or doesn’t it matter …

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Doubtful. Like I said it is likely because you have meta tags of your own on the page that you’ve configured manually or you’re allowing RW to generate those tags. Have you enabled that feature in RW’s Page Inspector for the blog page (click image below)?

If so you’ll want to disable it for the blog page.

Also, be sure to check your site-wide meta tags to make sure you’ve not created any manually as well.

As I mentioned, Alloy is doing what it is designed to do and it is properly populating the page with the meta tags it is supposed to.

Thank you. All works as it should. You were correct in that my site was generating an excessive amount of meta info and by disabling the meta info in the page the blog post is now being served up in Facebook . Thank you :-). Whilst I have your ‘ear’ can you tell me if I can disable the second image in the first of my blog posts - or is this a feature that cannot be disabled ?

Glad to hear you found your extra meta data and got it all sorted out. I suspected that was your problem.

I don’t know what you’re asking unfortunately? You want to delete the image at the bottom of your blog post?

In the summaries view there are two images - where as for all other subsequent blog posts in the summaries view there is only one image. Kind Regards | Justin

This is because your second image likely falls within the approximate character count for your summaries. So for instance if your summaries character count is set to 400 and the image is within that first 400 characters of your blog post, then it will appear in the summary view.

You can decrease your summary character count or add more content to your blog post, or delete the second image from the post.

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Aha. Yes of course. That would make sense. Thanks for all your help Adam on this and the other matters that I raised today. Keep up the brilliant work. The Foundry platform is A BREATH OF FRESH AIR’ and long may you continue to support it …

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Not a problem. Lots more great stuff in the works for the main Foundry package right now as a matter of fact. :wink:

Great. Looking forward to it. A quick feature request from me - ‘support for video in blog posts’. Kind Regards | Justin

That would be an Alloy feature… that said though – You can already do that. Use something like YouTube or Vimeo and embed the video in your blog post. Alloy will make the embed responsive even.

You mean if I copy and paste a vimeo URL into my blog via Alloy’s editor it will play directly in my blog posts ? Very nice. Do I use the ‘create a link’ , 'insert image ’ or ‘upload image’ options ?

None of those. You will need to copy the Vimeo EMBED code they give you and paste that embed code directly into your blog post.

Nice. I got it working OK. Looking forward to the time when the ‘summarise view’ will support Vimeo playback … Justin