When URLs are shared on social media a rich preview of the content may be generated to give the URL context. The goal of this module is to encourage CMS users to be aware of how their content will appear when shared, and give them tools to customise this appearance.
- SilverStripe ^4.0
- SilverStripe Opengraph module
See the Packagist listing and composer installation instructions.
$ composer require jonom/silverstripe-share-care- Flush manifests by visiting /dev/build
With the module installed you should find a Share tab on all pages which shows you roughly what each page will look like when shared on social media. The preview is based upon the output of the Opengraph module, so your configuration of that module will be reflected here.
To add share previews to other DataObject classes, just add the
ShareCare extension to them. Example:
---
Name: mysharecare
After: 'opengraphextensions'
---
MyDataObject:
extensions:
- JonoM\ShareCare\ShareCareSee the SilverStripe documentation for more info on extensions.
You can configure the Opengraph module to generate open graph tags however you
like, and this is what controls the appearance of rich previews on social
media (especially Facebook and Twitter). To quickly configure the Opengraph
module to allow CMS users to customise the content and appearance of these
previews, just add the ShareCareFields extension to your Page class (and any
other classes you like).
Example configuration:
---
Name: mysharecare
After: 'opengraphextensions'
---
Page:
extensions:
- JonoM\ShareCare\ShareCareFieldsThis allows CMS users to customise the image, title and description that are
shown when a URL is shared on social media. You can further tweak these
behaviours by overriding functions on your classes. For example if each page
on your website already contains a Hero Image, you may want to override
getDefaultOGImage() to use this as the default image:
/**
* Provide a better default OG image for pages
*/
public function getDefaultOGImage() {
// Use hero image if available
if ($this->HeroImageID) {
return $this->HeroImage();
}
// Fallback to website's apple-touch-icon
if (file_exists(BASE_PATH . '/apple-touch-icon.png')) {
return Director::absoluteURL('apple-touch-icon.png', true);
}
}Note that og:image is a required property, so please ensure
that getDefaultOGImage() will always work. If your website includes an
apple-touch-icon.png file in the root you'll be covered.
As an alternative to the ShareCareFields extension, try taking the
ShareCareSingleSummary extension for a spin. This opinionated extension
lets CMS users choose a single image and a single summary to be used to
represent a page within the website and on search engines and social media.
It puts the fields front and centre above the main content field to encourage
CMS users to actually fill them out. As a bonus it also hides that pesky
'custom meta tags' field away in the Settings tab.
Example configuration:
---
Name: mysharecare
After: 'opengraphextensions'
---
Page:
extensions:
- JonoM\ShareCare\ShareCareSingleSummaryMarkup for a large image summary Twitter card will be included if a large enough image is provided. To attribute content ownership set a Twitter username in your config.yml file. Example:
JonoM\ShareCare\ShareCare:
twitter_username: 'your-username'Don't want Twitter card markup? Disable it like so:
JonoM\ShareCare\ShareCare:
twitter: falseNote that Twitter will still use your open graph tags to produce a rich preview if this feature is disabled.
You can use these methods in your templates to get a convenient share URL for each service
$FacebookShareLink$TwitterShareLink$PinterestShareLink$LinkedInShareLink$EmailShareLink
If you're making use of the ShareCareFields extension and $PinterestShareLink, you can
include a Pinterest preview in the CMS and allow CMS users to set a different image for
Pinterest, as tall rather than wide images are better suited to this service.
JonoM\ShareCare\ShareCare:
pinterest: true