[Mitch]

Hey Steve,

Hope all is well. As I am messing around with one of the sites having Connections permalinks ON, I am trying to get the URL to register with facebook. What I mean is:

In the old way (permalinks OFF, I created a separate post/page for each category or company – ugh, the workload), but when I placed a facebook plugin shortcode – adding a Like box to the post/page – when someone shared that post/page URL the proper URL was shown at facebook.

Now, with permalinks ON, if I place that facebook shortcode on the connections ‘home’ page, the Like widget DOES display on the connections home page AND on each of the category or company pages (e.g. /category/dental/ or /company/joes-place/ etc…).

However, even though the URL shows as /company/joes-place/ the click of the Like widget shows ONLY the Connections ‘home’ page URL in the facebook newsfeed. I would have thought that whatever URL was applicable (e.g. /company/joes-place/) would have shown upon clicking the Like widget on that specific page.

How can I make it where the /category/dental/ or /company/joes-place/ URL is the one shared at facebook when I click like from the page that is that URL?

And BTW, thanks for not TL:DR my post here. :) Have a great day!

Mitch

[Steven Zahm]

@ Mitch

I read every post, fully :) …

I’m assuming the FB plugin you’re using is is the WP get_permalink() function to get the current page’s permalink to pass to FB. You are never actually leaving the directory home page, even though the address bar does change so the URL being passed to FB is actually “correct” … btw, Which FB plugin are you using?

Of course this isn’t ideal … so … My next dev cycle, which is monthly releases, will be addressing this by making sure the get_permalink() function is filtered so it’ll return the correct URL when on one of Connections “virtual” pages. A couple related items … the page title will also be filtered to show the current category / entry name as well as the browser window/tab title. I may even use an except of the bio field for the page meta.

These items are necessary not only for this issue, but to greatly increase SEO.

[Mitch]

Ah. That fact the URL doesn’t “really” change answers the why on the link that is shared. On this site, I use the Facebook plugin that was developed by Facebook and automattic.

http://wordpress.org/plugins/facebook/

The next dev cycle sounds great. The “real” facebook URL will be fantastic for some of the sharing features I am implementing.

An excerpt of the Bio field for a category? I’m not sure I follow? I don’t recall the ability to put that information in anywhere? This is exactly the use case I spoke of when I originally made separate pages for Every. Single. Category. It was important to have a description and the great SEO that came with it.

Thanks!

[Steven Zahm]

@ Mitch

Ok, let me explain the excerpt of the bio field more…

When on a page showing just a single entry I’m adding an option to use an excerpt of the text in the bio field for that entry to be used for the page meta. That should improve the SEO of the single entry.

And along the same lines…

The categories have had a description field since I implemented categories years ago but that description has never been used for anything. I implemented the category description field because WordPress had one. No other reason really. I’ve never seen a good use for it either … but … it occurred to me that I could, with some relatively minor changes, make the description hugely beneficial. What I’m going to do is upgrade the category description field to use the WP rich text editor and add two options. One, to show the category description before the list of the current category. Two, add another option to use an excerpt of the description of the current category page meta. This should improve the SEO of the current category page.

Nifty?

[Steven Zahm]

@ Mitch

The good news is that the changes I’ve already made for the permalink work on the single entry page with the FB plugin, yeah!

[Mitch]

Sweet. That is the plugin I use on most of the sites, though I’ve also been testing some (like the share features in Jetpack) which retain the old “share” function vs. just ‘Like.’

Re: Bio. So I use both the Bio and Info fields on records (I’d use a third panel, if one were available, hint, hint) :) depending on the ‘level’ of directory entry. While a customizable Category Description would be a *very* welcome addition, I still want to go on record as saying it would be nice to be able to *selectively* enable the permalink (and then related display of that bio info) that directs to a single entry page.

I dunno, I guess it would be fine to have all the permalinks ON, however I just think the display of the single entry doesn’t look that great for records that have no additional information (intentionally) in the bio or info tabs.

Just my three cents. :) I welcome your persuasive thoughts on it. I think from all the way back to my original custom template many moons ago, you’ve been right in nearly every issue vs. how I thought I should do things. LOL.

Thanks!

[Steven Zahm]

@ Mitch

It should work with any properly coded plugin, so, I’m certain jetpack will work just fine too.

Yep, I have the selective permalink on my feature request list … In one respect that is already enabled, but only at the shortcode instance level. Running the latest cMap with the latest Connections there’s a new shortcode option that is enabled; “link”. If you add link=false to the shortcode, that instance will override the settings and disable the name link. however, that detail page is going to become far more important in the months to come… :-)

A similar new shortcode option is “lock”. When set in the shortcode, lock=true, that shortcode instance will be unaffected by by any query made by other instances of the shortcode on the same page. Useful for showing specific entries or categories that you don’t want to change when, lets say, a search is performed.

I know you really want an additional text field, both of the bio and notes fields do support shortcodes so why not use a tab shortcode to show multiple tabs in those fields?

[Mitch]

Understand, but the link = false at the shortcode level would apply to all records in that page/instance of the shortcode, which wouldn’t work in my envisioned application.

And I agree, the details (single entry) page is very important. Having created dozens of ‘company’ pages (manually, ugh) and using the records’ ‘Website’ link to link to those internal pages (clumsy workaround, much?) :) the single entry/detail pages will be awesome (selectively). :)

As far as the tabs, I had used a tab plugin on those internally created ‘company’ pages, and I guess I should try that within the structure of Bio and Info. I’ll let you know how it plays out.

Thanks!

[Mitch]

OK, can’t shake thinking about this… so, if what you have list in Git for 0.7.8 includes this permalink improvement (19 days!) :), am I also then safe to assume that if I place an instance of “facebook_comments” – on Connections URL ‘pages’ (via a hook and conditioned specifically on the category I assign to these URL pages) – that people will be able to comment on these Connections URL ‘pages’, have those comments post back to facebook, and it will include the company logo (would likely need to be the ‘featured image’ somehow) that I have on that record, the excerpt from the record and a link back to that URL ‘page’/record?

How cool would that be? Does that even make sense the way I explained it?

[Steven Zahm]

@ Mitch

Honestly, at this point, I do not know, but my feeling is no. I don’t think this will work with the Facebook Comments.

Yep, makes sense…

What I do know at this point in testing is that both the Like & Send Facebook buttons will pass the current URL. So this should work fine in any other social sharing buttons too.

I did run into a small roadblock, my URL filter also affected the current page in the nav menu too. It was adding the Connections related info to the URL. But I moved past that. I already have support for categories and a single entry, I just need to add the logic to support Org, Dept, City, State, Zip and Country. All of which is pretty easy since the foundation is laid.

Next up, filtering the page title and browser tab/window title so it reflects the current URL.

I’ll probably have to punt a bunch of the items I have scheduled for the next release in order to make it in 19 days, but, all the SEO related items will definitely be finished and included in the release.

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