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Sharing a Web Page

Table Of Contents

Simple geometric shapes arranged to look like a social media news feed.

Notes on sharing a web page on platforms like Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn.

Last Tended
Planted
StatusSeed
A hexagon behind 3 circles.

Open Graph protocol

The Open Graph protocol enables a web page to become a rich object in a social graph. Some sites that allow posting (like Facebook), use this protocol (or a variation of it) to display an image & other meta information about a web page when a URL is added to the post. Example of a rich object on Twitter:

A twitter post featuring a wireframe of a sphere.

Common Open Graph HTML elements required on the web page to enable this:

/index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

   <head>

      <meta property="og:type" content="article" />

      <meta property="og:url" content="https://garden.bradwoods.io/notes/global-state" />

      <meta property="og:site_name" content="Brad Woods' digital garden" />



      <meta property="og:title" content="Global State in Next.js using XState" />

      <meta property="og:description" content="How to create global state in Next.js using XState." />

      

      <meta property="og:image" content="https://garden.bradwoods.io/ogImages/globalState.png" />

      <meta property="og:image:height" content="627" />

      <meta property="og:image:width" content="1200" />

      <meta property="og:image:alt" content="A wireframe of a sphere." />



      <!-- date format: ISO 8601 international standard -->

      <meta property="article:published_time" content="2021-05-23T10:00:00+10:00" />

      <meta property="article:modified_time" content="2021-11-11T11:00:00+11:00" />

      ...
Source
A bird.

Twitter

Elements required to render a Twitter Card when sharing a web page on Twitter post:

/index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

   <head>

      <!-- content can be "summary" or "summary_large_image" -->

      <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image" />

      <meta name="twitter:url" content="https://garden.bradwoods.io/notes/global-state" />

      <meta name="twitter:title" content="Global State in Next.js using XState" />

      <meta name="twitter:description" content="How to create global state in Next.js using XState." />

      <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@bradwoodsio" />

      <meta name="twitter:image" content="https://garden.bradwoods.io/ogImages/globalState.png" />

      <meta name="twitter:image:alt" content="How to create global state in Next.js using XState." />

      

      ...
Source
The letter 'in' in a square.

LinkedIn

Elements required to render a share card when sharing a web page in a LinkedIn post:

/index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

   <head>

      <meta property="og:url" content="https://garden.bradwoods.io/notes/global-state" />

      <meta property="og:title" content="Global State in Next.js using XState" />

      <meta property="og:description" content="How to create global state in Next.js using XState." />

      <meta property="og:image" content="https://garden.bradwoods.io/ogImages/globalState.png" />

      ...

Publish date

In order for a LinkedIn post to register a publish date, a time element needs to be on the page with a datetime attribute. Its value needs to be in ISO 8601 format.

/index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

   ...

   <body>

      <time datetime="2021-12-10T11:00:00+11:00">Dec 2021</time>

      ...

date-fns has a function for converting a date into this format.

/index.ts

import { formatISO } from 'date-fns';



const myDate = new Date(2021, 12, 10, 0, 0, 0);

const myDateFormatted = formatISO(myDate);            // '2021-12-10T00:00:00+11:00'
Source
A vertical & horizontal line with arrows on each end.

Image Size

Twitter's documentation details minimum & maximum image size but doesn't recommend a size or aspect ratio (for either summary or summary_large_image). Twitter's card displays a summary_large_image image at 504 x 264px (1.91:1 ratio) on desktop. The only recommendation I could find was from Neil Patel who recommends 1200 x 627px (1.91:1 ratio). This is consistent with LinkedIn's share image recommendation. The displayed image size doesn't adapt if an image with a different ratio is provided, even with accurate og:image:height og:image:height values.

A Twitter 1200 x 600px share image (cut-off at the sides):

A twitter post featuring a wireframe of a sphere.

A LinkedIn 1200 x 600px share image (cut-off at the sides):

A LinkedIn post featuring a wireframe of a sphere.

A Twitter 1200 x 627px share image (not cut-off):

A twitter post featuring a wireframe of a sphere.
A coffee machine.

Design

It's common to see meta information, such as the page title, within a share image. Considering most platforms will display meta information along with the image when sharing, I think this approach is duplicating information, resulting in poor UX (User Experience).

A twitter post featuring a wireframe of a sphere.
A space ship's docking bay with various equipment.

Tools