Whenever someone in the WordPress forums requests how to set up no right click, or disable right clicks, they get more replies than most questions (which get, like, zero.) I…
Category: <span>Tech Tips for Artists</span>
Garden of Evil: A Britt Montero Novel, by Edna Buchanan I know this former Miami crime beat reporter, now novelist, is very popular, but not with me. In this book,…
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Another in my series of Tech Tips for Artists.
It’s not that you’re materialistic, or G*d forbid, a selfish bugger, but everyone wants something. And what’s more fun than writing a Christmas list to Santa? Writing an ongoing, ever-updating list of things you really really need (or want)? on Amazon, so your kind and generous readers will know what to get you for all your hard work.
I tried to find how to add a Wishlist 3 years ago. I even called Amazon Associates, but they were dense. Finally, I found a link for the strange cousin of WordPress, WordPressMu: http://wpmu.org/how-to-add-an-amazon-wishlist-to-your-wordpress-blog/
Works with straight WordPress just fine. The trick was to find where it was hidden on Amazon’s site; as the author says there, it’s not easy to find! If you’re an Amazon Associate, it’s listed under Widgets>Other Widgets. https://widgets.amazon.com/Amazon-Wishlist-Widget/ If you’re not an Amazon Associate, lay down and die. JK.
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This took me a long time to find, but now I have it bookmarked in my Firefox Bookmarks Toolbar, at the very top, so you know it’s important to me!…
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Why I need it
When The Worst Neighbors in the World (TM) live next door to you, and you spend a lot of time online, you need to leave home from time to time. Desktops are too clumsy outside.
For many people, it’s their laptop or tablet or smartphone they take along with them. Tablets look great, but their keyboards are wonky. I don’t want to hold 2 different things at once. I can’t possibly eat that way.
I do enjoy my HTC One V phone (I used to say I loved it), and it’s a great camera and screen. But internet is a little slow and there’s just no way I can work on it, since I’m a multi-tab fiend.
That leaves a laptop. So, soon after TWNIW moved in, I started looking at laptops. SIGH. They all have Windows 8, so no, thanks. (And I don’t discuss fruit like Apple on this site, sorry, no matter how many people claim they’re good for you.)
Then I heard Leo LaPorte, the Tech guy on KFI mention the Samsung Chromebook for only $249. Gadzooks!
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Thumbnails not showing on Facebook
This isn’t a little bug or glitch, this is serious business nowadays! Anyone with the intelligence of a teenager knows 1) the importance of Facebook as social media supreme, whether you like it or not , and 2) importance of images in every blog, site and outlet in the whole world. As we artists have always known. :)
This problem of no thumbnails on Facebook had been going on for some 3 weeks for my new blog of chocolate cartoons, Dark.? Every time I tried to post a link on Facebook, in either my personal Facebook page, or my chocolate book page, I would get the ugly blue no-show icon. Not the best draw for visitors when you are starting a new art blog.
I finally had to find an answer. I had been blaming my theme (template, for you non – WordPress people), which is Elegant Grunge. It has fancy and quite attractive frames around each image. As everyone who does SEO knows, frames used to be lethal for indexing by Google and other scrapers, as bots couldn’t read the text or see images through frames. Now, Google has grown up, and has been indexing my images just fine, so why couldn’t Facebook see them?
But it wasn’t just Facebook who wouldn’t show thumbnails; bitly wouldn’t index images, either, which is on my backend. Not public, but still annoying when I am trying to keep track of posts.
So I started hunting for info on images in frames for a few days, and couldn’t find anything helpful. Either Elegant Grunge is the only theme that uses frames on images (not true) or no one else had a problem with them. I found Fix, on ansonalex.com, to be helpful, and finally started trying his suggestions there, one by one. Here are his suggestions that I tried:
- Installed the Add Facebook Share Thumbnail + Meta Plugin. Nothing.
- Even with the plugin, you have to add another line of code.? I think this was when my bitly links suddenly showed thumbnails, but nothing on Facebook yet.
- The images were named properly, so that was okay.
- Alex Anson at Fix suggests adding 3 lines of code to your header. I thought my title and description were fine, but added this one, just in case: <link rel=”image_src” type=”
image/jpeg” href=”
http://www.yourdomain.com/image/path.jpg“/> No change. (Also, I’m a dummy nerd, I guess, because I wasn’t sure what the actual code should be. Do I keep image and path in the code?)
- Removed the http and the final /on the post url, as he suggested last. No change. Feeling discouraged…
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