Works ... almost

I'm sick and tired of trying to get the most ridiculously idiotic things working.

Take for instance Dolphins inability to grab an image or the correct code from a post, or a classified ad or a blog entry and provide that photo through a share to facebook or anywhere else.

Everybody else's product on the PLANET can do this reliably. Boonex and Dolphin can;t even manage to get the text posted half the time.

Is anybody EVER going to fix this shit? Since 2009 I've been waiting,...

Go to this ad in my site and tell me why I can't share this post with the rest of the world...

http://towtalk.net/m/classified/view/2008-Sterling-Tow-Truck-w-19ft-Vulcan-Flatbed-w-Wheel-Lift#.UcEeV5yhjkw

As far as Facebook is concerned, the text shares fine for me, Title and Description.

To help grab the image you would need to use a little php or jquery I think... not sure how well it would work, I could try and put a code together if it helps?

Basically facebook needs to know what image your sharing, the best way is to add to the meta tags... normally this would be a global image ie: a logo... but we could make it dynamic by grabbing the first image of, in your case a classified advert and or any of the common modules... photos, events etc...

This is a standard facebook meta tag: (image must be minimum 200x200)

<meta property="og:image" content="http://yoursite.com/logo.jpg"/>

Nah thought I was on to something there...

Emm... looking at the rest of the ads the description seems shorter and it loads an image.

How about copying the description of this particular ad, then shorten it to a few lines and see if eg: facebook can pick up the image.

Sorry about all these reply's...

Forget everything above... it seems to be that there are too many icon images (on that ad) and facebook gives up looking for a 200x200

I notice you have a addthis block on your page. I also notice you have a module that is not standard in dolphin. The classifieds module.

Just so that you will know. This is what happens. When sharing a link, the site your sharing it with will scrub the page to look for things to use in the share. Sometimes this is successful sometimes it is not.

To make sure it happens properly, certain information needs to be in the header of the page.

This is not the responsibility of dolphin, but rather the module you are using. For example your classifies module needs to make sure the proper thumbnail image URL, title, page url and description exist in open graph head tags for the page.

The boonex modules are no exception. They to should do it also, but don't. I don't know of any dolphin modules that do.

I do not have the classified module, but i did put a addthis block for sharing on the top right column of a blog page and set the page up for sharing. This is the example blog i setup for this purpose. http://www.deanbassett.com/blogs/entry/Test-Blog-Title

Test a share to facebook. I think you will find it works as you would expect it to.

Ok, First you say it isn't Dolphins responsibility, then remark later that Dolphins base mods should work properly.

On the idea that this is not Dolphins responsibility, I'm sorry but I disagree. It is Dolphins responsibility to take the notion that almost EVERYONE will be sharing their content on the major social communities like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc and design their underlying code to do the best possible job of presenting the page in a format that can easily and effectively be shared on other platforms.

Also, I also feel it is the custom mod builders responsibility as well to take this fact into consideration as well. Not doing so just short changes the people that buy the mods expecting them to at least have a base set of functionality, like interfacing with the different sharing needs of other sites.

Between being forced to use the 'friends' concept and not being able to successfully share content reliably from my site has caused me to lose a lot of the interest in my Dolphin sites. These two factors are a real stumbling block and have effectively stymied the continued growth and usability of my projects.

I have been of the mindset that the developers at Dolphin kind of don't think their poop stinks and are constantly bucking the status quo instead of adopting certain things like a solid ability to share across all platforms because they think their product is above all others. That is SO not the case..... Ask anyone who has been trying to get their Dolphin project to the next level over the past few years.

You misunderstood, or i misworded it.

I said it's not dolphins responsibility but the individual modules.

So let me reword that. It's not dolphins responsibility as a core to do that, in fact, it can't. The individual modules have to do it. So yes. The modules that are included with dolphin need to do it as well as third party modules due to what needs to be done to make the sharing work.