Link not working properly

Roger Feenstra
Roger Feenstra Member Posts: 459
edited November 20 in English Forum

When I add a link to a post, the graphic and description used to show up (see below), but now it only posts the link itself (see above).  Is this a problem with me, our online site (sermon.net), or a bug in Faithlife?  Thanks

Elder/Pastor, Hope Now Bible Church, Fresno CA

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  • John Nobile (Logos)
    John Nobile (Logos) Member, Logos Employee Posts: 35

    Hi Roger,

    The Sermon.net site is not serving a consistent preview of itself so Faithlife gives up after a few tries which is why you may have noticed the link took a little while to show up as a preview.

    Technical detail: the sermon page is returning a different canonical URL for itself each time it is retrieved so Faithlife keeps trying to go get the most canonical representation of the page. You can see this by viewing the sermon page source in two browser windows. Look for a line like this and you'll notice the end of the link is different each timeyou get the page.

  • Roger Feenstra
    Roger Feenstra Member Posts: 459
    https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/854683#Comment_854683

    John said:

    Technical detail: the sermon page is returning a different canonical URL for itself each time it is retrieved so Faithlife keeps trying to go get the most canonical representation of the page.

    So strange.  I had sermon.net take a look at it and they do not see an issue.  We even revamped the links,

    Here is the new link I'm trying to post: https://hopenowbiblechurch.sermon.net/main/sermons/20775643


    But it still strips out the graphics and leaves me with just the link (as shown above).  Do you have thoughts as to why this is happening that I might pass on to Sermon.net?

    Thanks, John,  for any info you can provide. 

    Elder/Pastor, Hope Now Bible Church, Fresno CA

  • John Nobile (Logos)
    John Nobile (Logos) Member, Logos Employee Posts: 35
    https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/856234#Comment_856234

    Hi Roger

    In short, the sermon.net "og:url" content disregards Facebook's best practices for defining the canonical url in Open Graph metadata. (side note: Facebook defined the Open Graph standard, so I'll link to their documentation).

    Facebook documentation says: "og:url - The canonical URL for your page. This should be the undecorated URL, without session variables, user identifying parameters, or counters. Likes and Shares for this URL will aggregate at this URL." Reference: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters

    On the first page ( https://hopenowbiblechurch.sermon.net/main/sermons/20775643 ), Faithlife sees that the canonical location for the preview is not the first page that was just retreived since the "og:url" content references a url that is different: http://hopenowbiblechurch.sermon.net/20775643?1475597733 .

    Because they are different, Faithlife proceeds to retrieve the "og:url" webpage and then again inspects the "og:url" on it. If they are equal, then the most canonical version has been found. If they are not equal, Faithlife continues following links until the page's URL and the "og:url" are the same. If that never happens, then Faithlife gives up trying, which is exactly what is happening with these sermon.net pages.

    Consider the following and note the difference between the og:url" content each time:

    First Page: https://hopenowbiblechurch.sermon.net/main/sermons/20775643
    <meta property="og:url" content="http://hopenowbiblechurch.sermon.net/20775643?1475597733" />

    Second Page: http://hopenowbiblechurch.sermon.net/20775643?1475597733 (this link is from the og:url on the first page)
    <meta property="og:url" content="http://hopenowbiblechurch.sermon.net/20775643?1475597782" />

    Third Page: http://hopenowbiblechurch.sermon.net/20775643?1475597782 (this link is from the og:url on the second page)
    <meta property="og:url" content="http://hopenowbiblechurch.sermon.net/20775643?1475597825" />

    As you can see, the "og:url" keeps changing every time the page is retrieved.

    It is worth pointing out that there are legitimate use cases for a deep chain of "og:url" links that end at a canonical url. For example, a mobile news site in the UK can point to the non-mobile version in the UK which then points to the non-mobile version in the USA for the canonical version of the same article.

    I hope that helps!

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