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Jetpack Social: Troubleshooting

Note: Publicize is now called “auto-sharing” and is a feature of Jetpack Social.

For general features and FAQs, please see this information page. Of course, please do contact us if you still need help.

As a first step to troubleshooting issues with Jetpack Social, check that your Jetpack connection is working properly – Jetpack Social will not work correctly otherwise.

Jetpack and Open Graph tags

For auto-sharing to Facebook, your posts must have valid Open Graph meta tags. For Facebook, you can use Facebook’s Debug tool to see if your site has valid Open Graph tags. Jetpack will normally output those tags for you in your site’s source. If you are having trouble auto-sharing your posts, you can first check that you have Jetpack’s Open Graph tags in your post’s source code. It’s important that you check the individual post’s source and not your home page. You should see something similar to this:

<!-- Jetpack Open Graph Tags -->
<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
<meta property="og:title" content="Troubleshooting Jetpack Social" />
<meta property="og:url" content="https://jetpack.com/support/jetpack-social/troubleshooting-jetpack-social/" />
<meta property="og:description" content="If you are having trouble Publicizing your posts to your social networks, here are some troubleshooting tips that you can try before contacting us for help. Before taking a look at the below tips, …" />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Jetpack" />
<meta property="og:image" content="https://i0.wp.com/s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/a8c/jetpackme-new/images-2019/jetpack-logo.png?ssl=1" />
<!-- End Jetpack Open Graph Tags -->

Note that the exact meta tags will be generated based on your content. The important thing to look for is this:

<!-- Jetpack Open Graph Tags -->

If you see that, then you know that Jetpack is outputting its Open Graph meta tags. If you see Jetpack’s tags, but your posts still aren’t being auto-shared, then continue reading.

To find your post’s source page, add ‘view-source:’ to the beginning of your post’s URL. Here’s an example: view-source:https://jetpack.com/support/jetpack-social/troubleshooting-jetpack-social/.

Jetpack’s Open Graph tags are not there

If you don’t see Jetpack’s Open Graph tags in your source, then it’s possible that you have another plugin that’s conflicting. Since Facebook will give an error if there are duplicate Open Graph tags, Jetpack automatically deactivates its Open Graph tag generation when it detects that another plugin is adding them. The most popular of these plugins include Yoast SEO, Shareaholic, and the Official Facebook plugin; you can see the full list of plugins here.

If you have one of these plugins active, make sure that you have enabled their Open Graph tag generation. Some do it automatically, but some of these plugins require you to configure them for them to output the tags. You should check with the plugin author for assistance.

Alternatively, if you want to continue using those plugins but not their Open Graph output, then you can use this plugin to force Jetpack to output its tags:

Always Use Open Graph with Jetpack.

Remember to verify that you are not outputting duplicate Open Graph tags with any other plugin, as that will cause sharing your posts to Facebook to fail.

Jetpack’s Open Graph tags are there but Jetpack Social still fails to share posts

If you see Jetpack’s Open Graph tags in your post’s source code, yet auto-sharing to Facebook still failed, the next step would be to use Facebook’s Debug tool to see if there are any error messages. It may be that a plugin that is not on the list mentioned above or even your theme is outputting duplicate Open Graph tags. Feel free to contact us to help you interpret the results.

The same applies to posting to Tumblr and LinkedIn – the next step here is to check to see if duplicate Open Graph tags are being added to your site. You may be able to see duplicate Open Graph tags in your post’s source code (see ‘Jetpack and Open Graph tags’ above for more on this). The exact meta tags will be different depending on the plugin or theme that may be adding these tags to your source code, but all should mention open graph tags.

Are your connections global?

If you have multiple users who share posts on your site, your social media connections will need to be global. If they aren’t, only the user who made the social media connection will be able to auto-share posts to social media.

Posts still not sharing after that?

If your posts are still not being auto-shared, you can test posting the link directly to the social media page in question. If it fails, there is a general issue not related to Jetpack Social, and the best step would be to reach out to the social media platform in question.

Facebook is showing the wrong image

Facebook depends on the Open Graph tags to choose which image it will display for any auto-shared post. Jetpack will give several options to Facebook, including any Featured Image or Post thumbnail your post might have, as well as any other images found in your post. It is up to Facebook, however, to decide which image they will display. Also, Facebook requires that any image be at least 200px by 200px in size, and in fact, they recommend images that are at least 1200px by 630px. For more detail about Facebook’s suggested image size, take a look at their support document. If your post’s images are too small, their Debug tool will indicate that.

My site uses an Internationalized Domain Name

There is a known issue with sites that have an IDN. If your site uses an IDN, using Jetpack Social to auto-share posts to Facebook will fail.

Using a Post Duplicator

If you use a plugin to duplicate your posts, you could run into issues, because as well as duplicating the post content, it will likely also duplicate the post meta that tells Jetpack that the post has already been auto-shared with Jetpack Social, so when you publish the new post, it will fail.

There are several possible solutions to this:

  1. Don’t start from a published post. Duplicate a draft post.
  2. If the plugin includes an option like “Don’t duplicate post meta” – enable that option.
  3. If the plugin doesn’t include that option, ask the plugin author if they included a filter to prevent duplicating the post meta.
  4. If there is no filter, ask the plugin author to exclude all post meta containing the ⁠⁠⁠⁠_wpas⁠⁠⁠⁠ string from ever being duplicated.

Auto-Sharing to a Facebook Profile

Third-party tools can no longer share posts automatically to Facebook Profiles. This includes Jetpack Social’s auto-sharing feature. You’ll either need to share your posts manually to your Facebook Profile after publishing or convert your Facebook Profile to a Facebook Page. If you’re not sure what the difference is between a Page and a Profile, here’s Facebook’s explanation.

For more information about troubleshooting your Facebook connection, take a look at the Jetpack Social: Facebook support page.

Unable to make an initial connection

If you are unable to make the initial social media connection, try clearing your browser cache and cookies. Failing that, try resetting the connection (disconnecting the social media connection, then reconnecting). You may also need to cycle the authorization of the WordPress app (meaning disconnecting and reconnecting any app authorizations from within the social media page itself).

500 Status code

If you encounter a 500 notice when trying to connect or modify a Jetpack Social connection, then it’s likely that your site’s Jetpack connection has been interrupted.

To determine if this is the case, check your site’s connection in our Jetpack connection debug tool. If you see anything other than an Everything looks great! response, then you’ll want to reinstall Jetpack by following the steps here. Please note that you will need to re-save your desired Jetpack options after reinstalling.

If you still see a 500 notice when trying to connect / modify a Jetpack Social connection, you can contact your web host to have them look at your PHP error logs to deduct why the 500 errors are happening.

If you continue to have trouble with Jetpack Social, feel free to contact us.

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