How can I set a website image that will show as preview on Facebook?

Mark picture Mark · Jul 14, 2011 · Viewed 219k times · Source

When you share a link on facebook it will automatically find images on the website and randomly picks one as a preview. How can you influence the preview image? When a person shares the website link on his facebook?

Answer

Shef picture Shef · Jul 14, 2011

1. Include the Open Graph XML namespace extension to your HTML declaration

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
      xmlns:fb="http://ogp.me/ns/fb#">

2. Inside your <head></head> use the following meta tag to define the image you want to use

<meta property="og:image" content="fully_qualified_image_url_here" />

Read more about open graph protocol here.

After doing the above, use the Facebook "Object Debugger" if the image does not show up correctly. Also note the first time shared it still won't show up unless height and width are also specified, see Share on Facebook - Thumbnail not showing for the first time