New link preview feature downloads huge image files

[Brian]

Just downloaded the new update. Thank you for the new link preview feature and thank you fixing the php notices!

There are some things that could be improved on. Right now posting a link to say http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/25/supreme-court-housing-discrimination_n_7471048.html
forces users to download a huge 2000px by 1000px image file which gets shrunk down to 200 by 100 in the preview. That’s a big file to download especially for a mobile device. Just imagine 10 status updates like that on one page and how slow it could be.

Secondly, it would be great if it operated more like Facebook and you can disable the image preview by hitting an x somewhere. Something like that would also allow for removing the long messy link, like the above, from the post while keeping the link preview.

Lastly, there should probably be a little loading icon when the preview generates for a better user experience.

Thank you!

[Brian]

Also the external link should be target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow” and the text description should break on a word boundary.

[Alyssa]

@acroyes I will pass this along to the developers. It will probably be some time before they circle back around to the plugin so give us some time to work on this.

[Lauren]

How come sometimes the link will also pull content in with it (which we love) and other times it JUST renders an image?

One with content: http://devwork.thinkwithyourheart.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Screen-Shot-2015-06-26-at-4.11.01-PM.png

One without: http://devwork.thinkwithyourheart.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Screen-Shot-2015-06-26-at-4.18.39-PM.png

[Alyssa]

@optimystic it depends what the site has in its meta data. Link preview only works when sites are using Google/Facebook standards to allow us to pull content easily.

[Lauren]

thanks for the insight!

[Alyssa]

If you feel like reading this is the guide to add it to your site: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/best-practices#tags

[Anonymous]

@optimystic @tjchester

The next release uses smaller image sizes.

[Brian]

Thank you!

[Brian]

Can these link preview images now be put in a separate folder, not the media library?

[cannadvocates]

Good point @acroyes. It’s not ideal to have the preview images added into the media library. There’s also the issue of making the preview image link to the article. Thanks for the support.

[Alyssa]

@caasc @acroyes I have forwarded your requests to the developers to see if we can make it happen within the next release.

[Mark]

@tjchester Any update on these requests? I am running the latest version and haven’t seen some of these features added yet. I agree with @acroyes that some of these features would be a nice addition to your already awesome plugin.

Would definitely be ideal if we can paste a URL in and then delete it but still have the preview image and meta snippet show, similar to Facebook. Much cleaner this way. Interestingly enough I can use your edit activity plugin to manually delete the URL after publishing an update and the preview image and meta snippet still shows. Would be more functional if it can be deleted before hitting the post update button, again like Facebook.

I think it would be cool too (though not as important to me as the above feature) if there was an option on the plugin settings page or custom function so we can if preferred change the image folder to something other than the uploads folder. I think having this option will be beneficial to some. However, for those who do not enable this option, it would not be ideal to not have the ability to manage images via the media folder. @caasc, why do you feel it isn’t ideal to have the preview images added into the media library? I’m curious because I personally like having this ability.

[Mark]

@michael, @tjchester Is it possible to incorporate into your plugin the ability where images automatically delete when a post is deleted from the activity stream? As it is set up now, when a member deletes a post from the activity stream, the attached image/images are left behind on the server. WordPress creates an excessive amount for each one uploaded so over time these unattached images will add up and waste disk space plus increase site backup time. I think this feature would be really ideal and a great addition to your plugin.

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Hi @markob17, Thanks for your input.
I will keep it inside our task list.
Regards
Varun Dubey