JNews - Meta Header

Your article reaches social media with text written for another screen

On your news site, a headline comes with its section, the date, the standfirst and the rest of the front page. When a reader shares that story, all that context disappears. What remains is a card with a title, a few lines and an image, mixed in with friends' photos and ads.

That card is built from data usually written with something else in mind. The excerpt and featured image you prepared for your site end up also working as the ad for your story on every network, even if nobody reviewed them with that job in mind.

JNews Meta Header, the JNews theme plugin for Open Graph and Twitter Cards tags, gives you a place to separate the two. You can write which title, description and image appear when a post or page is shared, and leave what shows on your site untouched.

Six fields per post, and a fallback if you leave them empty

The Social Meta box is split into two groups of three fields each:

• Facebook Share Title and Twitter Share Title: if left empty, they use the post or page title.
• Facebook Share Description and Twitter Share Description: if left empty, they use the excerpt.
• Facebook Share Image and Twitter Share Image: if left empty, they use the featured image.

That fallback saves you work, because you are not forced to fill in everything on every story.

The two groups are independent, so a single story can carry one angle for Facebook and another for Twitter. The Facebook image has a minimum size of 200 by 200 pixels.

Only one source of tags for each page

Before activating it, check who already generates those tags on your site. Two plugins that output the same tags can leave duplicate data on the page.

The same applies to your SEO plugin. If you use one and already control the social title and image there, you may not need Meta Header.

To check, open the source code of a published post and search for og:title. It should appear only once.

An already shared card may keep showing the previous image

Changing a field does not always show up instantly. Facebook caches images by their URL and does not update them unless that URL changes, so to replace a published image it is best to upload it as a new file, with a different URL. Its Sharing Debugger shows which tags it reads and lets you have the page read again.

Meta Header is limited to tags. Automatic posting to social networks and message scheduling are not among its features. Share buttons belong to another theme add-on, JNews Social Share. To see the real card, use the debugger.

Installation and the first card

Meta Header is one of the JNews built-in plugins and is installed from its dashboard, so you need the theme active.

1. Go to JNews Dashboard and open Plugin.
2. Install and activate JNews Meta Header.
3. Edit a post you want to promote.
4. Scroll to the end of the editor and find the Social Meta box. It appears in both the classic and block editors.
5. Fill in the Facebook and Twitter fields you want to customize.
6. Save, open the debugger and review the result.

If your outlet already handles social media from SEO

Meta Header only makes sense inside JNews. If you prefer to keep titles, metadata and social in one tool, Yoast SEO Premium lets you change the image, title and description for social media on each piece of content.

Rank Math includes a preview of how the result will look when shared. The catalog also includes SEOPress Pro.

The newsroom and those six fields

Do I have to fill in all six fields on every story?

No. Each empty field falls back to the title, excerpt or featured image.

Does it change the headline shown on my site?

These fields are for sharing on social media. Your post title is edited separately, in its usual place.

Does it work with the block editor?

Yes. The Social Meta box appears at the bottom, in the JNews metabox area.

What size should the image be?

For Facebook, at least 200 by 200 pixels. For Twitter, try the same image and review the result.