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Ogplus for Joomla provides a convenient way to add Open Graph, Twitter Card and Google+ metadata [1] to your Joomla articles. The information stored in meta tags can be then automatically display your site content on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ as shown in the following examples:
Plugin settings
There are four sets of parameters that control how the plugin adds Open Graph and Twitter tags to your site content and depending on whether a single article is being displayed or you’re showing a series of articles as a “blog view”[2]. There is no need to set most of parameters because they’re derived from article settings (e.g. title, image if it is included in article, site name, etc.).
Article Options
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Title | If empty, article title will be set. It is recommended to leave this parameter empty. |
| Type | (activity | sport | bar | company | cafe | hotel | restaurant | cause | sports_league | sports_team | band | government | non_profit | school | university | actor | athlete | author | director | musician | politician | public_figure | city | country | landmark | state_province | album | book | drink | food | game | product | song | movie | tv_show | blog | website | article) |
| Path for article images | This always refers to a sub-folder of the site’s /images folder. The default value is ogplus. |
| Image | Set image. See the section on image processing to understand this behaviour. |
| Url | If empty, article URL will be set. It is recommended to leave this parameter empty |
| Site Name | If empty, the information will be obtained from Global Configuration » Site » Site Settings » Site Name. It is recommended to leave this parameter empty. |
| Site Description | Set site description. If empty, the information will be obtained from Content » Articles » <article name> » Publishing » Description. If there is no information in the category description then use Global Configuration » Site » Metadata Settings » Site Meta Description. It is recommended to leave this setting empty. |
Featured Options
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Title | If empty, article title will be set. It is recommended to leave this parameter empty. |
| Type | (activity | sport | bar | company | cafe | hotel | restaurant | cause | sports_league | sports_team | band | government | non_profit | school | university | actor | athlete | author | director | musician | politician | public_figure | city | country | landmark | state_province | album | book | drink | food | game | product | song | movie | tv_show | blog | website | article) |
| Image | Set image. See the section on image processing to understand this behaviour. |
| Url | If empty, article URL will be set. It is recommended to leave this parameter empty |
| Site Name | If empty, the information will be obtained from Global Configuration » Site » Site Settings » Site Name. It is recommended to leave this parameter empty. |
| Site Description | Set site description. If empty, the information will be obtained from Content » Articles » <article name> » Publishing » Description. If there is no information in the category description then use Global Configuration » Site » Metadata Settings » Site Meta Description. It is recommended to leave this setting empty. |
| Display (Featured) | (Yes | No) Run the plugin in Featured View |
Category (Blog) Options
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Title | If empty, article title will be set. It is recommended to leave this parameter empty. |
| Type | (activity | sport | bar | company | cafe | hotel | restaurant | cause | sports_league | sports_team | band | government | non_profit | school | university | actor | athlete | author | director | musician | politician | public_figure | city | country | landmark | state_province | album | book | drink | food | game | product | song | movie | tv_show | blog | website | article) |
| Image | Set image. See the section on image processing to understand this behaviour. |
| Url | If empty, category URL will be set. It is recommended to leave this parameter empty |
| Site Name | If empty, the information will be obtained from Global Configuration » Site » Site Settings » Site Name. It is recommended to leave this parameter empty. |
| Site Description | Set site description. If empty, the information will be obtained from Content » Categories » <category name> » Publishing » Description. If there is no information in the category description then use Global Configuration » Site » Metadata Settings » Site Meta Description. It is recommended to leave this setting empty. |
| Display (Category) | (Yes | No) Run the plugin in Category View |
Common Options
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Application ID | Set Facebook Application ID |
| Twitter name | Set Twitter name, e.g. @myname |
| Other Properties | Set other properties. Separate each property value with semicolon (;). e.g. og:audio:title=Some Audio;og:audio:artist=SomeArtist |
| Render Type | (Name | Property) Set if meta tag to use name or property attribute |
| Introtext As Description | (Yes | No) Set if introtext will be displayed as description in case there is no other description. |
| Disable In Menu Items | Set in which menu item IDs the plugin should be disabled. Separate each value with comma (,). |
| Disable In Views | Set in which views (component’s views) the plugin should be disabled. Separate each value with comma (,). |
| Disable In Options | Set in which options (components) the plugin should be disabled. Separate each value with comma (,). |
| Preference to use image_intro?[3] | (Yes | No) When searching for an image to use, set the preference to look first in the article’s image_intro image setting then the article's image_fulltext image (if both are defined), otherwise look at the article image_fulltext image setting before looking for the article's image_intro image. See the section on image processing to understand this behaviour. |
| Image (Parameter) Order | (First | Last) Used in controlling the order of selecting which image to use for the meta tags. See the section on image processing to understand this behaviour. |
Image processing
Ogplus for Joomla sets the meta tags og:image and twitter:image in the following manner
- If the setting Common Options » Image (Parameter) Order = First use the image defined by
- Article Options » Image
- Featured Options » Image
- Category (Blog) Options » Image
- If no image has been found then, depending on the value of Common Options » Preference to use image_intro? search for an image used in the article’s image_intro image setting[4], but, if there is no value for the article's image_intro image, search for an image using the article’s image_fulltext setting. If the value of Common Options » Preference to use image_intro? = No then search first in the article’s image_fulltext and then in the article's image_intro image settings. This may be useful if you both values defined with different images—one used in the category blog view and the other in the single article view—and you want to assign one of them, specifically, to og:image and twitter:image. As complicated as all if this sounds, most people would leave these settings unchanged.
- If no image has still been found using the plugin or the article article’s image settings, Ogplus for Joomla tries to find an image within the article content. The first image found will be used.
- If no image is found within the article contents, then the folder defined by the setting Article Options » Path for article images is searched. If an image is found in this folder with a filename that matches the article_ID then this image will be used. Images in this folder can be of type .JPG, PNG or .GIF.
- If the setting Common Options » Image (Parameter) Order = Last always use the image defined by
- Article Options » Image
- Featured Options » Image
- Category (Blog) Options » Image
Remember that Ogplus for Joomla is a content plugin and it can be used with Joomla articles and categories managed by the com_content component.
Notes:
[1] The Open Graph protocol enables any web page to become a rich object in a social graph; this is used on Facebook to allow any web page to have the same functionality as any other object on Facebook. Twitter card metadata is used with Twitter to achieve a similar result. Google+ also has its own proprietary metadata. Ogplus for Joomla—the plugin and this documentation—is substantially based on an original idea from Jan Pavelka of Phoca.
[2] See Joomla documentation for category blog settings and featured articles settings.
[3] New feature for version 1.0.4.
[4] When you edit an article in Joomla, you can set the images for either or both Intro or Fulltext.
