Open Graph Tags

Open Graph and Twitter card tags are the metadata that turn a plain link into a rich preview when someone shares a Gallery or Album on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, iMessage, Slack, or Discord. FotoGrids emits a full set of OG and Twitter tags on every Gallery and Album view page, with site-wide defaults you set once and per-collection overrides for the exceptions.

Location FotoGrids → Settings → SEO

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What FotoGrids emits #

On every Gallery or Album view page, FotoGrids writes a complete set of social preview tags into the document head. The tags cover the three things every social platform needs — a title, a description, and an image — plus the platform-specific extras that get the richest preview cards.

Tag	Purpose
og:type	Tells crawlers whether to treat the page as an article or a website
og:site_name	Your site’s name (read from WordPress)
og:locale	Page language (read from WordPress)
og:title	The Gallery or Album title
og:description	The description (resolved through a fallback chain — see below)
og:url	The canonical URL of the view page
og:image	The preview image (resolved through a priority chain — see below)
og:image:width / og:image:height	Image dimensions, so platforms can reserve the right preview slot
og:image:alt	The image’s alt text
fb:app_id	Optional. Emitted only when you supply a Facebook App ID
twitter:card	summary_large_image — the big-preview card variant
twitter:title / twitter:image / twitter:image:alt	The X/Twitter equivalents
twitter:site	Optional. Emitted only when you supply a handle
article:published_time / article:modified_time / article:author	Emitted only when og:type is article

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Site-wide settings #

The plugin-wide SEO settings live in FotoGrids → Settings → SEO and apply to every Gallery and Album view page. Per-collection overrides (covered further down) layer on top — when an override is empty, the site-wide default wins.

Defer to other SEO plugins

Setting	Defer to other SEO plugins
Options	on off
Default	off

When off (the default), FotoGrids emits its own Open Graph and Twitter tags on view pages, and automatically silences Yoast, RankMath, All in One SEO, and SEOPress on those specific URLs so you never get duplicate tags.

When on, FotoGrids stays out of the way completely. No FotoGrids OG or Twitter tags are emitted on view pages, and the auto-suppression of other SEO plugins is disabled — your SEO plugin manages the entire head meta.

Enable Open Graph tags

Setting	Enable Open Graph tags
Options	on off
Default	on
Visible when	Defer to other SEO plugins is off

Master switch for the og:* tag set. Turn off to stop FotoGrids from emitting Open Graph tags while leaving Twitter cards intact (rarely useful, but available).

Enable Twitter / X cards

Setting	Enable Twitter / X cards
Options	on off
Default	on
Visible when	Defer to other SEO plugins is off

Master switch for the twitter:* tag set. Slack and X prefer Twitter cards over Open Graph when both are present.

Default OG type

Setting	Default OG type
Options	Article Website
Default	Article
Visible when	Enable Open Graph tags is on

Sets the value of the og:type tag.

• Article — Suits most photography work: shoots, events, and dated projects. When set, FotoGrids also emits article:published_time, article:modified_time, and article:author.
• Website — Suits evergreen portfolios where individual Galleries are not dated content.

Default OG image

Setting	Default OG image
Options	Any image from the WordPress Media Library
Default	None
Visible when	Enable Open Graph tags is on

The fallback image used when a Gallery or Album has no Featured Item, no Featured Gallery, and no custom OG image set. A site-wide branded image (your logo on a coloured background, a stylised marque) keeps every shared link from looking like a broken preview.

Recommended dimensions are 1200×630px — the size Facebook, LinkedIn, and X all crop to.

Facebook App ID

Setting	Facebook App ID
Options	Numeric ID from developers.facebook.com
Default	Empty
Visible when	Enable Open Graph tags is on

Optional. Emits fb:app_id. Required only if you use Facebook Insights to attribute share activity to your account. Leave empty if you do not use Insights.

Twitter / X handle

Setting	Twitter / X handle
Options	Your @handle
Default	Empty
Visible when	Enable Twitter / X cards is on

Optional. Emits twitter:site. The leading @ is added automatically if you leave it off, and any non-handle characters are stripped.

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Per-collection overrides #

Every Gallery and Album editor has its own SEO tab where you can override the site-wide defaults for that specific collection. Empty fields inherit the global default — there is no separate “use default” toggle.

The SEO tab is hidden when Defer to other SEO plugins is on at the site level — there is no point overriding tags FotoGrids is not emitting.

Custom OG Title

Setting	Custom OG Title
Options	Free text
Default	Empty (falls back to the Gallery or Album title)

A different headline for social previews than the one shown on the view page. Useful when your Gallery title is internal-facing (“Smith Wedding — Final Selects v3”) and you want a public-facing version (“Sarah and Tom · 14 June 2025”).

Custom OG Description

Setting	Custom OG Description
Options	Free text, multi-line
Default	Empty (uses the fallback chain — see below)

A custom one-liner for the preview card. Capped at 300 characters in the emitted tag — most platforms truncate around 200 in the preview.

When this field is empty, FotoGrids resolves the description through a fallback chain in this order:

1. The Gallery or Album post excerpt (the field WordPress already uses for excerpts on archive pages).
2. The post content (trimmed to 300 characters).
3. An auto-generated count summary — for example, 24 photos in “Tuscany 2024” for a Gallery, or 3 galleries in “Weddings 2024” for an Album.

The site tagline is deliberately not in the chain — using the same tagline on every Gallery preview hurts more than it helps.

OG Image Source

Setting	OG Image Source
Options	Featured Item (Gallery) Featured Gallery (Album) Custom Image
Default	Featured Item / Featured Gallery

Which image to use for the social preview card.

• Featured Item (Gallery) — The Gallery cover, resolved from the Featured Item you set in the Gallery editor (or the first item if none is marked featured).
• Featured Gallery (Album) — The Album cover, resolved from the Featured Gallery’s cover.
• Custom Image — A different image that only the social preview uses. The Custom OG Image picker appears when this is selected.

If the source resolves to nothing — no Featured Item, no Featured Gallery, or no custom image picked — FotoGrids falls back to the Default OG image from site-wide settings.

Custom OG Image

Setting	Custom OG Image
Options	Any image from the WordPress Media Library
Default	None
Visible when	OG Image Source is set to Custom Image

A bespoke preview image for this single Gallery or Album. Recommended size is 1200×630px.

Hide from search engines

Setting	Hide from search engines
Options	on off
Default	off

When on, emits <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow"> in the view page head so Google, Bing, and other crawlers skip the page. Use for client proofing Galleries, one-off private events, or any view page you do not want surfacing in search results.

Canonical URL Override

Setting	Canonical URL Override
Options	A full URL
Default	Empty (uses the view page’s permalink)

Sets the <link rel="canonical"> URL for this view page. Useful when the same Gallery is also published as a regular post and you want search engines to consolidate ranking signals on the post URL instead of the view page.

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Deep-linked items #

When a visitor opens the Lightbox on a Gallery, the URL gains a ?fg-item={id} query parameter. If that URL is then shared on social media, FotoGrids detects the deep-linked item and swaps the collection-level OG tags for item-level tags: the shared preview shows that specific item’s image, title, and caption — not the Gallery cover.

This happens automatically. There is no setting to configure. The behaviour is on whenever Open Graph is enabled and the URL contains a valid ?fg-item for the current Gallery.

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Conflict guard #

When Defer to other SEO plugins is off, FotoGrids automatically suppresses the head output of Yoast SEO, RankMath, All in One SEO, and SEOPress on view pages only. This stops the page from emitting duplicate Open Graph, Twitter, canonical, robots, and schema tags.

The suppression is per-request — only the view page URL is affected. Every other URL on your site continues to use your SEO plugin normally. If you switch Defer to other SEO plugins on, the suppression is also disabled — your SEO plugin owns the view page entirely.

Plugin	What is suppressed on view pages
Yoast SEO	Open Graph, Twitter, canonical, robots, schema, title
RankMath	The full RankMath frontend integration
All in One SEO	Meta tags, schema, robots
SEOPress	Titles, meta descriptions, Open Graph, Twitter

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Validating your tags #

Once you have configured your settings, validate the live preview before sharing a Gallery URL widely. Each platform runs its own crawler and caches results, so test on the platforms that matter most to you.

• Facebook / WhatsApp / iMessage — Facebook Sharing Debugger (also clears the Facebook cache)
• LinkedIn — LinkedIn Post Inspector
• X / Twitter — Open the X compose window and paste the URL; the card renders inline
• Discord / Slack — Paste into any channel; both render previews live

If a preview looks wrong after a settings change, run the URL through the Facebook Sharing Debugger and click Scrape Again — most platforms read from Facebook’s cache or apply similar caching of their own.