Social media icons can display across all of your website content allowing visitors to share stories or posts they engage with to their favorite social network or via email links. However you may not want this feature available on some content.

The following is a brief walkthrough on how to manage where these icons appear via your admin dashboard.

Firstly the social media share icons appear in two main places: Pages and Posts.

Pages

Pages are most often used for evergreen content such as contact and about us pages.

While logged into your website, simply visit the page you would like to manage the social icons and click the “Edit Page” link in the admin toolbar at the top of the browser window.

This will take you to the Edit Page dashboard where you would make other normal content changes. Look for the “AddToAny” option and here you can toggle the appearance of the ‘Show sharing buttons’ to show or hide the icons on this specific page only.

Click update and your choice will be saved.

Posts

The other place these icons appear is on individual posts or stories. The process is similar, but we’ll look at another way of finding the particular article where you might like to hide or show the social icons.

From your main dashboard on the left menu listing go to Articles > All Articles. This will display a list of all article content on your website. This list can be filtered or searched in various ways with the dropdown selections above the list or the search field.

Once you find the story you want to edit, click on its headline and you will be taken to the Edit Article dashboard (which will look very similar to the Edit Page dashboard).

Again simply find the “AddToAny” option and here you can toggle the appearance of the ‘Show sharing buttons,’ this time only affecting this single article.

 

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This is also important for sharing your stories on social media to ensure that your article preview appears crisp and professional.

Creating A Default Image

You can be as creative as you want to be with your default image. A good place to start is a simple document with a light gray or white background featuring your logo in the middle. Facebook recommends using a 1200 x 630 pixel document.

Be sure to leave ample white space around your logo like in the scaled-down example below:

Setting your Default Image for Articles

Setting the default image for articles is very easy.

1. Navigate to your homepage while logged in with your admin account.
2. Click the “Customize” button on the admin menu across the top of the page.
3. When the Customizer loads, click the “General Options” tab
4. Under Upload a Default Image, click “Select Image” and select a graphic from your media library, or upload a new one from your computer.

Once you’ve completed this, any article without an image will automatically use this default image as a preview image anywhere that one is required. This includes article sliders and widgets on your homepage, category pages, and anywhere else that the featured image would normally be shown.

Setting your Default Image for Social Media Sharing

Despite setting the default articles image above, there are instances where articles being shared to social media do not include the newly set default image.

To prevent this, we’ll want to set up a default image to be used specifically for social media sharing. We can do this using the All in One SEO Plugin included with your website.

1. Login to your WordPress Dashboard with your admin account.
2. Navigate to the All in One SEO plugin tab
3. Select Social Meta from the sub-menu

There are two sections here you’ll want to pay attention to: Home Page Settings and Image Settings.

Home Page Settings helps determine how the preview will appear on social media when someone is sharing your homepage rather than a specific article. This could be the same image as your default article image, or you could create a different one specifically for your homepage. Whichever route you take, click Upload Image next to the Home Image field and select your default image.

The Image Settings section relates more to sharing specific articles.

1. Make sure the OG:Image Source is set to “Featured Image” — this tells Facebook to look for the featured image attached this article for sharing.
2. Make sure the checkbox below is marked for Use Default Image if No Image Found. This tells Facebook to use the default image (set below) when it cannot find a proper “Featured Image”
3. Next to Default OG:Image, click Upload Image and once again select the Default Article Image you have created.

Once you save these settings, you should be all set to share your articles on social media.

A great resource to use anytime you’re making adjustments to the default social media image is Facebook’s Sharing Debugger Tool. Using this tool, you can enter the URL for any article on your website to generate a preview. If the article has ever been shared on Facebook before, you can see what the current preview looks like. Once you’ve made changes to your default image and uploaded the new one to your website, click “Scrape Again” to get Facebook to recognize the new image. Read more about this tool here!

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You can use this tool with any Facebook account — it does not require that you own or administrate the Facebook page where the article is being shared. (All changes are actually made on the back-end of the website itself; the Facebook Debugger is used to refresh the way an article appears if changes were made after an article was shared.)

You can access this tool here: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/sharing/

Enter any URL and Facebook will search to see if the URL has been previously shared on Facebook. If so, it will show how the preview looks — title, preview image, etc.

Changing Your Preview Image

You can adjust the image that appears with shared stories in your WordPress Dashboard under the “All In One SEO” plugin. Select the “Social Meta” sub option.

Under the box titled “Home Page Settings” there is a setting to upload an image to be used specifically when sharing the homepage.

Home Image (Upload Image): Upload the image you’d like to use for when the Homepage is shared on Facebook.

Under the box titled “Image Settings” there are several settings that help determine which image to use in which situation.

Select OG:Image Source: “Featured Image” is the default option, which means Facebook will always use the Featured Image as the preview image when an article is shared on Facebook.

Use Default If No Image Found: Check this to tell Facebook to use the “Default Image” (defined below) for articles that do not have a Featured Image set.

Default OG:Image (Upload Image): This allows you to upload a default image to use in place of a preview image for any articles that do not use a Featured Image.

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After turning on the Vimeo add-on, you will be able to upload Vimeo videos along with YouTube videos in any of your video galleries.

Adding Videos

Navigate to your video gallery and click Add Videos. You can now see the Vimeo option is supported for URLs.

After adding a URL just click Add to Gallery and the thumbnails for the videos will be added to your gallery along with the URL and the title.

Note: Be sure to use the plain Vimeo URL and not a URL that has /channels/ in it or the video will not load properly.

Good URL: http://vimeo.com/104894544
Bad URL: http://vimeo.com/channels/staffpicks/85517984

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On the settings tab, in media Sources you’ll see Instagram.

Granting Access

To start pulling from Instagram you need to let Instagram know that everything is cool. Clicking Grant Access will take you to Instagram to login if you have not already done so.

Once logged in to Instagram, you’ll see a notification that MaxGalleria wants to access your Instagram photos. Max Foundry never gets access to this information, you are only authorizing for your particular website. After authorizing you will be redirected to the Settings page and shown the Instagram information you just authorized.

If at any time you would like to remove access, you can do so from the same Settings page.

Adding Images From Instagram

If you are in a new gallery or old, click Add Images. Along with the standard uploading options, you’ll now see an Instagram tab on the left. Clicking on the Instagram tab will show all of your Instagram images which you can now select from and add to your gallery. Click as many as you’d like and then click Add to Gallery.

If you would like to go further back in your Instagram feed history you can do so by clicking Load More. When new photos are added to Instagram they will appear in this area, but will not be automatically added to your gallery.

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Authorizing Facebook:

• Once the plugin has been installed and activated, go to Galleries > Settings using the menu on the left side of the WordPress admin.
• Under “Media Sources” on the left side of the page, click “Facebook”.
• Click the “Grant Access” button. When you click this button one of four things will occur:

1. If you are already logged in to your Facebook account and have not granted access to the plugin in the past, you’ll be redirected to a Facebook page allowing you to grant access. Clicking “Okay” will return you to the Facebook settings page with a message that you’ve successfully authorized the plugin to access your account.
2. If you are not already logged in to your Facebook account and have not granted access to the plugin in the past, you’ll be redirected to a Facebook login page. Once logged in you will be redirected to another page allowing you to grant access. Clicking “Okay” will return you to the Facebook settings page with a message that you’ve successfully authorized the plugin to access your account.
3. If you are already logged in to your Facebook account and have granted access to the plugin in the past, you’ll be redirected back to the Facebook plugin’s settings page with a message that you’ve successfully authorized the plugin to access your account.
4. If you are not already logged in to your Facebook account but have granted access to the plugin in the past, you’ll be redirected to a Facebook login page. Once logged in you will be redirected back to the Facebook plugin’s settings page with a message that you’ve successfully authorized the plugin to access your account.

Revoking Plugin Access/Switching Accounts:

• Navigate to the Galleries > Settings page and click “Facebook” on the left side of the page.
• Click the “Remove Access” button.
• You should see a message stating that “MaxGalleria is no longer authorized to access your Facebook account.”
• You can now re-authorize with another account.

Adding Facebook Images to a Gallery:

• If not already authorized, complete the Authorizing Facebook step above first.
• Choose a gallery from the Galleries page or create a new gallery by clicking Galleries > Add New.
• Click the Add Images button.
• In the resulting media manager popup click Facebook in the left pane. Thumbnails of up to the first 20 images from your Facebook account should be visible.
• 
• If you have not yet authorized the plugin to access your Facebook account a notice to do so will be shown here instead.
• Click the image or the checkbox below the image to select it. Choose as many as you would like. To view the next 20 in your Facebook account click the “Load More” button.
• Once you’ve selected all the images you would like to add to the gallery click the “Add to Gallery” button. Be patient as this might take awhile depending on the number of images selected.
• Once complete you should be taken back to the gallery page where you can customize and publish your gallery.
• To add the gallery to a page or post copy/paste the shortcode provided.

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