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  • Blomstra Meta - an open graph and schema.org extension with cards

I am REALLY digging the open graph cards for Extiverse! I had planned to create a portfolio-like site for myself to list Flarum extensions I've developed, but this could also be used on the FoF site which is not being actively maintained at the moment (that will change soon!). As for the Blomstra extension itself, I'd like to throw in some suggestions myself in regards to the card design 🙂

luceos changed the title to Blomstra Meta - an open graph and schema.org extension with cards .

luceos Yes, please! 🙌

I’ve wanted open graph cards for Flarum since I found Flarum. In fact, it might have taken me 2 years, but an open graph extension was going to be what I wanted to try next.

    Looking at everyone having their own taste in what needs to be rendered on such a card and how - rightly so, I have started adding the ability to create Templates and Themes for the cards.

    A theme can hold any variables/configuration, but by default will simply re-use the settings from the Appearance tab. A template can then use that Theme to generate fields. A template will contain a predefined set of methods that can be called to generate the image like Title, Subtitle, Logo, Author and a couple more based on the needs of the default template. Each of these methods in a template can then be used to generate a layer into the image.

    I'm also trying to allow these templates to use the natively shipped FA icons so that's going to allow these images to look even more awesome.

    Refactoring done. Font awesome now also works.

    Next building a better default template and creating a couple alternatives.

    So are these the cards that show up for links on Facebook and Twitter? Or are they what show up in Google search results, I am a little confused still.

      MikeJones Both. Sites usually use or fallback on open graph data if it exists. Including that image. Eg discord also uses them.

        5 days later

        i think this extension will be very useful since you are developing it 😃

        we want to completely switch to this whenever it is out, and will we able to completely relay on new extension ? we dont want to use any other seo extension if this satisfies all the needs

        1. can we expect any SEO fix for "near?" = canonical url issue
        2. custom page title and description where post title can be different and for seo purpose we can add different title : like Yoast SEO | is there any possibility to define page tittle at admin level for all pages like yoast seo ?
        3. full support to Q&A schema https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/qapage
        4. Best answer count issue - As per the Google’s doc we need to set answerCount to 0 for unsolved topics.
        5. there will be any possibility to add custom page tittle for tag pages?

        these are my Wishlist for an a ideal SEO extension

          Hari thanks for this clear list of requirements. Allowing custom meta definitions is on my todo, but takes a huge amount of more effort. All of the mentioned items seem like something that I'd like to implement at some point.

          I have made great progress and will make a simple first version available as soon as possible after my vacation.

              luceos Sure sir, take your time. all we need a copy version of yoast SEO in our flarum 😁

                3 months later

                It's been a bit silent in this area. Development stalled for a few weeks, then @IanM continued some work on the SEO side of things; like descriptions based on first post content.

                I've been reconsidering the implementation with the graph images and will probably refactor everything. Right now there's a pretty complex solution to allow customization of the graph image which I dislike. It uses gd to generate every block of the image using very low level code. I'm hoping to implement another method of generating these images based off of a simple blade template and then capturing the generated HTML using a headless browser.

                We cannot provide any ETA on this extension, but we'll do our best to keep you posted on our progress.

                a month later

                Could you consider adding this feature "Hide a discussion from search engine"

                  2 months later
                  a month later