Debugging OG Image Issues for Social Media
sathwikreddy GV
When sharing links on social platforms, you want your preview images to look crisp and load correctly. But I recently ran into issues where my OG image wasn’t showing properly on Twitter & WhatsApp while working fine on LinkedIn. Here’s what I learned and how I fixed it.
Meta Tag Order Matters
One key issue was that my Twitter meta tags were placed after the Open Graph (OG) tags in the index.html file. Twitter prefers its own meta tags to be defined before OG tags, or it might ignore them.
Fix → Always define Twitter meta tags first in your <head> section.
Image Size Limits & Best Practices
Different platforms handle OG images differently:
WhatsApp: Requires images to be under 300KB, or they may not load.
Twitter & LinkedIn: Accept larger images, but Twitter prefers 1200x630px for optimal display.
Fix → If your image isn’t appearing, try compressing it below 300KB
Cache Issues & How to Force a Refresh
Even after fixing the meta tags, changes weren’t reflecting on Twitter. That’s because social media platforms cache OG images aggressively.
Fix → Add a ?v=1 (or any versioning parameter) to your OG image URL to force a refresh. Example:
htmlCopyEdit<meta property="og:image" content="https://www.makemymvp.today/opengraph-image.png?v=1">
This tricks platforms into reloading the latest version of the image.
Final Debugging Checklist
If your OG image isn’t displaying correctly, check:
✅ Meta tag order (Twitter tags first)
✅ Image size & format (compressed for WhatsApp)
✅ Cache refresh (?v=1 trick)
After applying these fixes, my OG image now loads perfectly across Twitter, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp for makemymvp.today! 🚀
I hope this helps if you ever run into similar issues! Thanks for reading and Happing coding!
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Written by
sathwikreddy GV
sathwikreddy GV
Seeking to make an impact in the field of software engineering.