LinkFork lets you shorten, and customize how your link will appear when shared on social media, for free.https://linkfork.co/https://linkfork.co/blogs/html-markdown-and-machine-readers/https://linkfork.co/blogs/html-markdown-and-machine-readers/A preview crawler reads your head and ignores the body. An agent fetching your page does the opposite. What survives each, and what to do about it.Fri, 14 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTmetadatacrawlersstrategyhttps://linkfork.co/blogs/crawler-never-got-your-html/https://linkfork.co/blogs/crawler-never-got-your-html/A challenge page, a consent wall or a 403 produces the same generic card as a missing tag. How to tell a blocked fetch from a parsing problem.Sun, 09 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTtroubleshootingcrawlersblockinghttps://linkfork.co/blogs/what-a-preview-crawler-reads/https://linkfork.co/blogs/what-a-preview-crawler-reads/One GET, the first few kilobytes of your head, a dozen meta tags, then a second request for the image. Everything a card shows has to survive that.Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTcrawlersopen-graphmetadatahttps://linkfork.co/blogs/common-open-graph-mistakes/https://linkfork.co/blogs/common-open-graph-mistakes/A checklist of what actually goes wrong with link previews, ordered by frequency, each with the one-line fix and how to confirm it.Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTchecklisttroubleshootingopen-graphhttps://linkfork.co/blogs/you-cannot-change-someone-elses-link-preview/https://linkfork.co/blogs/you-cannot-change-someone-elses-link-preview/The preview comes from the destination page's own tags. Which means only whoever controls that page controls the card — and why that boundary matters.Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTopen-graphethicstroubleshootinghttps://linkfork.co/blogs/og-type-and-article-metadata/https://linkfork.co/blogs/og-type-and-article-metadata/The tag that tells platforms what kind of thing your page is, plus the site name, locale and article tags that do slightly less than people expect.Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTopen-graphmeta-tagsmetadatahttps://linkfork.co/blogs/og-url-and-canonical/https://linkfork.co/blogs/og-url-and-canonical/Two tags that both name the real address of a page, read by different systems. Getting them to agree is what stops your engagement fragmenting.Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTopen-graphcanonicalseohttps://linkfork.co/blogs/ab-testing-link-previews/https://linkfork.co/blogs/ab-testing-link-previews/Testing previews sounds easy and is statistically awkward. When it is worth doing, and the cheaper alternative most of the time.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtestingctrlinkshttps://linkfork.co/blogs/tracking-clicks-on-shared-links/https://linkfork.co/blogs/tracking-clicks-on-shared-links/Click counts and page views measure different things, and the gap between them is mostly crawlers. What each number is actually good for.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTanalyticstrackinglinkshttps://linkfork.co/blogs/url-shorteners-and-link-previews/https://linkfork.co/blogs/url-shorteners-and-link-previews/A shortened link adds a redirect hop, and what previews depends on whether the shortener passes through or serves its own tags.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTshortenersredirectsopen-graphhttps://linkfork.co/blogs/utm-parameters-explained/https://linkfork.co/blogs/utm-parameters-explained/Five query parameters that tell your analytics where a visitor came from. They also fragment your URLs, which has consequences worth knowing.Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTutmanalyticslinkshttps://linkfork.co/blogs/preview-crawlers-and-javascript/https://linkfork.co/blogs/preview-crawlers-and-javascript/Most link-preview crawlers do not run JavaScript. If your tags are injected client-side, they are invisible — and it looks fine in your browser.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcrawlersjavascripttroubleshootinghttps://linkfork.co/blogs/link-previews-in-chat-apps/https://linkfork.co/blogs/link-previews-in-chat-apps/Chat apps read the same tags with different priorities, and Slack is the one that actually respects your HTTP caching headers.Sun, 19 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTslackchatopen-graphhttps://linkfork.co/blogs/twitter-cards-explained/https://linkfork.co/blogs/twitter-cards-explained/You need one twitter tag, not a duplicate set. It falls back to Open Graph for everything else — and it uses name, not property.Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtwitter-cardsopen-graphmeta-tagshttps://linkfork.co/blogs/generating-preview-images-automatically/https://linkfork.co/blogs/generating-preview-images-automatically/Three approaches — build-time, on-demand, and one static image per site. Which to pick depends on how many pages you have.Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTautomationimagesbuildhttps://linkfork.co/blogs/designing-an-og-image/https://linkfork.co/blogs/designing-an-og-image/Cards render at roughly a third of the size you design them at. Four rules for text, contrast and margins that follow from that.Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTdesignimagesopen-graphhttps://linkfork.co/blogs/writing-preview-titles-and-descriptions/https://linkfork.co/blogs/writing-preview-titles-and-descriptions/A card's title has room for roughly eight words and its description for fewer than you think. Front-load, and stop repeating yourself.Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcopywritingopen-graphctrhttps://linkfork.co/blogs/how-to-test-a-link-preview-before-sharing/https://linkfork.co/blogs/how-to-test-a-link-preview-before-sharing/Check the raw HTML with curl, then the platform's debug tool. Two steps, in that order, and they catch different failures.Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtestingworkflowopen-graphhttps://linkfork.co/blogs/how-to-refresh-a-cached-link-preview/https://linkfork.co/blogs/how-to-refresh-a-cached-link-preview/Use the platform's own debug tool to force a re-fetch, and change the image filename. Why one without the other often fails.Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTcachetroubleshootingworkflowhttps://linkfork.co/blogs/why-your-link-preview-shows-the-wrong-image/https://linkfork.co/blogs/why-your-link-preview-shows-the-wrong-image/Almost always a cache. The platform built a card once, kept it, and your edits since then are invisible to it.Sun, 12 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTtroubleshootingcacheopen-graphhttps://linkfork.co/blogs/open-graph-image-size/https://linkfork.co/blogs/open-graph-image-size/1200 by 630 pixels, under about a megabyte, PNG or JPEG. Why that shape, and what breaks when you use something else.Sat, 11 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTopen-graphimagesdimensionshttps://linkfork.co/blogs/what-is-open-graph/https://linkfork.co/blogs/what-is-open-graph/Open Graph is a handful of meta tags that tell other sites how to display your link. Four of them do almost all the work.Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTopen-graphmeta-tagsbasicshttps://linkfork.co/blogs/previews-for-pages-that-are-not-articles/https://linkfork.co/blogs/previews-for-pages-that-are-not-articles/Homepages, docs, product pages and app screens each need a different approach — and for some of them one site-level card is the right answer.Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTopen-graphstrategyimages