Facebook sees the SSL and non-SSL versions of the same page as different. This means that page counts for shared pages seem to be lost.
Your site should still redirect people to the new version of the page, but the Facebook link will be lost.
However, there is a Facebook meta tag which describes the page URL and you can make that refer back to an old URL when you have changed the page. In the case of going SSL, this would be to tell Facebook about the non-SSL version of the page.
In the plugin released for us by our colleagues at appecetea.co.uk, they have added the option to make references on all pages back to the pre-SSL links. This will then retain all your page and content counts for your pages on Facebook. If you started as an SSL site, or not concerned about the links before, then you can leave it to default.
If you want to add this or edit your theme to incorporate this feature you just need to use the WordPress function get_permalink(). Here is a sample of code to relate to the non-SSL by suing a simple find and replace.
<meta property="og:url" content="<?php echo str_replace('https:','http:',get_permalink()); ?>"/>
If your site does not show the image and information on your page when you share it on facebook or twitter, it may be the meta information is not showing. View the source of a page of your site and look for entries similar to this page.
<meta property=”og:title” content=”Lost Facebook shares when you went SSL ? – Oh dear!”/>
<meta property=”og:description” content=”Facebook sees the SSL and non-SSL versions of the same page as different. This means that page counts for shared pages seem to be lost….”/>
<meta property=”og:type” content=”website”/>
<meta property=”og:url” content=”https://wpbusinessclub.com/?p=1341″/>
<meta property=”og:site_name” content=”WP Business Club”/>
<meta property=”og:image” content=”https://wpbusinessclub.com/content/uploads/2017/06/laura-college-190105-234×350.jpg”/>
<meta property=”article:section” content=”News” />
<meta property=”article:published_time” content=”2017-06-08T16:04:09+00:00″ />
<meta property=”article:modified_time” content=”2017-06-08T16:04:04+00:00″ />
<meta property=”og:updated_time” content=”2017-06-08T16:04:04+00:00″ />
<meta name=”twitter:card” content=”summary_large_image”>
<meta name=”twitter:site” content=”@WPBusinessClub”>
<meta name=”twitter:creator” content=”@WPBusinessClub”>
<meta name=”twitter:title” content=”Lost Facebook shares when you went SSL ? – Oh dear!”/>
<meta name=”twitter:description” content=”Facebook sees the SSL and non-SSL versions of the same page as different. This means that page counts for shared pages seem to be lost….”/>
<meta name=”twitter:image” content=”https://wpbusinessclub.com/content/uploads/2017/06/laura-college-190105-234×350.jpg”/>
If this information is not being created by your theme, or a pluigin, you may then want to take advantage of the free plugin Social Links Appcetera, which has been written by our colleagues at Appcetera. You can see more here
Our thanks to Laura for the great featured image.
