Sharing WordPress post to Facebook shows “Page not found” – possible reasons

If you experience the WordPress to Facebook sharing problem only with scheduled posts, please read the explanation and a fix in this post.

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Since late January more and more WordPress users notice an issue with sharing new posts to Facebook.

When a post is shared, meta being displayed includes “Page not found” as a title, and very often (if it’s set) a default image. See the example of my other blog:

Most users start from checking out sharing plugins. But from what I’ve found out, sharing tools are not to be blamed for.

First thing I noticed was that Facebook pulled the wrong data only when scheduled posts got published. When I published a post immediately after writing it, there was no problem at all.

Therefore I think this is an issue with a time stamp. I’m not sure if that’s related to WordPress 3.8.1 maintenance release from January 23 or not. What is clear is that people have started to experience the problem after that date.

Facebook finds out that the post is being shared before the declared published date, and therefore it pulls the default message for pages that don’t exist.

When I go to Facebook Debugger, it shows that the only issue is with the size of the image used. This might be misleading. The image is not the reason to pull the page as non-existent.

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Updated on 09.03.2014

The issue is caused by a plugin or setting (or a combination of them). Below there is a list of them to check out and change/reset/deactivate.

Let’s exchange information. If you manage to fix the problem, please share it what was the reason, and how you did it.

The plugin to automatically share new posts

This is a first thing to check out. As I wrote above, the issue may be caused by the fact that meta
property=”articleto Facebook.

Try to deactivate this plugin, publish a new post and check out if the problem still exists.

I use Jetpack module Publicize. I deactivated it, but it didn’t fix anything.

The way you add Open Graph meta data to posts

Open Graph is used to pull post data to Facebook. Something must be wrong when a post is being written or updated or published.

As I said before, I have experienced the issue only with scheduled posts, not the ones published from a draft.

Try to deactivate the plugin that automatically adds Open Graph meta to post, publish a new post, and check out if the problem is fixed.

I use WordPress SEO by Joast to add Open Graph. Neither unchecking “Add Open Graph meta data” in the plugin settings nor deactivating the plugin didn’t fix the issue.

A change of the slug while writing a post

Do you edit the slug while writing a post? I do it very often and I wonder if that would cause the problem. Once the post is being scheduled, its permalink is being pulled into source file instead of? post=00000.

Try to observe what happens with posts when you change the permalink. There are two possible variants:

You change the slug before the post gets scheduled
You edit the slug after the post gets scheduled (this might be the problem as the old permalink can get cached.)

Timezone

The possible reason might also be related to time zones. I have it set up to UTC+1. That means that if I schedule a post for 3pm in my timezone, it has a published date set for 2pm in UPC time.

I’ve changed the London / UTC, and then back to UTC+1, but it didn’t fix the issue.

Now, I’ve changed the timezone to London and will schedule the post with this timezone set. We’ll see if that helps.