WP - GMC Open Graph — Documentation (WordPress)
GMC Open Graph for WordPress adds correct Open Graph and Twitter Card tags to your posts, pages, categories and home page, so links shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp or X render as rich previews with the right title, description and image. It is a lightweight plugin with no tracking, designed to co-exist with your existing SEO stack: in its default auto mode it detects another Open Graph producer (Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO, SEOPress, The SEO Framework, Jetpack, GMC SEO API, or a YOOtheme theme) and stands down, so your pages never carry two competing sets of social tags. It suits site owners who want reliable social previews without installing a heavy SEO suite.
Requirements: WordPress 6.0 or newer, PHP 8.1 or newer.
Installation
- Download the plugin zip (
wp-gmc-open-graph) from your purchase email or your account. Keep it zipped. - In your WordPress dashboard go to Plugins → Add New Plugin → Upload Plugin.
- Choose the
.zipfile, click Install Now, then Activate. - After activation the plugin's settings screen appears in the admin menu, under Settings → GMC Open Graph.
One licence covers all three builds of the product — Joomla 5, Joomla 6 and WordPress — so install the build that matches your site.
Configuration
All options live in Settings → GMC Open Graph. The main settings are:
- Output mode — a single dropdown with three values:
- auto (default): the plugin outputs its tags only if no other Open Graph producer is detected. If Yoast, Rank Math, All in One SEO, SEOPress, The SEO Framework, Jetpack, GMC SEO API or a YOOtheme theme is already emitting tags, GMC Open Graph stands down automatically.
- force: always output the tags, regardless of other plugins.
- off: never output the tags.
- Fallback image — the image used for shares when a post has neither a featured image nor an in-content image. Set this so every share always has a picture.
- Twitter Cards — optional. Enable them and choose the card type (summary or large image), then enter your
@siteand@creatorhandles so previews on X are attributed correctly. - Facebook App ID — optional, added to the tag output if your site is linked to a Facebook app.
- Tag attribute — choose whether tags are written with the
propertyor thenameattribute, to match what your theme expects. - Download Key — paste the key from your licence email here to unlock licensed one-click updates.
For most sites the defaults work as-is: activate the plugin, set a fallback image, and leave Output mode on auto.
Using the plugin
Generated tags
The plugin writes og:title, og:type, og:url, og:site_name, og:description and og:image for posts, pages, categories and the home page. Values are pulled from each page's own content, so previews stay accurate as the site grows — there is nothing to fill in per post.
Image selection order
For each post the share image is chosen in this order:
- The post's featured image, if set.
- Otherwise, the first image found in the content.
- Otherwise, the fallback image from the settings page.
Duplicate protection in practice
To check the plugin's behaviour, view the HTML source of a page. If another Open Graph producer is active and Output mode is auto, GMC Open Graph leaves only a short "standing down" comment instead of tags — that is correct behaviour, not an error. If you want its tags anyway, switch Output mode to force.
Verifying your previews
After configuration, paste a page URL into the sharing debugger of the platform you care about (for example Facebook's Sharing Debugger or X's Card Validator) to confirm the title, description and image. Platforms cache previews, so re-scrape after changing settings.
Updates & licence
GMC Open Graph is a paid product (EUR 5, one-time). Enter your Download Key in Settings → GMC Open Graph to activate the licence. Updates are then automatic: the plugin checks the GMC / FuerteventuraTV update server about every 12 hours and, while your licence is active, new versions appear under Plugins and Dashboard → Updates like any other plugin — one click to install. You can also re-download the latest build from your account at any time.
The software is released under the GNU GPL. Your purchase covers the official build, licensed one-click updates and support for one site; for multiple sites or client projects, contact us for a volume or agency arrangement.
Support
For help, reply to your purchase email or message us on WhatsApp at +34 633 168 995 (this number is also in your licence email). Please include the product name and version, your WordPress and PHP versions, and a public URL or screenshot with any keys masked. We answer in English, Italian and Spanish.
If the plugin does not work as described and we cannot fix it for you, you can request a refund within 14 days of purchase.
Everything included
59 real capabilities, grouped by area — the full depth of GMC Open Graph, not a highlight reel.
Social preview output
- Correct link previews everywhere — writes
og:title,og:type,og:url,og:site_name,og:descriptionandog:imageso shared links render as rich cards instead of a bare URL. - Covers your whole site — generates tags for single posts/articles, pages, category (blog) views and the featured/front (home) page, not just single posts.
- Right title, description and image pulled automatically — values are drawn from each page's own content, so previews stay accurate as the site grows with nothing to maintain once enabled.
- Facebook App ID tag — optional
fb:app_idoutput for Facebook Insights / app attribution. - Choose
propertyornameattribute — output the OG tags the way your theme or validator expects. - schema.org image support (Joomla) — optionally add an
itemprop="image"meta tag alongsideog:image. - Custom extra properties (Joomla) — a free-form field lets you add any additional OG property (e.g.
og:audio:title=...;og:audio:artist=...), semicolon-separated.
Smart image selection
- Always shows a picture — a fallback waterfall guarantees every shared link has a preview image even on posts with no featured image.
- Joomla image order — plugin/parameter image (First mode) → category image (category view) → article intro image → article full-text image → first inline
<img>in the body → convention file/images/gmcopengraph/<article-id>.<jpg|png|gif|webp>→ fallback parameter image (Last mode). - WordPress image order — featured image → first inline image in the post body → a configurable default image URL.
- Configurable image priority (Joomla) — decide whether your chosen image is used first (always) or last (only when nothing else is found).
- SVG → PNG rewrite (Joomla) — optionally rewrite an
.svgimage name to.png, since Open Graph does not support SVG previews. - Clean image URLs — resolves Joomla's "dirty" image references and turns relative paths into absolute URLs so platforms can always fetch the image.
Twitter / X Cards
- Optional Twitter Cards — emit
twitter:*tags for correctly formatted previews on X, toggled on/off independently of Open Graph. - Card type choice —
summaryorsummary_large_image. - Attribution handles — set your
@siteand@creatorhandles (twitter:site/twitter:creator). - Auto-mirrored content — title, description and image are mirrored from the OG values into the Twitter Card tags automatically, so you configure them once.
Per-view targeting & content types (Joomla)
- Separate tuning per view — independent option sets for Article, Featured and Category (blog) views.
- Turn views on/off — run or skip the plugin in Featured and Category views individually.
- Title source per view — pick article title, article page title, menu-link (browser) title, first-article title, category title, or force "no title".
- Description source per view — pick article meta description, first-article meta description, category meta description, menu-link meta description, or force "no description".
- Rich Open Graph type vocabulary — choose the
og:typeper view from a broad list including article, website, blog, product, book, profile, music.song, music.album, video.movie, video.tv_show, restaurant, hotel, activity, city, country and landmark — useful for tourism and hospitality sites. - Intro-text description fallback — optionally build the description from the article intro text when no meta description exists, with shortcode/bracket snippets stripped out for a clean one-line summary.
- Remove-strings cleanup — strip unwanted phrases from the auto-generated description.
Value overrides & scoping (Joomla)
- Manual overrides — hard-set the title, URL, site name, description, image and type per section when you want full control instead of auto-detection.
- Disable on specific menu items — exclude chosen menu-item IDs from tag output.
- Disable in specific views — exclude chosen component views.
- Disable in specific components — exclude chosen components (option values), so the plugin only runs where you want it.
- Module-rendered article guard (experimental) — optionally skip articles rendered inside modules so list/teaser modules don't pollute the page's OG tags.
- Category image into the article body — optionally push a category image into an article that has none, affecting both the visible HTML and the meta tags (full image, intro image, or both).
Duplicate protection & compatibility
- Never doubles up your tags — the headline safety feature: two competing Open Graph sets are prevented automatically.
- Joomla mechanism — tags are written through Joomla's own keyed metadata API, so a repeated
og:property is overwritten rather than emitted twice. - WordPress Output-mode control — a single "Output mode" dropdown: Auto (recommended), Always output (force), or Off.
- WordPress auto stand-down — in Auto mode it detects an existing Open Graph producer — Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO, SEOPress, The SEO Framework, Jetpack, GMC SEO API (only when its OG is actually enabled) and YOOtheme themes — and quietly stands down, leaving a single HTML comment for supportability.
- Cache-safe detection — WordPress detection uses a deterministic producer list (constants/classes/active theme), deliberately avoiding output-buffer scanning that could interfere with page caching.
- Drops into an existing stack — install it on a site already running Yoast or Rank Math without introducing duplicate-tag warnings.
Admin & configuration
- WordPress settings screen — a simple Settings → GMC Open Graph page (output mode, site name, default image, render attribute, Facebook App ID, Twitter Cards) plus a "Settings" shortcut on the Plugins list.
- Joomla native options — all settings live in the standard plugin options, organised into clearly labelled fieldsets (Article, Featured, Category, Common, Twitter Cards, Extra, Experimental) with section header separators.
- Zero-config default — enable it and it works automatically; almost nothing needs to be set for correct previews.
Privacy, performance & security
- No tracking, no external calls at render — fully self-hosted; it only writes meta tags into your page head.
- Lightweight, no bloat — a single small content plugin / plugin file; a focused alternative to a heavyweight SEO suite.
- Front-end only — skips the admin, feeds and tag views; renders once per request (guards against duplicate firing in list views).
- Correctly encoded output — values pass through the CMS metadata API / WordPress escaping (
esc_attr/esc_url), so markup is never mangled or double-escaped. - Hardened & JED/WP-compliant —
_JEXECguards, GPL headers, input read through the CMS input API, sanitized settings, and update-download URLs validated against an HTTPS host allowlist.
Internationalisation
- Translation-ready — Joomla language INI strings and a WordPress text domain (
gmc-open-graph); respects your site's multilingual setup. - Per-language site meta description (Joomla 6) — falls back to the meta description configured for the current content language rather than only the global one.
- Storefront copy in EN / IT / ES — product listing and support are provided in English, Italian and Spanish.
- Note: the shipped extension bundles the English (en-GB) language pack; other languages follow the site's own translations.
Licensing & updates
- One licence, three builds — a single EUR 5 one-off licence covers the Joomla 5, Joomla 6 and WordPress builds; install whichever matches your site.
- Licensed one-click updates — a Download Key unlocks automatic updates delivered from the GMC / FuerteventuraTV gateway, shown in the normal CMS updater.
- Automatic update checks — WordPress checks about every 12 hours (with cached metadata) and exposes the WP auto-update toggle; Joomla checks about every 24 hours via its Update system.
- Clean uninstall (WordPress) — removes its options and cached update metadata on uninstall.
- On-network friendly — sites on the GMC network receive updates through the standard CMS updater like any other extension.
Trust & licensing
- GNU GPL v2 or later — free/open-source licensed software.
- Self-hosted, no third-party service — the plugin makes no external request other than the optional licensed update check.
- No tracking of your visitors — it only outputs standard social meta tags.
- Download Key by email — delivered with the purchase/licence email; one licence covers one site (volume/agency arrangements on request).
- 14-day refund — if it does not work as described and cannot be fixed.
Joomla & WordPress
- Joomla — deeper per-view control (Article/Featured/Category), rich
og:typevocabulary, exclusion lists (menu items / views / components), category-image-into-article, SVG→PNG, itemprop image and free-form extra properties; duplicate protection is achieved via Joomla's keyed metadata API (overwrite, not double). Requires Joomla 5.x (J5 build) or 6.x (J6 build); the J6 build adds a per-language meta-description fallback. - WordPress — the explicit Auto / Force / Off duplicate-protection dropdown with SEO-plugin & YOOtheme auto-detection is the WordPress-specific headline feature; image fallback is featured → first inline → default image URL. Requires WordPress 6.0+ and PHP 8.1+ (7.4 minimum declared).
