Posting Projects in Social Networks
Social networks have requirements for sharing links with images. Learn how to prepare your tour so that a shared link shows a title, a description, and a preview image on Facebook, X, and other platforms.
Share a Single Panorama
Use Quick Share to save the current node as an image you can post directly. With Panoramic Image selected, the image carries the metadata that tells platforms supporting 360° photos, like Facebook, to show it as a panorama.
Share a Tour as a Link with a Preview Image
When you share the link to a tour, social media platforms and messengers show a preview with a title, a description, and an image, if the page provides them. The normal HTML template adds everything they need.
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Enter a Title and a Description in the Project User Data. The shared link shows them.
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In the same place, enter the Publish URL: the web address of the folder you upload your tour to, for example
https://example.com/tours/house/. Social media platforms only accept complete web addresses for the page and the preview image. -
Add a web output and choose
normal.ggtas the Template in the HTML pane. -
Click the Edit Template button, select Add social media metadata, and click OK.
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Generate the output. Pano2VR adds two preview images to the output folder:
preview_social.jpg(1200 x 630 pixels) for Facebook and most other platforms, andpreview_twitter.jpg(1200 x 675 pixels) for X. -
Upload the output folder to the web address you entered as the Publish URL, or to Gnome Cloud.
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Post the link. To check what the preview looks like before you share it publicly, paste the link into Facebook’s Sharing Debugger, or post it privately first.
See the normal template for all its settings.
Use a Custom Preview Image
Pano2VR makes the preview images from the start node’s default view. To show a different picture, set a Custom Preview image in the Project Properties, or capture one from the Viewer with the Capture Project Custom Preview Image command in the Edit menu. Pano2VR crops it to both preview sizes on the next export, so use an image of at least 1200 x 675 pixels with the important part in the center.
Adding a Share Button
Share buttons are included in all the built-in skins. You are free to copy those buttons to your skins. Or build it from scratch:
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Add a share icon to your skin.
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Add a Go to URL action and add the following code
Facebook:
javascript:window.open('https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=' + location.href);X:
javascript:window.open('http://twitter.com/share?url=' + location.href); -
Save the skin.
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Add the new skin to the project.
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Output.
Tips and Notes
- Platforms keep the preview of a link in their cache. If you changed the title, description, or image, use Facebook’s Sharing Debugger to load the new version. It also shows what may be missing from the page.
- When posting to Facebook, first test the post by posting it privately. Choose Only Me.
- Rename the HTML file to avoid overwriting previous versions. The default file
name is
index.html. You can change it with Output File in the HTML pane of the web output settings. - To make single panoramas of a tour easier to find and share, the normal template can also create landing pages for search engines.