Open Graph Metadata

[stffen]

It would be nice if there was Open Graph Metadata when sharing a Pad on WhatsApp / Signal. It would be like:

og:title = title of the pad
og:image = favicon
og:desription = A document that everybody can edit at the same time. (configurable in settings.json)

[JohnMcLear]

The concept of Title of the pad comes from ep_set_title_on_pad
Favicon is super easy
Description might be suitable to AI generate?

@stffen can you provide an example of a pad and what you would expect the values to be?

[stffen]

Sure, thanks for your quick response.

So I created this pad: https://yopad.eu/p/Hiking_trip_2026

And I would expect the following values:

og:title = "Hiking trip 2026 | Etherpad"
og:image = favicon as specified in settings.json
og:descripton = "This is a document that everybody can edit anonymously." (configurable in settings.json)

I don't think the description should be taken from the pad itself or be AI generated. The content of the pad should be clear by the title and the description should explain what you can do with the pad. But as an option in settings, this could be interesting. Also generating the title by AI could be an option if the pad name was generated randomly. I can imagine some if logic: If the pad name consists of 10 lower case and 10 upper case letters, generate the title by AI.

By the way, I would suggest to replace the favicon in src/static with the one in doc/public, for it looks nicer and has a better resolution

[JohnMcLear]

I understand. So:

1. Parse title from URL.
2. Description isn't related to content so can be generic. Question, how does this work with i18n? See below conversation
3. Noted. Workable to modernize favicon.

Sounds good?

I18n note to self

og:locale and og:locale:alternate: Use to define the primary language. For multilingual pages, add og:locale:alternate tags for each supported language.

Gonna be a decent amount of html to support 100+ languages... Necessary evil?

[stffen]

Sounds very good, looking forward to share etherpads in style!

Concerning i18n I think it should be just the language of the pad, either the default or as selected by the creator of the pad, so not so much hmtl. I think og:locale does not help, but I am no expert in this area.

[JohnMcLear]

Ready for testing if you fancy testing it you can checkout the branch and restart, it will take a while to land in dev then a few more weeks to land in master/release

[JohnMcLear]

I requested approval of the PR from @SamTV12345

[SamTV12345]

I will check after work. My current work day is quite a lot up to 10 hours a day 😅.

[JohnMcLear]

No rush.. given today's vulnerability announcement I think we are all working a long day ;)

[stffen]

Thank you for implementing this!

Is there a way to edit the description text? I did not find an entry in the settings.

Also, the default description is in English and I don't think it should be. How does etherpad determine the language of the description text?

[JohnMcLear]

Afaik

  "customLocaleStrings": {                                                                                                                              
    "en": { "pad.social.description": "My custom blurb" },                                                                                              
    "de": { "pad.social.description": "Mein eigener Text" }       
  } ...

is the initial design but perhaps this should be in de.json for example.. I'll send a PR for that

Crawlers don't send Accept Language. I'll look into best practice for it.