How can a link post also have an image? (beehaw.org)

submitted 2 months ago by SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org to c/support@beehaw.org

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I have looked through the app I use (mlem) and the web interface but I can't figure out how to give a link post an image, as when I try to put something into the image section it replaces the link.

So how is it done exactly? Is this some setting, special script or app feature I don't know about? Or have I missed something?

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[-] ptz@dubvee.org 4 points 2 months ago

You can't. There's only one URL field you can use, and it can be a link or an image (or video).

When you post a link, the server will try to fetch the metadata for it (title, description, thumbnail image, and/or embedded video). So what you're seeing on posts that have a URL and an image are the thumbnail images provided by the metadata fetch of the link that's posted.

Workaround is to put the image in the body with the inline syntax: ![Image alt text](https://image.url/image.jpg)

[-] SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 2 points 2 months ago

Oh, hmm, so why on youtube videos does the image fetch sometimes work and sometimes not, and same for other URLs, I assume. Do I need to enter the full youtube.com url and not the youtu.be one?

This is very confusing to me why it wouldn't be able to fetch all the images associated with a URL for me but seems to work flawlessly for others, unless I am seeing it in the body and mistakenly assume it's attached to the URL.

Hmm. More testing is required I guess.

Thank you for the workaround!

[-] ptz@dubvee.org 1 points 2 months ago

Oh, hmm, so why on youtube videos does the image fetch sometimes work and sometimes not, and same for other URLs,

It all depends on the Lemmy server making the fetch. Many Lemmy instances are run from various VPS's, and sometimes sites block IP ranges from certain cloud providers or Cloudflare might not let them through unchallenged. If the server can't fetch the details, it won't have the thumbnail image.

I think it also depends on the instance's pict-rs configuration as well. If the thumbnail it fetches is larger than the max size configured for pict-rs, it won't fetch it. There's some other weirdness with that process, but I'm not sure enough to even try to explain it lol.