Articles need to designate an image that is used by meta tags and eventually the mobile apps

[nathan-osman]

Each article should have a designated image that is used for:

• the 2buntu Android and Ubuntu Touch apps
• integration into the API
• countless "embedded data" protocols (like Open Graph)

This can be done in one of two ways and I'm open to discussion of the merits and disadvantages of each:

• by adding a model field
• by having the Markdown parser flag the first embedded image as the article's "canonical" image

[nitstorm]

Here is another question that I'd like to add - What do we do if the article doesn't have/need an image? Do we make it mandatory for every post to have an image? And if the article doesn't need an image or screenshot, do we find some image relevant to the topic just for the sake of adding them?

Also I have an idea to float - let's have some stock images for each category type. If the blog post doesn't have/need an image, we could use the stock image of its category.

Also, I would vote for secret option number 3 - the first embedded image (if any) to be marked as the article's canonical image if no image is supplied in a model field. What I'm trying to say is:

if blogpost has image:
    if post has featured-image:
        use featured-image
    else:
        use first-image
else:
    use category-stock-image

[nathan-osman]

I like your idea!

I might make one slight adjustment though - since categories don't currently have an image, we can't easily make images for categories a requirement. So we would need one additional image for the entire blog. In short:

if blogpost has image:
    if post has featured-image:
        use featured-image
    else:
        use first-image
else:
    if category has stock-image:
        use category-stock-image
    else:
        use site-wide-image

[nathan-osman]

Also, is there a standard size or aspect ratio for these images? I guess I'll have to do some research.

[nitstorm]

Sounds good 👍

On 9 August 2014 22:02, Nathan Osman [email protected] wrote:

I like your idea!

I might make one slight adjustment though - since categories don't
currently have an image, we can't easily make images for categories a
requirement. So we would need one additional image for the entire blog. In
short:

if blogpost has image:
if post has featured-image:
use featured-image
else:
use first-image
else:
if category has stock-image:
use category-stock-image
else:
use site-wide-image

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[nathan-osman]

I've requested approval of 2buntu.com for Twitter Summary Cards. I received an email claiming "We've activated the summary card for 2buntu.com" but the expanded summaries aren't showing up yet.

[nathan-osman]

Update: the expanded summaries are showing up now, but I'm getting tired of seeing the category images over and over again. I'm going to add an "image" field to the Article model that is optional. If specified, the image will be used in place of the category image. Otherwise the category image will be used as a fallback.

The new "image" field will be a foreign key to the Image model, so the image will have to be uploaded through the existing image upload button. There are a few bits of JavaScript that will need to be completed before this works. I'll reference this issue in commits.