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WP Visibility

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Set a Default Social Image

Pick one image in the Social section to use when a page has no image of its own. Each page chooses its own social image first, then its featured image, then the default.

Updated September 27, 2026

Docs

Open WP Visibility → Settings, scroll to the Social section, and under Default social image click Select image and choose a picture from the media library. Click Save changes. Any page without an image of its own, including the homepage and archives, then shares with that picture. The Social section appears while the Social module is on, as it is by default.

How the image for a page is chosen

WP Visibility picks one image per page and uses it for the Open Graph tags and, on blog posts and WooCommerce products, the structured data. The order is:

  1. The page’s own Social image, set in the editor’s Social sharing panel.
  2. The page’s featured image.
  3. The Default social image.
  4. Nothing. No image tag is printed, and each network decides what to show.

The full-size file is used, with its width, height and alternative text. Meta says the width and height let its crawler render the image right away, without first downloading and processing it (Meta’s image guidance, checked September 27, 2026). The alternative text comes from the image’s entry in the media library.

Choose a good default

  • Meta recommends at least 1200 by 630 pixels, kept close to a 1.91:1 ratio so the full image shows in the Facebook Feed without cropping (Meta’s image guidance, checked September 27, 2026). WP Visibility does not check the size, so choose it yourself.
  • Keep the subject and any text away from the edges. X’s Summary card, for one, crops the image to a square (X’s Summary card documentation, archived copy, checked September 27, 2026).
  • Use a file from your own media library. The image must load for someone who is not logged in.
  • Give it alternative text in the media library.

Override it for one post

In the block editor, open the WP Visibility sidebar and expand Social sharing. Click Select social image to choose a picture for that post only, Replace social image to change it, or Remove to fall back to the featured image, then the default. Social title and Social description sit in the same panel; left empty, they use the search title and description.

The classic editor’s metabox has no social fields, so posts edited there use their featured image, if any, and then the default, unless a social image was set another way, such as by an import. Categories and tags have no social image field and no featured image, so their archives use the default, unless a Rank Math import brought across a social image for the term.

Check it

View the source of a post with no featured or social image and look for og:image. It should be your default’s URL, followed by og:image:width, og:image:height and, when set, og:image:alt.

WP Visibility prints no twitter:image tag. X’s card documentation says its card processor falls back to the Open Graph property when the Twitter-specific one is missing (archived copy, checked September 27, 2026). The Twitter/X card type setting decides whether the card is Summary (the image cropped to a square) or Summary with large image (the default).

Two warnings to read with care:

  • The editor’s pre-publish panel says a post has “no featured or social image” even when a site default is set. With a default in place, the post still shares with an image.
  • The site audit (wp visibility audit) reports “No default social image is set” until you choose one.

If a network still shows an old picture, see Fix the Wrong Image in a Social Link Preview.

Behavior checked against WP Visibility 2.10.3.