No preview image in Facebook or WhatsApp, Facebook bot blocked

[will44]

What is the name of the domain?

LoveSick by Soul Circles Events

What is the error number?

403

What is the error message?

Wordpress - Broken Access Control, File Inclusion …bff5a079

What is the issue you’re encountering

Unable to preview website in Facebook or Whatsapp, Facebook bot is being blocked by Cloudflare

What steps have you taken to resolve the issue?

1. Turned off all website and server-level caching
2. Reviewed Cloudflare security log to see that Facebook request is in fact being blocked

Was the site working with SSL prior to adding it to Cloudflare?

Yes

What is the current SSL/TLS setting?

Full (strict)

What are the steps to reproduce the issue?

1. Enter https://soulcircles.clearintent.com/ at Sharing Debugger - Meta for Developers - you will get a 403 error
2. Review Security Events for clearintent.com - you will see Facebook (Ireland) request has been blocked

Screenshot of the error

[will44]

Update: I found an article that seemed to address this situation here: Issues sharing to Facebook | Cloudflare Web Application Firewall (WAF) docs

I followed the recommendation.

I am still getting the 403 error from the Facebook Share debugger.

I am now no longer getting the blocked message in my Cloudflare Security Events panel, it says “Skip” which, I guess, is what should be expected.

What do I need to do to get the Facebook share working?

Thank you so much

[Laudian]

@will44

I am still getting the 403 error from the Facebook Share debugger.

I can’t confirm that, it seems to be working now:

[will44]

I am still getting the 403 error when I test. Preview is still not showing in WhatsApp.

I do see the image showing in the debugger now, in spite of the 403. I am presuming that the image was retrieved on one of the previous, successful calls like the one you have showed here.

Why would I be getting 403 when you are getting 200? Is it possible that the request by the Facebook bots is sometimes using another id than the ones I have allowed?

[will44]

Update: I just checked my event logs.

I just confirmed that the action taken for my Facebook Bots rules was “Skipped”. And yet Facebook is still getting the 403.

I have also confirmed that the request is not making it to my server. There are no 403s in my server log. It has to be Cloudflare blocking the bot.

How do I resole this?

[Laudian]

Did you make any changes to your robots.txt recently?

I saw a 403 - blocked by robots.txt when I tried a few minutes ago. After clearing your robots.txt from their cache, it’s working again now:

[will44]

Hmm. Now it is working for me too.

No, I have not made any changes to my robots.txt so that is strange.

Where did you see the error that it was blocked by robots.txt? And when you say you cleared it from “their” cache, do you mean Facebooks? How did you do that?

Thank you so much

[Laudian]

Right below the response code, it said the reason for the 403 “may” have been a robots.txt setting. It was obviously not blocked, as the image did appear on the debug site.

@will44

And when you say you cleared it from “their” cache, do you mean Facebooks? How did you do that?

On the same page, at the top, there is the “batch invalidator”. I used that.

[will44]

I am getting another strange behaviour now. It may not be related to Cloudflare, but it might.

Now that I am getting a preview image, I got a request to change the image, and even though I am re-scraping in the Facebook debugger, and the debugger is picking up the new image, when I actually share the link I am getting the old image.

Do I need to clear a cache in Cloudflare somewhere?

Thank you so much

[will44]

Update: I purged the Cloudflare cache in an attempt to get the preview image to update when the link is shared to WhatsApp.

Now, although the Facebook Sharing debugger is bringing up the image perfectly without error, the preview is not appearing when I share to WhatsApp.

So frustrating! What did I do wrong?