Starting from July 18, 2017 Facebook has decided to disregard custom parameters set by users. This choice blocks many of the possibilities offered by this answer and it also breaks buttons used on several websites.
The quote
and hashtag
parameters work as of Dec 2018.
Does anyone know if there have been recent changes which could have suddenly stopped this from working?
The parameters have changed. The currently accepted answer states:
Facebook no longer supports custom parameters in sharer.php
But this is not entirely correct. Well, maybe they do not support or endorse them, but custom parameters can be used if you know the correct names. These include:
- URL (of course) →
u
- custom image →
picture
- custom title →
title
- custom quote →
quote
- custom description →
description
- caption (aka website name) →
caption
For instance, you can share this very question with the following URL:
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fstackoverflow.com%2Fq%2F20956229%2F1101509&picture=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.applezein.net%2Fwordpress%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F03%2Ffacebook-logo.jpg&title=A+nice+question+about+Facebook"e=Does+anyone+know+if+there+have+been+recent+changes+which+could+have+suddenly+stopped+this+from+working%3F&description=Apparently%2C+the+accepted+answer+is+not+correct.
I've built a tool which makes it easier to share URLs on Facebook with custom parameters. You can use it to generate your sharer.php
link, just press the button and copy the URL from the tab that opens.