WP Link Preview WordPress plugin review

Testing WP Link Preview WordPress plugin by Kishan Gajera.

What does it do?

WP Link Preview will add a button to your post/page editor which can be used to generate and embed a link preview for a given URL. The link preview consists of a title, description and image which will result in a similar look as sharing a link on Facebook.

Example

Another example

Here I can include a link from my book store and it’s displayed like that:

Inner Engineering – A Yogi’s Guide to Joy

Sadhguru: Inner Engineering – A Yogis Guide to Joy. Cheap books from category Personal Development. Bestseller123 offers cheap books with free worldwide delivery for any total purchase amount.

www.bestseller123.com

Pretty neat and it’s all automatic. The display of the preview can’t be controlled, but it’s inserted as text, so you can edit it as you wish.

Another example to a post in this blog:

Asus Zenfone Max Plus M1 – no update in June 2019

For the followers and owners of the Asus Zenfone Max Plus M1 I have sad but expected news: there is no new firmware updates available in June 2019. That means that the update version WW-15.02.1904.453 is the latest available update. It brings Google security patch 2019/5, but apart that nothing new.

www.bestresizer.com

Potential problems with this plugin

• Doesn’t seem to support UTF-8, which is a huge disadvantage. If I include a link to a site which uses UTF-8 chars in the description, they are converted to question marks:

This is Going to Hurt – Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor

8.49 EUR v akciji + brezpla?na po?tnina! This is Going to Hurt avtorja Adam Kay: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor je knjiga z mehko vezavo. Nahaja se v kategoriji Spomini. Izdala jo je zalo?ba Pan MacMillan. Knjiga This is Going to Hurt je prodajna uspe?nica! Brezpla?na po?tnina ne glede na vi?ino nakupa.

www.bestseller.si

• The plugin creates the snippet at load time, which means it’s not updated if the site info changes. Once you create the link preview, it will stay the same forever. This can be either good or bad, depending on your use case.

• It was last updated more than 1 year ago so it may no longer be maintained or supported. This plugin hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress. My suggestion is to try and find a different plugin for this use.

Have you found a better plugin? Share in the comments!