Frequently asked questions

Learn more about how Little Eagle Images work.

What happens when a link to my website is posted onto social media?

When a link is posted onto social media, then that link is loaded by the social media network so it can make a preview.

By default, this doesn’t look very interesting: just some text or the first image that shows on the page. However, by adding Open Graph tags you can customize this view. A news website might make the main image appear from the story, or an online store might show an image of the product on the page.

For example, let’s say you sell shoes and your customer Jane posts a link to the Air Jordans you sell onto Facebook. This is what happens:

  1. Jane posts a link to a page on your website on Facebook.Loading…
  2. Facebook immediately loads the page’s and looks for metadata named Open Graph tags. These customize how Facebook will present the link, such as setting the title, description, and the main image shown.
  3. If an image was specified (using the og:image tag), then Facebook loads that image. Now Facebook has an image and metadata such as a title that it turns into a nice looking link in the feed.
  4. Jane’s friend Arthur is browsing Facebook, and sees the posted link — the red photo of the Air Jordans catch their eye and he taps the link.
  5. Arthur then explores your online shoe store, and decides to buy a pair, or share a link to a different set of shoes, or sign up to your newsletter. The picture enticed Arthur to click on the link — without it, he might never have even noticed the link amongst all the other posts on Facebook, and never have visited your site.
How do Open Graph images work?

Web pages specify their ‘OG images’ using HTML tags. They look something like this:

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The OG image meta tag is really just a link — a URL to where the image is loaded from. And this is whereLittle Eagle Images comes in — it can generate a unique PNG image for your page on the fly.

If you want text or your logo or a photo to appear in your image, you just tell Little Eagle and it will create the image for you.

Why would I want to make my OG image dynamically?

Apart from designing it, the annoying part is that you must upload your image somewhere (e.g. to S3 or a content management system). If you want to make changes to your image (e.g. change the text), then that means designing and then uploading a new image.

And if you want every page on your site to have its own unique image — e.g. your team page could say “We’re hiring”, or your product page could display product specifications and promotions — that means designing and managing each of those images. It feels old school, plus its a lot of manual work.

How long does it take to make dynamic images?

We’ve invested in our platform to generate them fast on the server, so it should be quick! Typically in the order of hundreds of milliseconds, and we cache the results just like a CDN to make future requests even faster! Take a look at some of the samples above or try making your own below.