When someone shares your site on Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, X, or in a messaging app, the platform shows a preview card: your page title, description, and a picture. Zarla fills that card in automatically wherever it can — and choosing the picture yourself puts you in control of how every share looks.
How the picture is chosen
For each page, platforms are shown the first of these that exists:
- The page's own share image — set in the editor's Page Settings.
- Your site's default share image — set once in Settings, used by every page that doesn't have its own.
- The page's main photo — automatic; usually the big photo at the top of the page.
So with no setup at all, shares fall back to your hero photo — though the very first share of a link can go out without a picture while platforms take their first look at it (see "Why a first share sometimes has no picture" below). Choosing your own share image puts you in control: set a default when you want one consistent brand image everywhere, and a per-page image when a specific page (a promotion, an event, a landing page) deserves its own.
Set a share image for one page
- In the editor, open the page, then click the gear icon next to the page name to open Page Settings.
- In the SEO section, find Social share image and click Choose image.
- Pick from your photos, upload a new one, or search stock photos.
Zarla normally makes a 1200 × 630 copy of your pick — the exact card size platforms expect — so it loads fast and displays without awkward cropping. Wide, landscape photos work best.
Set one default image for the whole site
- Go to Settings in the sidebar.
- Find the Social sharing card and click Choose image.
Every page without its own share image now uses this one. Your default gets the same 1200 × 630 copy — and the same first-share benefit described next.
Why a first share sometimes has no picture
Because Zarla knows the exact size of the copy it made, it also tells Facebook the size — so the picture normally appears the very first time anyone shares the link. A few cases work differently: pages that fall back to their main photo, the rare pick Zarla couldn't make a copy of (it keeps your original picture instead), and a picture set outside the editor — for example by an AI assistant connected to Zarla. For those, Facebook fetches the picture in the background, so the first person ever to share the link may see a preview without it; from the second share on, it shows. To be certain before you post a link, paste it into Facebook's Sharing Debugger first — that makes Facebook fetch the picture ahead of time.
After publishing: give platforms a moment
Platforms cache preview cards. If you change your share image, a page shared before the change can keep showing the old picture for a while — that's the platform's cache, not your site. After you publish the change, re-sharing the link alone won't always refresh it; Facebook's Sharing Debugger forces a refresh.
Your changes take effect on the live site the next time you publish.