From 6232a66878b971c351ce5cef45f547ebc02a35c1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: npeter83 Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2026 22:56:38 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] fix(share): let link-preview crawlers fetch /watch/ pages (robots.txt) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Shared links didn't unfurl in Messenger: robots.txt disallowed /watch/ for ALL user-agents, so facebookexternalhit honoured it and got a blocked (403) fetch — the OG tags were correct but never read. Add an allow group for the link-preview bots (facebookexternalhit, Twitterbot, Discordbot, WhatsApp, Slack, Telegram, LinkedIn, …) so they can fetch share pages; the wildcard still keeps /watch/ out of search indexes. Release v0.32.1. --- VERSION | 2 +- frontend/public/robots.txt | 20 ++++++++++++++++++++ frontend/src/lib/releaseNotes.ts | 8 ++++++++ 3 files changed, 29 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/VERSION b/VERSION index 9eb2aa3..fd9620c 100644 --- a/VERSION +++ b/VERSION @@ -1 +1 @@ -0.32.0 +0.32.1 diff --git a/frontend/public/robots.txt b/frontend/public/robots.txt index 43d4e0c..5d456cc 100644 --- a/frontend/public/robots.txt +++ b/frontend/public/robots.txt @@ -1,7 +1,27 @@ # Siftlode is mostly a private, login-gated app; only the public landing and legal # pages are worth indexing. Allow crawling but keep bots out of the API surface. +# Share links (/watch/) are unguessable capability URLs: kept out of search indexes, +# but link-preview crawlers are allowed below so shared links unfurl in chat apps. User-agent: * Allow: / Disallow: /api/ Disallow: /auth/ Disallow: /watch/ + +# Link-preview / unfurl bots — allowed to fetch /watch/ so shared links render a rich +# card (title/channel/thumbnail). They don't build a search index, so this doesn't +# expose share links to search engines. +User-agent: facebookexternalhit +User-agent: Facebot +User-agent: Twitterbot +User-agent: Slackbot-LinkExpanding +User-agent: Slackbot +User-agent: Discordbot +User-agent: TelegramBot +User-agent: WhatsApp +User-agent: LinkedInBot +User-agent: Pinterest +User-agent: redditbot +Allow: / +Disallow: /api/ +Disallow: /auth/ diff --git a/frontend/src/lib/releaseNotes.ts b/frontend/src/lib/releaseNotes.ts index 6147913..90bbf39 100644 --- a/frontend/src/lib/releaseNotes.ts +++ b/frontend/src/lib/releaseNotes.ts @@ -14,6 +14,14 @@ export interface ReleaseEntry { } export const RELEASE_NOTES: ReleaseEntry[] = [ + { + version: "0.32.1", + date: "2026-07-07", + summary: "Fix: shared links now actually unfurl in chat apps.", + fixes: [ + "Shared links now show a rich preview in Messenger and other chat apps. The site's robots.txt was telling every crawler — including link-preview bots — to skip /watch/ pages, so Facebook got a blocked response and showed just a bare link. Link-preview crawlers are now allowed to fetch share pages (they still stay out of search indexes).", + ], + }, { version: "0.32.0", date: "2026-07-07",