MyBB Social Meta Tags Plugin

MyBB 1.8 plugin that adds configurable Open Graph and Twitter Card metadata to board, forum, and thread pages. It works independently of the active theme and provides sensible board-level fallbacks when page-specific metadata is unavailable.

Features

• Contextual metadata for Help, Portal, Statistics, and Forum Team pages, with board-level fallbacks elsewhere.
• Forum titles, descriptions, and absolute forum URLs.
• Thread titles, article type, absolute thread URLs, descriptions, and optional thread images.
• Configurable default description, image URL, title format, Twitter card type, page-type behavior, and metadata extras in Admin CP.
• New installs initialize fallback metadata from the board name and active theme logo when available.
• MyBB friendly-URL support through get_forum_link() and get_thread_link().
• HTML-safe template values.
• Automatic template synchronization when themes are added, imported, duplicated, or made default while the plugin is active.
• One-time import of legacy revolution_theme_default_meta and revolution_theme_logo_url values when the new settings are first created.

Requirements

• MyBB 1.8.x
• A theme whose headerinclude template contains {$stylesheets}, or manual template integration

Install

Copy the contents of Upload/ into the MyBB installation root:

Upload/inc/plugins/social_meta_tags.php -> public_html/inc/plugins/social_meta_tags.php

Then install and activate Social Meta Tags under Admin CP → Configuration → Plugins.

Theme Integration

Activation removes any marker-delimited fallback metadata block and inserts {$social_meta_tags} before {$stylesheets} in each theme's headerinclude template. The same synchronization runs when themes are added, imported, duplicated, or made default while the plugin is active. A runtime fallback also injects the generated block when a recreated theme is missing the template variable. Deactivation removes the plugin variable and restores a basic fallback built from the board name, board URL, and active theme logo.

If a customized headerinclude template lacks {$stylesheets}, automatic insertion cannot run. Add this variable manually and remove any duplicate social metadata:

{$social_meta_tags}

The individual {$open_meta_*} variables remain available for themes that need custom tag markup.

Template Variables

• {$open_meta_title} — board page, forum, or thread title.
• {$open_meta_description} — help document, forum, first-post, or configured default description.
• {$open_meta_url} — board page, forum, or thread URL.
• {$open_meta_type} — website or article.
• {$open_meta_image} — thread image when enabled and available, otherwise the configured default image.

When neither a thread image nor a configured default image is available, the plugin omits both og:image and twitter:image instead of rendering empty image tags.

Settings

The plugin creates a Social Meta Tags setting group containing:

• Default Meta Description
• Default Image URL
• Twitter Card Type
• Title Format
• Enable Board Metadata
• Enable Forum Metadata
• Enable Thread Metadata
• Use Forum Descriptions
• Thread Description Source
• Maximum Description Length
• Enable Thread Image Metadata
• Enable Site Name Metadata
• Open Graph Locale
• Default Image Width
• Default Image Height

On first installation, values from the old Revolution plugin metadata settings are copied when available. Otherwise, the default description starts with the board name and the default image URL starts with the active theme logo when MyBB exposes one. The legacy settings are not deleted automatically.

Output

The generated block includes:

• og:title, og:description, og:url, og:type, and og:image
• twitter:card, twitter:title, twitter:description, and twitter:image

When enabled and configured, the generated block can also include og:site_name, og:locale, og:image:width, and og:image:height.

The plugin supplies social-sharing URLs through og:url; it does not add a separate HTML rel="canonical" link.

Testing

Run the dependency-free test suite from the repository root:

php tests/social_meta_tags_test.php

The suite uses lightweight MyBB stubs and does not require a MyBB installation.

Uninstall

Uninstalling removes the Social Meta Tags setting group and its settings. MyBB deactivates the plugin first, removing its template insertion. Legacy Revolution settings are not modified.

License

Copyright (C) 2026 SickProdigy.

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or any later version.