When you share a webpage on X, the link preview, sometimes called a Card, displays information such as the page title and an image. That information comes from metadata: details in the webpage’s code that tell social platforms what to show.
The old Twitter Card Validator no longer shows a visual preview. To see what X displays, paste the link into a draft post and inspect the preview before publishing. If it looks wrong, check the page’s metadata separately. For WordPress publishers, PressQueue can set a social image that also supplies preview metadata, while the X composer remains the place to check the platform’s display.
What happened to the Twitter Card Validator?
In August 2022, Twitter announced that it was removing the validator’s preview function. Contemporary reporting described the post composer as the alternative and noted that debugging functions remained at the time. That distinction matters: the announcement concerned the visual preview, not a confirmed date when every validator function stopped working. Gihyo’s report explains the change.
Older instructions for the tool may therefore be out of date. An independent metadata checker can still show what it finds on a webpage, but its preview is generated by that checker. It does not confirm that X will display the same result. For example, BrandBird describes its tool as fetching metadata and rendering a preview.
Check the link in X, then inspect the page
Paste the exact URL you plan to share into a draft post on X. Wait for the preview, then check the image and any text X displays. Discard the draft if you are only testing. X’s post composer was the recommended replacement for the validator’s visual preview. Its interface can change.
If the preview is missing or wrong, use an independent metadata checker to inspect the public webpage, or ask a developer to examine the page’s HTML, the code the site sends to browsers. Open Graph is a set of webpage metadata used for sharing. It includes fields for a title, description, and image. Archived X documentation describes Twitter-specific metadata and some Open Graph fallbacks. This does not mean every Open Graph field replaces a Twitter-specific field. Archived X guidance provides the historical details.
Compare what the page supplies with what you intended to share. Check that the image URL loads publicly and that the live page contains the latest title and image. A checker shows the metadata on the webpage. It does not clear X’s cache, the stored page and image information, or confirm what X has fetched. Historical X troubleshooting guidance described cached page and image information, but does not establish a guaranteed current refresh time. Archived troubleshooting guidance treats refresh methods conditionally.
Set WordPress link images with PressQueue
PressQueue is a free, open-source WordPress plugin that shares WordPress posts to social media through Buffer. It can also use a generated social image as the page’s og:image and twitter:image, the metadata fields that identify a preview image. This helps set what the page offers to link previews; it does not replace checking the link in X.
To set it up, download pressqueue.zip from the PressQueue download page, then go to Plugins > Add Plugin > Upload Plugin in WordPress. Connect it with a personal Buffer API key, a code that lets PressQueue connect to Buffer. Then choose the channels you want to use.
Under Settings > Social images, choose a style and review its live preview. PressQueue creates an image from the post title and site name. In its link-preview settings, choose whether to use that image for every post, only posts without their own image, or no posts. If an individual post has an image set in a search engine optimization (SEO) plugin, PressQueue uses that image instead. PressQueue supports Yoast SEO and Rank Math for this metadata. It also supports The SEO Framework and Jetpack.
After changing the image or settings, open the published post’s URL in X’s composer to check the result. PressQueue’s image preview shows the image it creates; the composer shows what X displays. The image generator needs the PHP GD graphics library with FreeType support. Without it, posts still go out with text and a link.