How your page looks when shared: previews explained

Paste your campaign link into WhatsApp, Facebook, X, Slack, or iMessage, and the app unfurls it into a preview card — an image, a title, and a line of text. That card is often your campaign's true first impression, and every part of it comes from something you control. This article traces each piece to its source. (For the share button and share card, see Sharing your campaign.)

The preview image

Apps pick up the preview image from your page in this exact order — the first one that exists wins:

1. The first image in your media gallery — set in Design & Media. This is what almost every campaign's preview shows.
2. An explicit cover image — used if the gallery is empty but a cover image is set on the campaign.
3. Your logo — used if there's no gallery image or cover.
4. The Pledgix logo — the last-resort fallback.

So the fix for a weak preview is almost always the same: set a strong first gallery image. Banner and cover images are automatically served to social platforms as a pre-sized 1200×630 crop (the exact shape preview cards want), so you don't need to prepare a special version — just use a clear, high-resolution photo whose subject sits near the center, without small text. Messaging apps shrink the image aggressively, and fine print turns to mush.

The preview title

The title is simply your campaign name. (In a browser tab, it appears together with your organization's name.) A descriptive name — "Rebuild the Community Kitchen" rather than "Spring Campaign" — pays off every single time the link is shared.

The preview description

The text line under the title comes from the first of these that exists:

1. Your campaign's short description — the concise summary field in your campaign details. This is the one to invest in: one or two compelling sentences, front-loaded, because apps truncate long text.
2. The opening of your story — if you haven't written a short description, an excerpt from your About section is used instead.
3. Your coming-soon message — for pages still in their pre-launch phase.
4. A generic "Support this campaign" line — the final fallback.

Tip: Write the short description as if it's the only thing a stranger will read — because in a group chat, it usually is. Lead with the impact ("Every $54 feeds a family for a week"), not the logistics.

Language and domain details

• One preview for all languages. Your page's Hebrew, Russian, Spanish, and French addresses all show the same preview, built from your campaign's primary language. Translated links land readers in their language once they click, but the card itself doesn't translate.
• Custom domains carry through. If your campaign has its own domain connected, previews of that link show your domain — your brand end to end.

Updated the page but the old preview keeps appearing?

Messaging and social apps cache previews — they remember the card from the first time your link was shared and reuse it, sometimes for a day or more. Your page is already updated; the app just hasn't looked again. To hurry it along:

• Use the platform's own refresh tool where one exists — Facebook's Sharing Debugger re-fetches your link on demand and updates the card for everyone.
• On apps without a refresh tool (like WhatsApp), the cache simply expires on its own — typically within a day.
• Sending yourself the link in a different app is a quick way to confirm the new preview is live at the source.

The pre-share checklist

1. Cover image set, wide format, no small text.
2. Short description written — punchy, under two sentences.
3. Campaign name says what this is.
4. Paste the link into a private chat with yourself and look at the card with fresh eyes.

Thirty seconds of checking beats a thousand shares of a broken card.