The Website Was Fine. The Metadata Had Other Ideas.

The link preview looked wrong. The homepage did not need redesigning. The metadata did.

The website was fine.

LinkedIn, however, had enlarged my headshot to roughly the dimensions of a regional election poster.

This was not the first impression I had in mind.

My immediate thought was that something on the homepage needed changing. Perhaps the image. Perhaps the layout. Perhaps the entire bloody thing.

It did not.

LinkedIn was not looking at the website

When I shared the link, LinkedIn did not take a neat screenshot of the homepage. It read the page’s hidden sharing instructions: the title, description and image it should use.

Those instructions are called Open Graph metadata. Mine did not clearly specify the preview image, so LinkedIn selected one for itself.

It chose my headshot.

Bold of it.

The page had not suddenly developed a design problem. The sharing platform had found a gap in the instructions and filled it with my face.

How a small problem eats an afternoon

This is how perfectly serviceable work gets rebuilt.

A shared link looks wrong, so we redesign the page. A report contains the wrong number, so we rebuild the dashboard. An email fails to arrive, so we rewrite the automation.

We change the thing we can see because it is standing conveniently in front of us.

Meanwhile, the actual problem is one step away: metadata, caching, routing, permissions or a platform making a confident decision nobody asked it to make.

The five-minute diagnosis

Before touching the visible thing, ask:

• Where does the problem actually appear? On the page itself, or only when the page is shared?
• Who is rendering it? My website, a social platform, an email client, a browser or a cached copy?
• What instructions did it receive? Explicit settings, inherited metadata or absolutely nothing useful?
• How will I verify the fix? Not in the editor. In the same place the problem appeared.

That last question matters because social platforms cache previews. The code can be correct while LinkedIn continues proudly displaying yesterday’s mistake.

The actual fix

I created a properly sized 1200-by-630 branded image, added the correct Open Graph tags and tested the live link where the problem had appeared.

No homepage redesign. No brand workshop. No need to place my headshot into witness protection.

The preview now has one job: explain what the link is and give the right person a reason to click it. It does not need to improvise. It certainly does not need to feature my face at agricultural scale.

Small technical fix. Useful reminder.

Good judgement is not fixing things quickly. It is knowing which thing deserves to be fixed.

Diagnose first. Edit second. Leave innocent homepages alone.

Use the tools. Own the outcome. Have a G&T if and when absolutely necessary.

One oversized headshot, one corrected line of code and no lasting damage. Carry on.