# "Onebox Assistant", crawl for those previews reliably!
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405
**Category:** Plugin
**Tags:** onebox
**Created:** [24 januari 2019 om 12:16 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405 "2019-01-24T12:16:43Z")
**Posts on this page:** 17
**Page:** 5
### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [5 augustus 2024 om 15:15 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405/154 "2024-08-05T15:15:02Z")
> [@taravasya](#):
>
> I was think it is your’s API.
No I’m not affiliated (call me crazy 🤣)
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [5 augustus 2024 om 15:49 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405/155 "2024-08-05T15:49:52Z")
It means the API is not overcoming vimeo’s bot checks. They might be able to resolve this if you email them.
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### Author:  [@taravasya](https://meta.discourse.org/u/taravasya)
#### Post date: [5 augustus 2024 om 17:24 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405/156 "2024-08-05T17:24:57Z")
It turns out that this site also uses a plugin onebox assistant?
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [5 augustus 2024 om 19:15 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405/157 "2024-08-05T19:15:23Z")
I very much doubt it
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### Author:  [@taravasya](https://meta.discourse.org/u/taravasya)
#### Post date: [5 augustus 2024 om 20:13 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405/158 "2024-08-05T20:13:17Z")
But then its mean that black screen on vimeo previews, **not cause of plugin onebox assitant!**
In my [post here](https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405/152), without onebox assistant, I see the same black screen as on my forum, instead of normal preview.
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [5 augustus 2024 om 20:19 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405/159 "2024-08-05T20:19:40Z")
OneBox Assistant is meant to help solve these problems, not make them worse 🙂
But it relies on the 3rd party API crawling that site. (embed.rocks)
Onebox Assistant is merely wiring up the results returned from the API instead of going directly.
If you cannot get a successful result on their website, then it is unlikely to help.
You need a response from embed.rocks.
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### Author:  [@taravasya](https://meta.discourse.org/u/taravasya)
#### Post date: [5 augustus 2024 om 21:25 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405/160 "2024-08-05T21:25:50Z")
Robert, my English is pretty bad, and this probably creates additional difficulties in understanding between us.
I also apologize to the moderators, because I have already created many messages that do not bring anything useful. I think it would be right to delete them…
However, I still want to clarify my thought. The most important thing at this moment is that: on this forum, `meta.discourse.org`, the [link I inserted to the video from the vimeo resource is also displayed incorrectly](https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405/152). Theres no preview. And this surprised me. In other words, as I understand it, if this forum does not use this plugin, but the preview is still displayed incorrectly, then I initially thought incorrectly that the problem was in onebox assistant. The problem is in somewhere else. May be problem in OneBox itself?
Just tell me, link in [this post](https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405/152) is showing correctly for you? Is it with thumbnail or it just blackscreen?
> **Спойлер**
>
> 
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [6 augustus 2024 om 07:19 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405/161 "2024-08-06T07:19:59Z")
No problem. Let’s walk through this again.
In a vanilla Discourse, to create a onebox preview, a Discourse server must be able to see and retrieve the “og” tagged data in the target page meta information. This is essentially a crawl.
To achieve this the target web server and its gatekeepers must not block this crawl.
It appears that meta is not permitted to see that page by its gatekeepers.
This is why you would consider using this plugin in the first place.
This plugin uses an API to return the target page instead of crawling directly.
This takes advantage of activities and management that the API provider does to significantly increase the chances of being allowed to see the content (e.g. using a farm of servers with high reputation IP addresses from which to launch the crawl, or possibly even faking a view as if it came from the desktop).
Unfortunately in this case, it appears even embed.rocks does not have rights to crawl that page and therefore in this case this plugin is not helpful.
However, if you raise this issue to embed.rocks support teams attention they may be able to work out ways in which to resolve this blockage.
In general this plugin should be useful as it should provide a better onebox previewing experience than a vanilla Discourse without it, though of course you have to pay the API provider.
Note, other things might be going wrong here, for example the target page might not have a good thumbnail.
However, you can use Facebook’s debug tool to explore the data and I believe it looks good:
> **[Sharing Debugger - Meta for Developers](https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/)**
Which points to the issue being with embed.rocks atm.
On a side note, the rise of Generative AI may be making content platforms much more careful about who can see their content for fear of their content ending up in someone’s model for free.
I hope that’s clear.
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### Author:  [@taravasya](https://meta.discourse.org/u/taravasya)
#### Post date: [6 augustus 2024 om 07:46 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405/162 "2024-08-06T07:46:41Z")
Robert, thanks a lot. Now i see. Without plugin [meta.discourse.org](http://meta.discourse.org) can’t get thumbnails from vimeo also. With plugin it can be achieved, but at this time API is broken for vimeo.
Thanks again!
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### Author:  [@tumbano](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tumbano)
#### Post date: [8 april 2025 om 15:02 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405/163 "2025-04-08T15:02:22Z")
For the past few weeks, Onebox hasn’t been working for me. I went crazy trying to figure out the reason until today, by disabling plugins one by one, it turned out that commenting out Onebox Assistant in app.yml made it work again.
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [8 april 2025 om 20:48 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405/164 "2025-04-08T20:48:30Z")
You might be right. It may need an update.
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [9 april 2025 om 12:26 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405/165 "2025-04-09T12:26:01Z")
[https://github.com/merefield/discourse-onebox-assistant/commit/ac74269d4c9a0329a221b380f2a2ceb1c7802fd2](https://github.com/merefield/discourse-onebox-assistant/commit/ac74269d4c9a0329a221b380f2a2ceb1c7802fd2)
[https://github.com/merefield/discourse-onebox-assistant/commit/546872f556309679f28362e38334715faf06a148](https://github.com/merefield/discourse-onebox-assistant/commit/546872f556309679f28362e38334715faf06a148)
@tumbano this should be operational again, thanks for the report.
> [@tumbano](#):
>
> For the past few weeks,
I believe it relates to changes made 2 weeks ago
[https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/32035](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/32035)
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### Author:  [@tumbano](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tumbano)
#### Post date: [9 april 2025 om 13:01 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405/166 "2025-04-09T13:01:40Z")
Confirmed, thank you.
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### Author:  [@tumbano](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tumbano)
#### Post date: [1 mei 2025 om 04:53 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405/167 "2025-05-01T04:53:04Z")
It’s no longer working for me (at least for youtube).
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [1 mei 2025 om 06:49 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405/168 "2025-05-01T06:49:28Z")
No changes upstream in core that I can see that would change anything.
However:
> **[embed.rocks](https://embed.rocks/try)**
>
> Embed 'cards' on your website
Looks like it’s an issue with the provider … can you escalate to them please and report back?
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [9 mei 2025 om 05:43 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405/169 "2025-05-09T05:43:03Z")
Looks like they fixed things.
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### Author:  [@tumbano](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tumbano)
#### Post date: [9 mei 2025 om 05:57 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405/170 "2025-05-09T05:57:07Z")
Yes, I emailed them (got no reply) last week and noticed it was working again 2 days ago.
[Vorige pagina](https://meta.discourse.org/t/onebox-assistant-crawl-for-those-previews-reliably/107405.md?page=4)