This plugin adds XHTML META tags to your WordPress blog. Its design is based on the assumption that the WordPress categories are used as tags, so it requires no user configuration in order to work. On the other hand, the latest versions include all those features a SEO-concerned publisher would need in order to have total control over those meta tags.
This page contains information about old versions of the Add-Meta-Tags plugin for WordPress. The initial user comments and discussion is available on this page.
Add-Meta-Tags – Legacy by George Notaras is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Copyright © 2006 - Some Rights Reserved
Now that I have the keyword in the excerpt field in the db, to display them as tags after the post, should I modify the phps manually?
Hi,
what this plugin does is to add metatags in the web page’s head in single post view. The excerpt is being used for the description metatag and the categories are being used for the keywords metatag. It can do nothing more than that.
The following are added to the head of the page:
If I understand correctly, what you ask for is a completely different thing and you probably need a different plugin or write your own.
Thanks for the clarification, btw your plugin will be handy indeed. Best.
Hello,
This plugin works like a charm for my WP 2.0 site.
It does almost exactly what I was looking for.
I would like to know if there is a way to put the description tag on the Index page of my site.
Hi Jason,
I intend to add the blog’s description as a description metatag and all the blog categories as a keywords metatag. These would be added when the frontpage or a page that contains archives are displayed.
On the other hand, this could be done using a different approach. A user could fill in some custom description and keywords, so these are included in the page header when the frontpage or a page with archives is displayed.
I really would like some suggestions on this.
hi
what if the excerpt holds html ?
cheers
jakob
sorry, saw your update log and the html comment, will try it,
cheers
jakob
Hi, I really like the idea of using the excerpt in the description meta tag.
I don’t find categories a good vehicle for keywords however. Categories, if used in the way the word is defined, are inherently broad in scope because they seek to classify rather than to probe. In fact my category titles never turn up in my posts, which is possibly detrimental to search engine rankings.
Category: A specifically defined division in a system of classification
Keyword: A word used as a reference point for finding other words or information
I doubt you’re interested in having a debate about it so I’ll get to the point: it would be great if you could add the ability to define your own meta keywords. There doesn’t seem to be any plugins that do what I’m after and yours comes closest. The ability to add them to the post as well with rel=”tag” (technorati style) would be nice.
And if you’re really bored, I’m looking for a search feature that will allow boolean searches on meta keywords, tags and categories: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/60832
Thanks for releasing your plugin anyway. No worries if you’re not interested in the above.
Hi Christiaan,
I wrote this plugin (and the my-tags plugin as well) with the assumption that someone uses the WordPress category system as a tagging system. Regardless of this fact, your idea about the ability to define some extra custom keywords sounds good. At the moment, the fastest and most easy way to implement something like that is to have the plugin recognize a custom post field, named keywords, and append the words it finds there to the keywords metatag. This will be added in the TODO list because theoritically, it seems easy. From a technical point of view, I’ll have to do a small test to determine if it is possible, using the provided WP functions, to read the post’s custom fields outside the loop.
On the other hand, putting hyperlinks for these extra keywords with the
"tag"inside the post, serves well only if these hyperlinks point to an external website, eg Technoratti. In the case that these links are constructed to point to the local blog’s categories (tags), they would lead to a 404 error, because there would be no categories with such names. This idea is relevant to the My-Tags plugin, but the issue I have described above needs to be resolved before implementing it.Thanks for your feedback.
Hi:
The plugin works for me but i want to add extra keywords as the keywords generated are only the first two words. sometimes i have three word keywords. i want to add that manually so i created custom field called keywords but when ipost i dont see the extra keywords in the html source – i only see the default. how do i add more keywords so it shows in the page source. thanks.
Hi, this is in my todo list. Unfortunately, no free time at the moment, sorry.
Hi Gnot,
Just want to say thanks for the plugin. It does exactly what it says on tin. Any idea when you will have time to include the same features for the Index page of WP sites?
Regards,
Pete Moxon
http://www.teklink.co.uk
Thanks Pete. I’ll release a new version tonight that will take care of the home page description and keywords meta tags. I always needed this feature too :)
Update: The plugin has been updated to version 0.4 which handles the description and keywords metatags on the home page. Thank you all for your feedback and ideas.
Hi Gnot
I’m completely new with WP and shy to say I don’t have any HTML knowledge. I just downloded your add-meta-tags plugin system and activated in Admin Panel.
Can you tell me where and how can I write the meta tag description and keywords for front page and individual post.
Appreciate your help so much.
Regards,
Vyim65
Hello, there is no need to know any HTML or PHP. In order to set custom description and keywords for your blog, open the add-meta-tags.php file in a text editor and fill in these settings as shown in the plugin page. Sorry, but I didn’t have the time to make a panel for these settings…
Thanks for the plug-in. It was super easy to install and it works very well.
Great stuff, I’ve removed the static markup from my template and applied your plugin.
My only additional to your plugin was a preset keyword to be applied to all posts except home, this change was:
Line 76: "$my_metatags .= "
Can’t wait for an administration control, keep at it.
Interesting feature Michael. I might add an option for it too.
OK, you have convinced me. :-)
Here is a major update v0.5. Now it also recognizes custom fields and has an administration panel.
If you like this plugin, I’d be happy if you wrote a small post, so other people know about it.
Thanks to all for your suggestions.
@Michael: I hope the functionality you want is covered by the addition of a custom “keywords” field that contains the following:
Good plugin. Will try it on my blog. It’s worked with WordPress 1.5.2?
Although I haven’t tried it on WP v1.5.2, I guess it will work fine as it does not make use of any extraordinary hook or any other newly added WP feature.
I can’t get the individual posts to show the custom meta tags…but I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. Are there more detailed instructions somewhere?
Unfortunately there are no more detailed instructions, but it is simple.
If you need to customize the meta tags, when editing a post, there is a “Custom Fields” section in that page. There you can add a custom field with the name “description” or “keywords” and set their values. These field values will be picked up by the plugin and will be used in the description and keywords meta tags.
But keep in mind that even if you do not create any custom fields, the meta tags will still be created automatically from the post’s excerpt and its categories.
Please read again the “Features” section of the post above.
i just downloaded the plugin. i will try to my site now. thanks for the plugins..
thanks
Great plugin! Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for the hard work on this.
Found a bug. Meta breaks when there is a single or double quote in the excerpt.
Hi, indeed there is a bug here. Single quotes are not actually a problem as the description metatag is enclosed in double quotes. I received the modified code you sent me and I partially used it to add a description filter which performs all the mentioned modifications to the description text.
So, version 0.6 of the plugin is out.
Thanks for the report.
Best regards.
I fixed some bugs, find the patch against 0.6 at http://moeffju.net/blog/2007/01/11/wp-add-meta-tags-06-patch/
@moeffju: I guess heavy statements like “broke my site in more ways than one” need some more explanation, so I know exactly what issues you have encountered.
Anyways, the problem here is that if the site description that is added to the add-meta-tags admin panel (options->MetaTags) contains double or single quotes, wordpress escapes each quote, so these slashes need to be stripped. This has been FIXED.
Your other fixes are related to the alpha version of wordpress 2.1 you use. There is no get_categories() function in any stable wordpress version at this time. When WordPress 2.1 is released, I will modify the code in order to comply with the new functions/features.
Thanks for reporting the quote problem in the site description.
Version 0.7 of the plugin is out.
When I have this plugin activated it posts the content twice when viewing individual posts – one time before the header, and then the actual post itself. If I deactivate the plugin it behaves as it should.
Here is a picture of the error:
http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/6003/wperrorvf2.jpg
Any ideas on how to fix it?
Did you also fix the ’empty keywords string fails horribly’ bug? (In 0.6, you’re using list_cats which echoes its results.)
Sorry, didn’t read before I commented. Broke my site as in, list_tags echoes all categories, and the call is in the header, so the layout is destroyed, the structure of the HTML is broken, etc.
As to the get_categories, that sucks. Luckily, the next stable release is due soon. In any case it would make more sense to default to empty keywords for now, wouldn’t it? list_cats() echoes its results and thus breaks things.
@Jef Elf:
Hi Jef, add-meta-tags has nothing to do with the post’s content. I use this plugin in my blog too and, as you can see, there is no such behaviour when viewing single posts. What version of WordPress do you use? I believe that, although it should not happen, there is a conflict between add-meta-tags and some other plugin you use. If possible, de-activate all of the plugins except add-meta-tags temporarily and check if the problem persists. When you tell me which other plugin it conflicts with, I will probably be able to provide a solution. It’s all I can do, sorry.
@moeffju:
Hi moeffju. From the list_cats() function documentation:
recurse : (boolean) Display the list (FALSE) or return it for use in PHP (TRUE). Defaults to FALSE.As you can see in the plugin code, I set this argument to TRUE, which should not display anything at the time list_cats() is called. What I assume is that things are a bit broken in WordPress 2.1/alpha and of course I will not reset keywords to an empty string because an alpha version of wordpress breaks backwards compatibility! What really surprises me is that you insist that the plugin is buggy, although you have only tested it with an alpha (!) version of wordpress… :-)
I do not say that the use of list_cats() is the best way of getting all of the blog categories, but since wordpress does not provide a function that directly returns an array with the cats, list_cats() was just a workaround. Even if the new versions of wordpress implement a get_categories() function, I believe it would be better to implement my own function that fetches all the categories, so to preserve backwards compatibility.
This modification will be implemented in the next version of the plugin in order to preserve backwards compatibility.
Who knows why the option is called ‘recurse’ ;)
I didn’t have much time to debug things, but admittedly didn’t consider that WP would break such simple and basic functionality in an alpha (which is almost a release, so alpha is really a misnomer). Anyway I changed the wording in my post.
Keep up the good work.
Hi I notice it puts my DESCRIPTION about half way down the page.. Is their anyway to tell it to place it higher up the page in the code?
Did something in 2.0.7 break this? I just installed this, and it didn’t work. Admin page was there, but no meta tags were added to source.
Oops! Never mind. I also found mine listed farther down the page than I expected. I’ll move them up.
@jon & @Blair:
where exactly do the meta-tags show? It is not possible to place the meta tags first in the HTML HEAD with a plugin. This happens for technical reasons.
But you can try setting a high priority in the action that adds the metatags. Modify the following line in the plugin source (it’s at thge end of the plugin source code).
From:
add_action('wp_head', 'amt_add_meta_tags');to:
add_action('wp_head', 'amt_add_meta_tags', 0);I hope that this will help by placing the metatags as close to the beginning of the HTML HEAD area as possible.
Please report back if it does any good.
Hi – don’t see any Meta tags being generated at all in my html source. I had the same problem with tags in the head plug-in. Don’t know why the script is not working. Any thoughts?
Hi GNOT ….love your plug-in by the way.
However when you view my site…I see two sets of Meta tags in the source code, and and while it displays OK…my concern comes with how search engines will see it, duplicating keywords and the like.
Is there a way to get rid of the reference for WP 2.06 standart Title Tag and meta description that is is referencing above yours in the sourcet?
Here is the problem…I used one of those meta-analyzers and this was on the report.
[…]
Ugh! Can’t say I am very php savvy at all so if you could direct me to the area or code I need to remove or modify, where and with what code, I would be again most grateful !!
Hey – I love this plugin, though it’s not working for WordPress 2.1 (it makes the categories duplicate above the theme view). Any ideas or thoughts on revising it to be compatible with the newly released version?
Thanks!
Please use the latest version of the plugin and check if your theme has any meta tags hard-coded in the header.php file (this is only for those who encounter issues with double meta tags).
I upgraded to WordPress 2.1 and installed your latest add-meta-tags plugin. The meta tags on the main page is ok, but the excerpt on the single post for the description tag is blank.
You are right. The get_the_excerpt() function does not work any more out of the loop. I hate wordpress when it breaks backwards compatibility… I am working on it…
Thanks for reporting the issue
The version 0.9 of the plugin which fully supports WordPress 2.1 has been released. The fixes have not affected backwards compatibility, so this plugin should work on all versions of WordPress.
I stongly suggest that you use the latest version of the plugin in which all the reported bugs have been fixed and contain all those enhancements that improve the plugin’s functionality.
Please read the changelog for a list of the fixes.
A huge thanks to all who have provided their feedback.
GNot, you rock! I will try this out.
Wow, that was fast! Thanks GNot for providing the fix immediately. You rock!
Hey! Thought I’d let you know this doesn’t work in WordPress 2.1. :)
Peter
Oops! Just realised your latest comments are at the bottom rather than the top! :D
Great plugin! Thank you so much. I had been struggling with a couple of other plugins and this one is so nice and simple to implement.
I am using it with WP 2.1 and it works great.
I have one question, though. I am seeing the keywords and description show up in the head, no problem with that, but the description line is first, then the keywords line.
Is there a way to switch this so that they keywords is above the description line?
Patty
Hello Patty, thanks for your comment.
There is always a way to do something, but, in this case, I wonder why the order of the meta tags is so important. (Only one or two simple changes of the plugin code are required to switch their order.)
If I miss something and the current order of the meta tags (description, keywords) is a mistake or of little effectiveness, I will make a new release as soon as I find some free time.
IMHO, their order is not important. The META tags are the document’s metadata, which will be read by all indexing bots that respect the document’s information. I would like to hear some more feedback about this.
Hi,
Just out of curiosity, would you be able to fetch the Category Description as the Description for Category pages? I’ve had to revert back to the “Head META Description” plugin as my categories on my main blog are quite important.
Otherwise your plugin would be absolutely PERFECT! Been looking for one that combines both excerpt and custom fields, depending on availability.
thanks.
This is a very interesting feature request.
Feature added and version v1.0 of the plugin is out. Your feedback is welcome. Thanks for your feedback.
I’ve been developing and supporting this plugin for over a year now. If you like it, blog about it so more people know about add-meta-tags!
Hi,
Thanks for adding the feature. I’m now using your plugin (and will write about it). Another quick suggestion: Do you think it would be a good idea to default to the Blog’s description/tagline if there is no Category description?
Just wondering what you think.
thanks again.
Hi James,
hmm, this needs a bit of thinking… An alternative would be to use a custom message, eg “A list of all the posts tagged as category_name” or something like that. But, in this case, taking for granted that thousands of blogs could use the same categories, it would have a negative effect if they all had the same description metatag.
The blog’s description you have suggested is a good choice. One thing that should be considered is if it would be good to give the frontpage’s description to a category archive page, which admitedly is a page of much less priorityimportance than the home page.
I don’t know… I would like to read some more feedback about this before implementing something. I won’t be updating the plugin for some time now because I am too busy, but I’ll keep this in my mind.
Thanks for your suggestions. They have been really helpful and motivating.
Also, thanks for the post! ;)
It’s my pleasure. Perhaps you’re right about not having a generic Category Description the same as your homepage’s description. Though I do like your “A list of all the posts tagged as category_name” idea.
It’s easy for me as my key blog only has about 10 categories, so I can just update the descriptions quickly. But, for me, this plugin is perfect as it is, so good luck…
Can I recommend the “Subscribe to comments” plugin as well? (http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/subscribe-to-comments/). It would have made following this thread a but easier. Just an idea for you. Then, if you have an update to your plugin, post a comment, and every read who’s commented gets a mail. ;-)
Sorry, I’ll keep quiet now ;-)
I guess I’ll leave things as is for now. But I’ll keep this in my mind for the next release.
Thanks for the plugin recommendation. Sounds very interesting!
will try to change my current meta plug-in that based on the description this is what i am looking for. thanks
Still problems with this.. after you activate.. and go check a post and go to source..
The Description and Keywords Meta is Half way down the page of code.. vs right at the top underneath the TITLE meta where it should be..
Please fix it could you.. it has to be with where your telling it to place itself
jon: please fill your website URL when submitting a comment, so I can check it out to see where these metatags get written to.
Have you read this comment? Please try the possible workaround and report back.
Thanks for the nice tool, it’s really easy to use and saves a lot of hassle.
Regards,
Vladimir Ghetau
Hey George :),
Good one on that. Somehow I missed this post. I’ve been using v0.8 all this while. Updating it right away.
Cheers,
m^e
Hi Sourjya,
Yes, 0.8 had some problems, so the upgrade is necessary.
Also, someone recommended that I use the “subscribe to comments” plugin so someone can be notified. Ithink I’ll try it.
Cheers :)
Hi GNot
I am hopeless at all these things byt love this plug-in. However is still doesnt add tags to the index page. I note from comments here that this was supposed to be added.
Can you let me know
Andy
Hi Andy, it should work. You run wordpress 2.0.4 but I haven’t had any reports that the plugin does not work on pre 2.1 wordpress installations. Anyway, I do not have the required time or any clues to check it at this moment, but will do in the next days. Please, check if this plugin conflicts with any other plugin you use. It shouldn’t, but do it just to be sure and report back.
Thanks Gnot
I wouldnt know how to do that OR how to upgrade to 2.1 but I have bookmarked this page and will check to see if you manage to add a comment later.
Hi
I have trouble using your plugin, but I have a hunch that the problem lies somewhere else.
The site in question is http://www.inventive.fi . It uses WordPress 2.1.1 and add-meta tags plugin 1.0.
The site used to have hard coded description and keywords in header.php. I removed them and activated you plugin. I saved a previous post and even made a new post. However no description or keywords show up in any of the posts.
Could you point me where the problem comes?
// Lasse
Hi Lasse,
I just tested the plugin in a test 2.1.1 wordpress installation. The plugin seems to work fine. There is no need to edit/save any posts for the meta tags to appear in the HTML head area.
Are you sure that the meta tags do not appear in the HTML head? Probably they would be written at a different place than the one where the hardcoded metatags existed. Also, please try to check if the plugin conflicts with some other plugin you use (unlikely).
I double checked the head and there is no description meta tag present.
I deactivated all other plugins with no help.
However I have description and keywords keys in as custom field keys. Could this mess it up?
All other plugins work fine. I even tried autometa plugin, but that too failed to include the metatags to the head.
I have double-checked the plugin in a test 2.1.1 blog. It works fine with or without custom fields and all meta tags appear properly in the HTML code. Could you please check if the following:
exists in your
header.phptheme template? This should be there, otherwise nothing can be added to your HTML head area by a plugin.Thats it!
Great. Thank you very much from your help. I couldn’t figure it out. Now it works like a charm!
// Lasse
Ok, time for an ignorant question. I have version 1.0 and it’s activated in the plugins area. However, I have no meta tags being generated in my code on my main page. I see the code on the individual pages.. I’ve edited the header.php and see the code there – but it won’t generate out!
I’d appreciate any advice.
My site is http://www.treasure-trips.com.
Thanks
Kim
Hi Kim, I sincerely have no clue about what might be wrong. I have confirmed 100% that the plugin works. Maybe there is a conflict with some other plugin you use.
Hi,
Exist any way to “delete” the keyword of the plugin!?? I just want to put the description in each post, but not the keywords, because it use the “category” like keywords, and i dont want this. Can you help me???
Can you tell me what i need to change inside the plugin?? I need to delete each part “call” the function “keyword”!! Help me please!!
If its possible, i need to change something in my database?? (this plugin use something like one “database index” like others plugins??)
(ps.: sorry my bad english!! hehe…)
Thanks…
Hi Michel, anything is possible but it requires a little manual work. It is impossible for me to post here what needs to be commented out in the source, but I think that the selection of description/keywords or both can be added as a feature in future versions.
Great plugin! It is intuitive and easy to use. 1 question: one single post view it lists categories as the keywords. So far so good, but it’s listing the category slug rather than than individual words. For example, in the meta it is showing “my-category-name” rather than “my category name.” Ideally there would be spaces rather than dashes between the words.
Anyway to change this other than manually entering keywords?
Hi Sam,
This is a little bug that noone has ever noticed until today! Although there shouldn’t be any difference between “breaking-news” and “breaking news” for search engines (they most probably consider it as two words), this is still an issue that will be solved in the next version.
Fortunately, the solution is very simple. Open
add-meta-tags.phpin a text editor and in line 269:replace the word: category_nicename
with : cat_name
This should fix the problem. Currently, I do not have any free time to make a new release. Please, follow the instructions above to resolve the issue until the new version is out.
Thanks for reporting this issue. :-)
Yep. That did it. TY! Very nicely commented and clean code too btw.
For those still looking for a meta plugin, I’ve tried 7 others and this is the best one out there imo.
Version 1.2 of Add-Meta-Tags is out.
For a list of changes, please read the changelog above.
Upgrade Instructions:
This is only needed for upgrades from version 1.0 or older to the new 1.2 version or newer, because the way of storing the plugin options has changed.
1 – Overwrite the old add-meta-tags.php file with the new one
2 – Take a note of your “site description” and “site keywords” options.
3 – Make sure you have completed step 2
4 – Hit the Reset button at the bottom of the configuration panel. All options are deleted from the WordPress database.
5 – Set your options again.
If you notice any bugs, report them ASAP.
I thank all who have in any way contributed. :)
I noticed when I put some keywords in the “Site-wide META tags” – textbox , that these keywords appear on the top of my website. Here is the code :
This textline are keywords
Tom Ford Fanpage latest news
Can you tell me what’s wrong?
ps. I use your latest plugin v1.2
Hi Enrico,
I think you have overlooked the title of that textarea. The “Site-wide META tags” area is a place where you can add complete META Tags and not just keywords. For example:
Hope it helps.
For security reasons only
metaelements with a set of valid attributes are allowed in this box. Everything else is stripped.I don’t think
valueis a valid attribute of the meta element. The value of the meta tag should be included in thecontentattribute instead.It should be:
If you want to get rid of this check, you have to manually edit the
amt-utils.php(ver2.3.7) file and uncomment (remove the two slashes//) line 15.Line 15 is:
//return array();Should become:
return array();Please note that this will let you paste any HTML code in the ‘Full Meta Tags’ box, which means you open a security hole if the person who edits the post is not fully trusted.
Hello Georges,
Firts of all, thanks for the pluggin!
I want to insert a text in the “Front Page Description” but a text in french using an apostrophe. But when I insert a text like “L’actualité”, automatically, the apostrophe disappears?
Do you know how I can manage it?
Erik
hey – does this plugin leave any footprints. SEO by yoast does and this is no good in googles eyes.