SEOSimple Joomla 1.5 Plugin
This native Joomla 1.5 plugin automatically generates description meta tags by pulling text from the content to help with SEO. It also gives you the ability to set different title configurations. SEOSimple 1.0 is the continuation of the autoMetaDescSEO plugin (something had to be done about that name).
plg_SEOSimple_1.2.zip - Latest Version v1.2 (July 25/08)
What it does
Search engines often use a Web page’s meta description in the SERPs, and as such it is important that these meta descriptions have relevant text related to the page’s content.
In the standard Joomla 1.5 setup, meta descriptions are either set globally on the Site->Global Configuration->Metadata Settings page, or on a content item by content item basis. This isn’t too shabby if you’ve the time and energy to customize every article’s meta data.
The SEOSimple plugin automatically generates the meta description tag by taking a customizable length of text from the start of a page’s content. Should you already have a custom meta description assigned to the article (as set in the Metadata Information box in the article editor), the auto-generated tag is ignored and the custom one is used.
Additionally, the plugin gives you several options for displaying your page titles, as well as the ability to easily customize the behavior of the plugin on the site’s front page.
Note: An important practice to get in the habit of when using this plugin (and for writing on the web in general) is using the journalistic principle of the “inverted pyramid”. Essentially, write a keyword-rich summary in the first paragraph of the article. Here are some good tips on writing for the web.
How to install
Install the plugin just like you’d install any Joomla 1.5 plugin.
- Download the latest version to your system.
- Login to your Joomla 1.5 administration panel.
- Go to the EXTENSIONS->INSTALL/UNINSTALL screen.
- Click BROWSE, select the ZIP file and click the “Upload File & Install” button.
- Navigate to the EXTENSIONS->PLUGIN MANAGER and enable the plugin.
Configuration
The plugin should be pretty much ready to go right out of the box, however it does have some config options available.
Meta Desc. Length
This is how much of the contents text you want grabbed from the page and inserted in your meta description tag. By default it’s set to 200 characters - general SEO practice is to have this between 200 and 300 characters. The plugin will round it off to the nearest word, so as not to chop any terms in half.
Title Layout
By default Joomla 1.5 only displays the content item’s title as the page title (the bit that appears at the top of your browser - and, more often than not, in search engines). We agree with the Joomla development team that the content item’s title is the most important, but we felt users should have the option of also having their site name in the title tag.
You can choose to have the title tag displayed with either the content item’s title first, the site’s name first, or just the content item’s title (no site name - as is Joomla’s default).
Separator
Simply the single character that separates the content item’s title from the site’s name in the title tag. By default it is set to the pipe (’|'), but can be changed to whichever style you prefer. Note: With some characters (ie. the pipe), Joomla adds a backslash when saving to “escape” the character. As a temporary work-around, we’ve set the plugin to remove these and though they may appear in the settings, they shouldn’t appear on the site itself.
Optional Front Page Title
Often the site’s front page title is set simply as “Home” or something equally generic. As the main landing page of your site, you may wish to customize it with a few more keywords to help SEO. To do so, simply add the title here - it will replace the content item’s title on the front page.
Front Page Title Layout (*New v1.1*)
You can now customize the layout of the site’s front page title with the following configuration options:
- [optional fp title] | [site title]
- [site title] | [optional fp title]
- [optional fp title]
- [site title]
Whereby the [optional fp title] is whatever was imputed for the above “Optional Front Page Title” field.
Use Global Meta Description for Front Page
This setting allows you to bypass this plugin’s auto generation of the meta description for the front page, and instead just load the generic meta description which is set in Site->Global Configuration->Metadata Settings. The setting simply allows you an additional level of meta data control to help with SEO.
Credit Tag
This is a non-affecting meta tag that is added to give this plugin (and Dao By Design) a bit of credit. It does nothing to harm nor help SEO, but is just a way to show you support this free plugin. We much appreciate you keeping it in place, but if it really irritates you, simply disable it with this setting.
Thanks/Credit
We’d like to thank everyone that suggested improvements to the original plugin, autoMetaDescSEO plugin. Particularly, a huge thanks goes to Michael Bingmert, who donated a nice chunk of sweet code.
Support
You’re welcome to leave comments below or contact me directly regarding the plugin, but for support, bug reports, and feature requests, please use the official SEOSimple support forum.
Like this plugin? Please show the love
If you liked this plugin, we’d be super grateful if you’d take just a moment of your time and throw a vote or comment our way over at Joomla’s Extension directory. Thanks!
History
v1.0 - April 28/08 - This project was formerly called autoMetaDescSEO, but as new features were added, the name didn’t really fit (did it ever? man, bad name) and so it was retitled and reversioned starting at 1.0.
v1.1 - July 6/08 - A quick release to add some additional front-page title functionality.
v1.2 - July 25/08 - Another maintenance release to add better support for auto-generated meta descriptions on Section and Category pages. Also features better UTF-8 support and description word wrapping.
How hard can it be to look at the address for the website you are logging into? To stop the virus...
@Rob: Solid tip Rob - cheers for sharing. Didn’t even occur to me to use MySQL’s built in MD5...
This is pretty easy using PHPMyAdmin if you have it. If you don’t, get it - it’s free,...
Is there anyway to remove it once you have it?
autoMetaDescSEO changed to SEOSimple - new name, new features! | Dao By Design Blog
[...] more information about the plugin, as well as the download link - please see the SEOSimple official home page. Filed under: Joomla | Tags: j!1.5, Joomla, plugins, search engine optimization, seo, seosimple [...]
April 28, 2008 @ 11:20 am
Lazy
Hi,
great improvements.. i`m interested in but the download link does not work..?
have a nice day
Chris
April 28, 2008 @ 12:19 pm
Ryan
Doh! Had updated the file on JoomlaCode, and didn’t realize that when you update anything, it changes the URL. Should work now.
April 28, 2008 @ 12:40 pm
Lazy
thank you very much, it`s working and i have installed it right now.. works like it should and i`m really impressed. Great plugin for my lazy side..
Do you plan to add keyword generation as well?
sincerely
Chris
April 28, 2008 @ 12:52 pm
Ryan
Hi had considered adding keyword generation in this release, but am still debating the best method of auto-keyword extraction. Essentially, at the moment, the value of keywords (to me at least) is less than the value of the time it would take me to implement it. Maybe for v2.
April 28, 2008 @ 1:31 pm
Lazy
I See and agree, of course
Hm, what does it need?
A min length of the word, e.g., a keyword should not be smaller than 3 letters.
Only Substantives or not
How many to show / insert
Blacklist?
and of course, handle german umlaute (ä ü and so on )
I know your problem, the lack of time and can reconstruct it, of course. I`m very thankfull for your plugin and keywords are not that important like they were in former times.. i think, and i`m lucky about this plugin, too, because it sure saves time and i must not track all the articles from moderators/team members if the description(s) are set.
so.. thank you very much and have a really nice day
and sorry for my real bad english.
greetings
Chris
April 28, 2008 @ 1:58 pm
rightinfront
Tried this plugin looked great for the lazy gits like me, but alas when i enable the plugin, it white screens my site luckily not the admin section, so no harm done….look forward to using it..
Keep up the good work
April 28, 2008 @ 9:31 pm
Ryan
@rightinfront: What version (and subversion) of Joomla are you running?
April 29, 2008 @ 12:22 am
Purse
Hi
I am a newbie with Joomla so please excuse my lack of intelligence… I would like to know where to upload the folder via ftp so I can enable it in the administration?
June 4, 2008 @ 10:25 pm
Ryan
@Purse: Install it like you would install any Joomla 1.5 extension. Then go to the Plugins section. Scroll down the list until you see the SEOSimple plugin and then click it to enter the screen with the plugin’s parameters.
June 5, 2008 @ 9:45 am
Elim Garak
Hello! I simply ADORE this plugin, as much as I adored the previous. I have a little problem, though. It does not seem to generate any meta description (title works perfectly). Ie., this is the meta section of my homepage:
———————-
Home - http://www.kimonoflaminia.it
———————————–
Another problem I had with AutoDescSeo was this:
I installed yvcomment to have comments for my articles. When AutoDescSEO created meta description, it used the first comment instead of the content of the article. I cannot check if it’s the same with SimpleSEO, because of the first problem, but I hope it’s been fixed. Thank you!!!
June 5, 2008 @ 7:52 pm
Elim Garak
Sorry, the comment module seems to remove the code so I cannot send you the meta section of my site.
June 5, 2008 @ 7:53 pm
Ryan
Hey Elim, I went to your site to check out the meta tags and that’s a strange thing indeed. The only thing I can think of is that one of the extensions you’re running (component or plugin) is affecting the insertion of the description.
About every bug that I can think of would leave at least some trace of the description tag in there - it might be empty, but it’d at least be there. Am not sure what might be removing it all together.
Have you tried disabling the various components that insert things in your HEAD tags? The JCE stuff, and the yComment stuff and seeing if that changes anything?
June 5, 2008 @ 8:04 pm
Elim Garak
Hello!
First of all, thank you for the answer.
Yes, I’ve tried even uninstalling everything in the HEAD tags, but nothing happens.
That’s too strange, since AutoDescSeo worked (even if the problem I told you before).
I really hope we can come to a solution, because this plug-in is possibly the most useful I have on my website.
Thank you again!
June 5, 2008 @ 10:16 pm
Elim Garak
Hello again. I thought that maybe I set something wrong in Joomla SEO page, so here’s my settings (sorry if the translation is not exact, but I’m using an Italian version of Joomla):
——————–
HTML title setting: [TITLE] - [SITENAME]
Default title: [SITENAME]
Show title meta tag: Yes
Show author meta tag: Yes
Show Joomla generator tag: No
Meta description: http://WWW.KIMONOFLAMINIA.IT - Abbigliamento tradizionale giapponese
META tag description settings: Don’t use global meta description
Meta Keywords: kimono,haori, michiyuki, furisode, tomesode, tabi, geta, zori, obi, giappone, flaminia, micca, necci, abbigliamento, collezione, geisha, ventaglio, Japan, stile, style, cultura, culture, moda, fashion, Kimono,Haori, Michiyuki, Furisode, Tomesode, Tabi, Geta, Zori, Obi, Giappone, Flaminia, Micca, Necci, Abbigliamento, Collezione, Geisha, Ventaglio, Japan, Stile, Style, Cultura, Culture, Moda, Fashion, anime, Anime, manga, Manga
META tag keywords settings: Don’t use global meta keywords
Generator tag:
Custom fields default setting: Don’t use custom meta default
————————-
Thank you again!!!
June 5, 2008 @ 10:35 pm
AainaA
Thank you for sharing this - great stuff - I was looking for something similar, and am glad I found your site. Description is good, but no keywords relevant to the article concerned?
June 6, 2008 @ 11:27 am
Ryan
@Elim: I have only done prelim. testing with the plugin being used in conjunction with Joomla at Work’s SEO patch. As soon as I get a chance, I’ll take a closer look - but will be honest, that “get a chance” thing is tight these days.
@AainaA: Nope, no tags in this version. It’s on the list to be added, but to implemented it would have taken considerably more time and as meta keywords have pretty much been deemed useless.
June 6, 2008 @ 5:12 pm
Elim Garak
Thank you so much!
I suspected that could be the problem…
I’ll wait patiently for your update.
June 6, 2008 @ 5:27 pm
Anton
This is a great plugin. I use it for sections/categories pages where Joomla doesn’t allow you to enter meta description. Your extension fills in that gap.
One ‘bug’ I noticed is that it has a problem with a Russian letter P (R sound in English) as for some reason it renders it as some weird symbol �. See for example http://www.russiacall.com/lang-ru/information/39-about-us in the meta description should be the word Россию, instead it’s � оссию.
July 5, 2008 @ 12:59 pm
Anton
For what it’s worth it substitutes that one letter with Unicode replacement character FFFD.
July 5, 2008 @ 1:40 pm
Ryan
Hey Anton - I’ve not tested the plugin with multiple languages, but am not sure why it would have any effect. I’m knee deep in other projects at the moment, but as soon as I have a free moment, I’ll look into a solution for this.
If anyone comes up with one - please let me know.
July 6, 2008 @ 2:29 pm
SEOSimple Joomla 1.5 Plugin v1.1 | Dao By Design Blog
[...] a quick note to say that version 1.1 of the SEOSimple plugin has been released. This was just a quick release to add some additional front page title tag [...]
July 6, 2008 @ 6:04 pm
Elim Garak
Hello! Could you please tell if the issue with Joomla at work’s SEO patch has been solved in this release? Thank you!
July 6, 2008 @ 6:40 pm
Ryan
Sorry Elim - I just did a bit of testing, and it looks like the SEO patch changes some core files so that this plugin wont work with it.
I like the SEO patch, and have used it on a couple sites - but the fact that it modifies core Joomla files is a bit unnerving - and uninstalling (or “repatching”) after you’ve installed the patch it is a pain in the ass.
I only use it now if I need it on a site where I need to make the page’s title different than the story title.
July 6, 2008 @ 10:47 pm
Anton
Ryan,
I realize that the error I’m talking about (REPLACEMENT CHARACTER U+FFFD) is somewhat obscure and most people won’t have to deal with it. My thinking it has something to do with the encoding not decoded correctly, though why does it only do it with one letter is a mystery. Also, this only happens with meta description, not the title.
It’s got nothing to do with Joomfish either; if I put the word starting with cyrillic P capital in the default language it still gives the error.
I like the improvement to the frontpage management by the way. Used to comment it out in the plugin code with the previous version because it didn’t work with Joomfish. Now it’s more multilanguage site compatible.
July 8, 2008 @ 12:28 am
Elim Garak
Hello Ryan! I’m so sorry about that, so I presume that a version that will work with the patch will never be released…
:..(
I REALLY love your plugin and now it would be too difficult (as you say, too) to uninstall the patch.
Well… I keep hoping that maybe someday… ^__^
Thank you!
July 8, 2008 @ 4:45 am
Ryan
@Anton: I hunted around a bit online to see if anyone else was reporting problems of a similar nature and couldn’t find anything. I agree that it must have something to do with the encoding and decoding, but really have no idea what could be causing it. If, by chance, you sort it out, please let me know.
@Elim: It’s not possible for my to create a version of the plugin that works with the Joomla At Work SEO Patch because the patch alters the Joomla core. As I mentioned in the last post, because it alters the core, I’ve virtually stopped using it on any sites I develop. The problems it can create outweigh the benefits and unless you need to have an extra field that allows you to change the page’s title tags independent from the auto-generated title tags based on article title (or whatever) then there are other (non core hacks) that do the job just fine.
July 8, 2008 @ 8:41 am
Elim Garak
Such bad news…
I’d really like to remove the patch, but the problem now is that I don’t know HOW to do it.
July 9, 2008 @ 12:20 am
Anton
To Elim: the only way to get rid of the patch is overwrite your whole joomla installation with default original files.
To Ryan: do you think I can insert a custom code in SEOSimple.php something along the lines $text = str_replace…? This is just one character that’s bugging in cyrillic. Don’t know if you can do it with U+FFFD though.
July 15, 2008 @ 10:40 am
erik
Hello,
I have installed the plugin and enabled it and I am able to configure the tool. When is it writing the meta data, do I have to trigger it off?
Thanks
Erik
July 18, 2008 @ 10:31 am
JBS
Unfortunally I only get the pagename in de browser, not the combination “website title - page title”
I have installed the plugin twice:
http://www.jbscomputers.nl (1.5.4)
http://www.brabantsdialectenfestival.nl (1.5.3)
Take a look at the image slider at http://www.jbscomputers.nl and you will see the correct titles displayed. What’s wrong?
July 24, 2008 @ 6:30 pm
JBS
Fixed, openSEF was overruling the title.
July 25, 2008 @ 12:01 am
Ryan
@JBS: Good to hear - I really need to put a disclaimer up top that problems may be had if you run this plugin with other (more invasive) SEO/SEF components. Just FYI - I am running the plugin successfully with SmartSEF - which does a decent job of making extra friendly URLs.
July 25, 2008 @ 8:28 am
SEOSimple Joomla 1.5 Plugin v1.2 | Dao By Design Blog
[...] Close on the heels of the release of v1.1 I’m releasing v1.2 of the SEOSimple Joomla 1.5 plugin. [...]
July 25, 2008 @ 10:20 am
Andreas
Hi,
thanks for the great Plugin. But I have a encountered a problem with my site. First everything went right but the I changed the site name from “go west jobs - High Potential Recruiting” to “go west jobs” and changed the order from [page] | [site] to [site] | [page]
Now it still displays the old site title. When I disable the SEOSimple plugin, I get displayed the new title “go west jobs”.
Could you please check if there is some problem in your code. Or might it be some caching problem? I deleted the site cache and the explorer cache also.
Thanks in advance
August 3, 2008 @ 2:14 pm
Andreas
Forgot the site: http://www.gowestjobs.de
August 3, 2008 @ 2:15 pm
Andreas
The problem mentioned above is SOLVED!!! It was a problem with joomfish. The meta and title information in the language selection overruled the global site settings.
Greetings anyways.
Great plugin!!!
August 3, 2008 @ 10:46 pm
Elim Garak
Hello!
After installing 1.5.2, I’m receiving a lot of these in one of my sections:
Warning: cannot yet handle MBCS in html_entity_decode()! in /web/htdocs/www.kimonoflaminia.it/home/plugins/system/SEOSimple.php on line 124
Thank you!
August 3, 2008 @ 11:10 pm
Elim Garak
Obvoiusly, I meant 1.2 and not 1.5.2.
August 3, 2008 @ 11:11 pm
Ryan
@Andreas: Glad you figured it out. It’s an ongoing problem with the plugin conflicting with some components and hacks that overwrite Joomla’s built in methods, as this plugin relies on them.
@Elim: The problem is not *technically* with the plugin, but with PHP4. It’s a PHP4 bug that is easily solved by upgrading to PHP5. As PHP5 is now 4 years old, and PHP6 close at hand, upgrading your version of PHP is highly suggested. I will try to build in a bit of error checking in the next ver. to help any that refuse to upgrade for whatever reason.
August 4, 2008 @ 11:22 am
steven
Before installing seosimple:
I am new to joomla seo and was wondering about the correct process to register my site with google and yahoo. Do I register with each one then insert the verify tag in my index.php file? Then install seosimple, put in a front page title along with the meta data. Then when a google robot checks my site will it automaticaly find the info needed to create a website title and info? I have never done this before with joomla, only with flash which you insert meta tags in the index.html file. Any info you can give me would be great. Thanks
August 6, 2008 @ 7:52 am
pjk
Thanks for a great plugin! But I have a question… I’m using it with the MyBlog component, and for articles managed through MyBlog the “title” bar always just says “Home”… it never gives the title of the article, even when I click through to the article. i don’t have this problem with other articles on the site that are NOT managed by MyBlog. Any ideas why this might be happening??? thanks again!
August 7, 2008 @ 3:52 am
Ryan
@Steven: Best thing for you to do is familiarize yourself with some basic SEO principles. Also look into a good sitemap component (xmaps is decent).
@pjk: I’m really not sure if there is a conflict with MyBlog - I’ve never used it. If it rewrites the titles, there could be. Shouldn’t be, but could be.
August 7, 2008 @ 11:44 am