This plugin automatically generates description meta tags from content to help with SEO. Currently the only parameter is the ability to set how long the description should be (default 200 characters).
autoMetaDescSEO_1.0.zip – Latest Version v1.0
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.
This simple Joomla 1.5 plugin simply takes the starting chunk of text from the page’s content and applies that as the value for the meta description tag in the page’s head.
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 plugin’s zip file 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.
- Optionally, you can also edit the plugin and change the length of text that the plugin will grab from the article. By default this is set to 200 characters.
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 autoMetaDescSEO support forum.
Developing our 
You could add a function that does not leave the words cut in half
Please make 1.0.x joomla version.
Hey Milos, sorry, but we’ve barely enough time to improve the J!1.5 version. As there are huge improvements with J!1.5 over the J!1.0.x series, I’d highly recommend upgrading. J!1.0.x is quickly going to fall off the map for support and new features.
Nice plugin but one problem. I have a couple mods that I use just on the home page and when a articled is clicked or commented on, it uses up the full page. After enabling the plugin, my mods show on every page now. When I don’t want them too. Anyone else have this problem?
Hi Rob, bizarre indeed. The plugin simply inserts a META tag in your page’s head – before any actual body HTML is rendered. I can’t see how this would have any effect on module positions.
Thanks for the reply. It seems it happens only sometimes and I’m sure it has something to on my end that I screwed up
I was just curious. It is a very good plugin.
Hi,
its a really fine plugin, thank you very much. Would be great if it could add keywords, too.
have a nice day
Chris
You should better use :
$document->setDescription($thecontent);
to not duplicate the description metatag. You can also cleanup a little bit the content :
$thecontent = substr(strip_tags($row->text),0,250);
$thecontent = str_replace(array(“\t”,”\r”,”\n”,” ”),” “,$thecontent);
$thecontent = preg_replace(‘/\s+/’, ‘ ‘, $thecontent);
$thecontent = trim(substr($thecontent,0,200));
Hi Vincent – you’re absolutely right – all those changes and many more have been made for the new version – SEOSimple v1.0.
This is a great plugin but for me it only seems to work on the front page – maybe I’ve not got Joomla setup properly / using it correctly?
The description and meta tags on the front page are fine but all other pages it uses the same keywords as the front page and
I first tried the shcustomtag plugin which never worked.. I tried this after that which again did not work.. something shud be wrong from my end..
@Danny: This post is way old. Definitely check out SEO Simple, the updated version and see if that works. If it doesn’t – be sure to dig into what other components/plugins you’re using – if you have other addons that are trying to configure SEO stuff, they might conflict.
Has Not understood what sign on news?
How can we set different Mata Title, Meta description and Meta Keywords for different pages
The purpose of the plugin is to auto-generate these items. To custom-set these values, you simply do it the usual way via Joomla’s article editor (it’s a core function of Joomla).
This is a great plugin but for me it only seems to work on the front page – maybe I’ve not got Joomla setup properly / using it correctly?
Very nice tool thanks for this.
After enabling the plugin, my mods show on every page now.
A very nice plugin I have found and recommending to my clients as well. Thanks for this. Regards. Sagar
Nice plugin..
A really liked it .but is there any option to edit meta tags at once for 50 pages ??
This plugin works great, been running it on all my new Joomla installs and it seems to work as described.
This is a great plugin, been using it for about a year and have had no issues
Thanks for the reply. It seems it happens only sometimes and I’m sure it has something to on my end that I screwed up
I was just curious. It is a very good plugin.
Can I use this for keywords only?
Pretty good plug in! but have a problem… When you’re in the Home Page, the plug In put the Meta Description of the firts news in the Home news component; I’ve changed the code for the follow:
function autoMetaDesc( &$row, &$params, $page=0 )
{
$task=JArrayHelper::getValue($_GET,’view’,false);
if ($task==’article’) {
$plugin =& JPluginHelper::getPlugin(‘content’, ‘autoMetaDescSEO_1.0′);
$document =& JFactory::getDocument();
$pluginParams = new JParameter( $plugin->params );
$thelength = $pluginParams->def(‘length’, 200);
$thecontent = rtrim(substr(strip_tags($row->text),0,$thelength));
$document->setMetaData(“description”, $thecontent);
}
}
I didn’t know about the plugin before. Thx a lot I have found a lot of informations in your article. Please more aricle like yours
Plugin works fine, no issues so far!
Joomla have a great Seo programm i am happy to use it
This has been pretty useful, and nice to see Joomla as a platform getting some support. There’s often WordPress features that I want to see emulated on Joomla, so this is pretty cool.
thanks Dao . dùng rất tuyệt
Thanks for this one – quite helpful!
very nice plugin, is exactly what I was looking.
thanks for the instructions!!
Wonderful work! That is the type of info that should be shared around the net. Shame on Google for now not positioning this put up upper! Come on over and discuss with my website . Thank you =)
It works, but as mentioned before it would be better if it didn’t truncate the words and also to maybe append to the beginning of the description some additional words or phrases to represent the website.
Thank You – Excellent